Best Parallelism Poems
Perhaps I’m facing pogonophobes?
Apparently wore the wrong face.
Age-hardened wiry wisps forge
post-pubescent platemail -
protect strangers
from my truest fleshy pores, protect me
from the xenophobes of the Winter Conference.
It’s all pitching and coffee breaks
In a hall too grand for these meager mergers
Silent hecklers - likely clean-shaven -
likely Twitter-blasting about
an awkward pitch
and bitterness.
A beard grows opacity over my ebullient disinterest,
feigns sophistication amidst sophists,
and harbors microbes – an entire ecosystem –
Bored, I wonder;
Do they hold conferences as well?
Share stories around a follicle?
How uncomfortable
the itch of capitalism,
This profit pilgrimage
huddles us together
for that sickness to spread.
Free meals, networking with the estranged -
connect vacuously over downed drinks
and political action.
Shallow words spread thick
on the biological superhighway
bacterium feast freely.
The Winter Conference;
a microscopic windfall.
CONTEST ANNOTATION:
I’ve attempted to employ alliteration (‘post-pubescent platemale’), ambiguity (‘…for that sickness to spread’), double entendre (‘free meals’ and ‘bacterium feast freely’), imagery (‘my truest fleshy pores’, ‘Age-hardened wiry wisps’), paradox (‘ebullient disinterest’, ‘networking with the estranged’), and parallelism (‘likely clean-shaven – likely Twitter-blasting’). Not sure I’ve nailed every aspect of these devices - love the contest format as a way to force us in new directions!
Frightened By the Polls
As frightened as a wolverine in a man-made metal trap,
The politician crawled out from under his rock.
Afraid, after his voting record was revealed,
He avoided facing his constituency and their votes.
Never had he seen such scathing, waving, hating arms.
A people’s representative turned belly-up.
One Senator, a rejected self-server, voted out!
His crown fell into the black mire.
Peaceful realms of his mind were jolted.
The plaza of his heart unfettered.
Sorrowfully, for him, self-serving statutes were stifled.
Laughing loudly his bloodthirsty opponents celebrated.
Their fun was short lived.
They, too, were soon hung out to dry on the pole, at the polls.
Because they failed to honor the value of our forefather’s demands,
Because they had misrepresented their voters again and again,
Because Americans stood tall and took Freedom’s stand,
They voted out self-servers and voted in honest men.
An entirely new era in Washington began.
The continuation of freedoms as our ancestors planned.
Constitutional guarantees for freedom were revived.
Soon, sunshine shone its smiling face upon ordinary people.
Society reclaimed her power.
Love, tolerance, respect, and individuality thrived.
God bless America.
Poetic vehicles used: alliteration, assonance, metaphor, parallelism, personification, rhyme, satire, simile,
synecdoche, and metonymy. Written for Deborah's contest, but it's the wrong form. Oops. Thanks for the lessons, Deb. SMILES.
© August 19, 2010
Dane Smith-Johnsen
1. Today, the weather feels like heaven's bliss!
2. The balmy breeze and beautiful soft blue
3. of sky above so makes me think of love.
4. I feel time's right to write a charming poem
5. alone, together with my thoughtful views;
6. the day's bright glow morphs into sunny smiles
7. as sun speaks out to tell me all's okay.
8. Free gift, true fact, sun is my greatest joy!
9. Oh loveliness of day you melt my heart!
10. The words are humming, coming to my mind...
11. not nasty, snippy ones, evoked by rain,
12. but sweet, melodious, soft, sing-song ones
13. that move what's seen to my poetic scene
14. to paint such happiness when weather's fine.
15. And now...my poem...profound or slight? Oh no!
16. To write with pointless pencil...so pointless!
Poetic Devices Used In Lines 1 through 16: Words in italics help identify them.
