Best Dactyls Poems
Fractals.
Spawn of iterating quadratic functions.
Choreographers of cosmic conjunctions.
Impervious to human dysfunctions.
Makers of multiverses. Encoders of creations.
Limited only by imaginations.
Recursive. Coercive. Immensely immersive.
Purveyors of poetic creative cursive.
With formative fractals you’ll melt your mind’s shackles
and be anywhere that you may want to be.
You can form fractals to your own reality,
and make anything in the sky or the sea.
You can even repurpose them to poetry …
Yes, if
fractals were dactyls they’d flow off the page,
whirling and twirling, sublime.
Freeing us, being us, thoughts disengage,
teasing and pleasing with rhyme,
reaping the rhythms of time.
From mundane equations that yet yield complex
repetitive patterns that please and perplex,
come fractals so beautiful in all respects.
Constructors of coastlines and snowflake concerns,
foundries for forests, and feathers, and ferns,
the deeper you dive they have more twists and turns.
Generators of patterns, like veins in a leaf,
and the branches of trees, shapes of every motif.
Look around, everywhere, there are fractals, good grief!
From the large to the small and still smaller they flow,
simple patterns repeating, yet different, you'll know
that there’s just no escaping the great fractal show.
So, let’s face them, embrace them, we’ll host history.
Let us master them, plaster them, I guarantee:
merge your mind into fractals, you’ll set your soul free.
Reconstructed 3/22/2021, for the FRAGMENTS OF VERSE Poetry Contest, sponsored by John Lawless
Today I feel iambic! I would say
of all the meters, I like it the best.
An iamb starts with some soft sound to say
then ev'ry second syllable is stressed.
Trochees likewise, alternate their stresses;
even-numbered syllables are muted.
Nowhere near as popular (my guess is) -
Trochee fans, though, fervently dispute it.
Feet are the units of meter - such fun!
Dactyls have syllables STRESSED/, un-/, and un-.
"T'was the Night Before Christmas" is in Anapest:
that's a foot with three syllables: un-/, un-/, and
STRESSED.
The meter is the pattern of the beats within a line
"Iambic" and "Heptameter" describe this line just fine.
Anapestic Tetrameter: four anapests;
and the best part of THIS lecture series? No tests!
Trimeter has three feet
Tetrameter has just four feet
Pentameter adds one foot, making five
Hexameter adds one: six feet in this beehive
Heptameter has seven feet, but now it's getting late;
and so I'll close with this (you may have guessed):
Octameter has eight!
written 1 July 2023
Today I’d like to talk to you about how meter plays a part in
how we write a poem and sometimes in how we speak
The above lines, which are not at all poetic, are written in a specific
rhythm, or meter. Go back and read them again. You’ll pick up on
the rhythm: da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, etc. (unaccented syllable,
accented syllable, etc.)
The meter most commonly employed in poetry is iambic pentameter:
An iamb consists of an unaccented syllable and an accented syllable.
“Penta” means five. Therefore, five iambs create the meter called
iambic pentameter. Now, we’ll look at the top two lines again, this
time dividing the words into three lines: 1. Today I’d like to talk to you
about 2. how meter plays a part in how we write 3. a poem and some-
times in how we speak. This plain, literal language is written in the
rhythm used in many poems—iambic pentameter.
Literary examples, followed by everyday language, all in iambic pentameter:
“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall.” (Robert Browning)
My rubber ball went bouncing down the hall! (Yours truly)
*****************************
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (THE Bard)
Let’s stop and buy some gum along the way. (Yours truly)
****************************
Ask me for trochees, dactyls, anapests,
and spondees. All will take me quite a while.
Request tetrameter and trimeter.
Will do! But none of these will make me smile
like writing five neat iambs in each line.
I most enjoy this well-established style.
August 1, 2018
Contest Title: Reads Like Music--Haibun-Look poetry contest
Sponsor: Line Gauthier
Squickleby Pickleby
Nicholas Nickleby
loses his Father and
feels quite forlorn.
Ralph his tight uncle a
disciplinarian
mean to the marrow
regards him with scorn.
Nicholas, penniless
uncompromisingly
works as a master where
boys take the flack.
Nickleby fears for the
safety of orphans there
rescues a cripple and
never looks back.
Granted this ending is
unsatisfactory
Dickens had plenty more
meat to this tale.
So to all readers I
send my apologies;
These double dactyls are
tricky travail.
01.01.2021
Based on the novel 'Nicholas Nickleby' by Charles Dickens
Double Dactyl (Win For Paid Membership) Poetry Contest
Sponsor : William Kekaula
I.
Higgledy piggledy
Roger de Coverley
Fonder of hoofing it
Than of romance
Found himself typified
Characteristically
King of the Reels and the
Lord of the Dance.
II.
Willety wallety
William the Conqueror
Wanted his subjects to
Quail at his power,
Crowing to Londoners
Hyperdespotically,
“Look, everybody, I’ve
Built me a tower!”
III.
Rickety tickety
Wolfram von Eschenbach
Sought for a subject to
Fashion a tale;
Tiring of writing so
Eschatologically,
Rather, he turned to the
Quest of the Grail.
NB. The nonsense opening of a Double Dactyl was originally, and is still most frequently, "higgledy-piggledy", but it can be any alliterative pair of dactyls. Here, the opening of the second is from the adapted version of the Scots folksong "Wee Cooper o' Fife" in the schoolhouse sequence of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds-- though some postings online mishear it as "willaby wallaby" or "willicky wallicky". The nonsense opening of the third is from Tom Lehrer's "The Irish Ballad".
^b^
Lux Nova
(after Notre Dame)
The light at Suger's
St. Denis
precursor for mighty Notre Dame
Paints both floors in color.
Transliterated from the glass of guilds
Tracery and mullions
Adumbrate
A story in late winter's light
Perhaps enough, barely enough
Enough of an outline...
Still, colors bleed
Onto freshly scrubbed floors and
Sing in their own tongue.
A washbucket stands idle
Utensils erect and attentive
Listening for
A song sung to eyes, not ears
And that is what some call magic
For others
Inspiration...
To all
The lux nova.
I too have heard whispered prayers
Hushed reverence, suspirations of hope...
Nascent long ago
Even in the empty house
So still, so full of light.
Stone and the Areopagite
Make the stuff of building ---
But neo-Platonic rhythm on strings
Sound the noumenal
now real and
Find the unwinding of the literal
Amid limpid traces
Of flesh, reaching spirit
Like incensed smoke-trails
Seeking height.
Censers disgorge aspirations
History disgorges bodies and
fire destroys beauty.
Climbing inchoate dactyls
Finger the new braille
Of the new light...
Lux Nova
Noli me tangere...
And so it is ---
Light remains ineffable in its
Own incarnation...
One can re-build stone and timber
the rest
Resides inside...
^b^
Limerick Gimmerick
Jason of Pendleton
Tried double-dactyls while
Fearing the worst.
Uh-oh-spaghetti-o!
They're all bass-ackwards cuz
He's used to anapest
(Dactyls reversed).
La Isla del Encanto
(El Poema del Linda)
There was no Elizabethan
Changing of eyes
On the Isle of Enchantment;
No sudden moment of charm or bewilderment.
Rather, came a delicate awakening
Like soft dawn rising over groves
Redolent of plantain and nectar.
The Linden tree calls her
Soft and tender
So too a neo-Latin name for
Beauty
As she was
Ever
Native to islands
Born from sea spray
A soft mystery to be read,
Explored, and never concluded...
And now I see it
So absolutely like
The shawl settled
Across her shoulders
Lifting in the breeze
Ushered in by grace.
As such,
She wandered to my bed where
Passion can burn in one candescent night.
But where love
Is a different calendar.
Not precise and never numbered...
Indeed, ahead unfold
A concatenation of days
Accruing as a mausoleum of memory
Where gentle spirits lay forever
Eschewing sleep in favor
Of allowing auras to seep into
And inform
The ever-expanding present,
Of an interlocking reverie.
Slow growth,
delicate and steady...
Becoming more entwined
The moment fingers locked
And we ascend towards bloom.
A lattice made from mutual mistakes
Holds up, defiant ---
Lends skeletal strength
While mapping the body of
One ardent dream.
And what soft lumen roused me
From my torpid slumber
Waking me to lilt of sea-song?
Aurora's nascent dactyls
Inched up horizon line
Ascending like aspiring wisps of hope
Spreading warmth unnoticed
Until, by zenith
All shall be bright and clear
Where we share a common tongue
But speak a deeper language
Not private, but privileged.
Granted only those who move
Beyond number and word
To caress contradiction
Embrace the ineffable
Partake of the fabulous Dane's
Mystic leap of faith.
If this be the reward to come
In learning from the past
Then let me, please
Mistake no more...
RECIPE: “Poulet Roti” French Style - Ballade Le Chant Royal 6
(NOTE: This French “ballade” is being composed on permutations of the number ONE repeated twice, I.e., 11. Eleven syllables to the line in iamb or anapeste, interposed with dactyls, I guess, and of course with the ENVOI added. Eleven lines to the STANZA in eleven in res media “instalments”involving the minutely PERSONAL in interaction with the larger hoi polloi in relation to the STATE and its tentacular authoritarian apparatuses designed to keep the independent INDIVIDUAL always nailed in limbo.) T Wignesan
STANZA VI
“So why don’tya get out of this Third World hell !”
Near-East stronghold now in Maghreb stranglehold
Where Asians and Africans mingle pell-mell
Where the French affix sign-boards on their soil: “SOLD!”
The moonlight flit now turned to Indian rope trick
Where East Europeans come thick and homesick
To join the ranks of those from South-Euro lands
Who make much of the Far Right extremist brigands
Les français de souche* still commute to keep jobs
Like they once nostalgic did in foreign lands
The migrant refugee does odd jobs and robs
ENVOI
French lasses push prams with babes sunburnt inlands
No Tariq Ali* need turn back for want of bans
May the World colourless be sans hapless gods
Or will it taken over be by hooligans
The migrant refugee does odd jobs and robs
*Les français de souche: the French of stolid French ancestry.
*Tariq Ali, the Berber Moor alighted on the rock of Gibraltar, in 709 C. E. , with 30,000 horsemen, and by 711 had over-run the Iberian Peninsula, but Abdul Rahman al-Gafiqi, the Governor General of al-Andalus, who tried to extend the conquests further into Europe was halted in his tracks by the Frank Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers/Tours in 732.
(c) T. Wignesan - Paris, 2017
That Salad Went Right Through Me
I've always wanted to write a poem called
“That Salad Went Right Through Me”.
And I would wager upon its best destiny:
To begin with, there is the Universal Theme--
For who has not gurgled around a conference table
at half past the last radish scrap?
Who, once stalled, has not
persistently punched the flusher
to muffle the borborygmus din?
But on a loftier note, I prefer
to think of my paean emblazoned
in the annals of first line indexes,
where, as one wanders lonely as a cloud
over dactyls and tropes,
“That salad went right through me”
trots right off the page
demanding a fervid flip to its leaf.
And future discourse plied at workshops,
and other such rarefied privies of poesy
might thusly include:
"Did you write a poem for the class today?"
Yes...“That Salad Went Right Through Me”
"Well then, you should consider the cheesecake."
Thank you dear / Debbie for / pointing out / my mistakes!
Now I can / see where I’ve / been getting / out of step.
“Statuesque” / was one of / my early / efforts and
Then I had / not learned the / rhythms of /poetry.
If I were / Writing it / now I’d be / tidier.
I’d know my / dactyls and / iambs and / … other stuff …
But since the / subject was / utterly / frivolous,
Frankly Ms. / Guzzi, I / don’t think I / give a damn!
.......................
I thought my original entry in Debbie’s meter contest was in
dactylic tetrameters.
Sadly it was not – but this one is!
Dactyls are metrical
Feet that are named after
Fingers with three little
Parts like the knuckles that
Lie in a pattern of
Stress like these sentences:
'Jealously murmuring
Elephants quietly
Sob in their handkerchiefs.'
Feet that are fingers -
How odd!
Rabbit brags
crazily;
Tortoise plods
lazily.
Rabbit gets
sleepy, see.
Tortoise wins
Easily.
Work ethic
is lacking;
Rabbit gets
shellacking.
Relentless,
forward, there.
T’s out front
by a hare.
Nonfiction
or fable?
Decide if
you’re able.
----------
Using more dactyls seems a good match for the form...
https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/cethramtu-rannaigechta-moire-poetic-asides
A prehistoric dragon, with a taste for Pterodactyl;
felt a major hunger pain while penning a few dactyls.
Dropping hammer and chisel, he flew off for his hunt;
it wasn’t long at all when, he spied himself a runt.
The tender meat, to him would be a tasty little treat
but, runt’s fly fast and could he last till capture was complete?
His aim was great so, in he flew to the Pterodactyl nest;
but a runt did dragon spot and it put him to a test.
Though dragon was of middle age; eight thousand years or so;
his agility was still quite good and he gave the chase a go.
His meal once caught, he’d sear and eat; his fire was good and hot
but, an easy catch, this little runt was not.
Its swiftness was unusual; though speed he couldn’t clock.
He was certain he’d not slowed down but, then he smacked a rock!
Oh my, the stars that swirled around, his bruised and aching head;
the runt was gone; dragon staggered home and lay down in his bed.
The moral of this story, have variety in your diet;
you’ll always have enough to eat; just try it.
Written, March 24, 2025
For Contest, Your Choice E sponsor, Brian Strand
******************
hands aegis
sculpting lullabies
cradling
warmed by
candlelight - wax
flesh
muscle
breath
zephyr
exhales
inaudible eulogies
exuding oxidation
of
turpentine
nectar
of
ebony &
onyx
varnishes in
liniment
to coddiwomple
fingers &
dactyls
tracking
ectoblastic
layers
labyrinth puddles
yen's fuel trigger
perspiring
bruised blooms
quivered reverberations
declining
blossom
obscured in
sunken strands
of
sprouts
&
burial site
effigy melting
Inside
silk gloves