1. Simile 2. Alliteration 3. Internal Rhyme 4. Homophone 5. Oxymoron
6. Metaphor 7. Personification 8. Pleonasm 9. Euphony 10. Assonance
11. Dissonance 12. Parallelism 13. Homonyms 14.Truism 15. Antithesis
16. Pun Lines 10-14 Enjambment
August 18, 2018
~3rd Place~
Contest: Litany of Poetic Devices
Sponsor: Line Gauthier
Judged: 09/13/2018
1 Would you say that you’d like to write better?
2 Keep writing whether book or love letter.
3 Great writers don’t quit, they write quite a lot.
4 If tempted to stop they simply did not
5 The best of the best, I’d even dare say,
6 Wrote not a few that they just threw away.
7 When eyes of blank pages stare up at you
8 “Quitting makes perfect,” has never been true-
9 ly the more that you practice you’ll find
10 forsooth erelong you shall broaden your mind.
11 The pen is a sword of limitless might;
12 If something is wrong, words can make it write.
13 Words are like arrows that target the soul.
14 They twang, zip, then thump when shot with control;
15 Untrained words injure and never strike true.
16 So religiously write, routinely review
17 For words are the lamp, through darkness lighting.
18 So always, forever just keep right on writing.
8.28.18
Contest: A Litany of Poetic Devices
Sponsors Line Gauthier
Literary Devices by line:
1. rhetorical question
2. internal rhyme
3. consonance (t)
4. inversion
5. parallelism (and superlative)
6. litote
7. personification
8. antithesis
9. enjambment
10. archaism
11. metonymy and metaphor
12. pun (homonym)
13. simile
14. onomatopoeia
15. dissonance (via harsh consonants and uneven vowels)
16. alliteration
17. hyperbaton and metaphor
18. pleonasm
1. The story started in sunshine on the sea shore
2. in reminiscent ambience like the French Riviera
3. where the colors of sunset were painting horizon.
4. When twilight merged with descending darkness of dusk
5. I saw your flashing figure, a fleeting deer, on the beach,
6. hair on air making charming lace on your face
7. blushing in serene grace in setting sun’s hued embrace.
8. The lasting picture I made into dream, I knew it could break.
9. That’s how my heart weaved love, and you … amorous tapestry
10. your sweet arms laid on an ardent pathway for me.
11. I saw it wind toward you as you paced in the wind,
12. a scene I’d seen in the mist of dream … I hadn’t missed.
13. The reverie came true when I slowly strode near you,
14. you let me hold your hands supple, how alluring they were
15. my mind felt … your love wasn’t the farthest one
16. for you were keen to lend your hand usher it in
17. from the waxing waves with the whispering wind
18. that broke the deafening silence between you and me
19. for we heard melody of romance in the air, in the heart
20. repeated again and again like the breaking waves,
21. the crests crowned by pearls pristine of the dancing sea.
22. In my own heart I could feel that you became only mine
23. so … together we could fly in the limpid sky of longing life.
24. At sundown hour like birds to the astral nest we’d return.
September 13, 2018
Poetic devices used in lines : 1. Alliteration, 2. Allusion, 3. Ambiguity, 4. Antithesis (also Alliteration), 5. Apposition (also Alliteration), 6. Assonance (also Consonance and Enjambment), 7. Consonance, 8. Dissonance (also Metaphor), 9. Ellipsis (also Enjambment), 10. Euphony (also Enjambment), 11. Homograph, 12. Homophone (also Ellipsis), 13. Internal Rhyme, 14. Inversion (also Enjambment), 15, Litote (also Ellipsis), 16. Metonymy (also Internal Rhyme), 17. Onomatopoeia (also Alliteration and Personification), 18. Oxymoron, 19. Parallelism (also Enjambment), 20. Tautology (also Simile), 21. Personification, 22. Pleonasm, 23. Metaphor (also Ellipsis and Alliteration), 24. Simile.
While the U.S. Delta aircraft lands,
moving toward Simon Bolivar Airport,
humidity assaults me like my own tropical country;
people like Venezolanos and other walks of life,
emerge on the horizon with smiles and thanksgiving.
Beyond my wildest imagination,
there's parallelism in the Caribbean experience.
Food, history, literature, and even human struggles
abound with stories and gospel cries.
Roads are narrow, long and winding,
but with leafy trees giving green and delight.
Up in the hills, houses could be seen piling up
like matches or the Italian presepio background.
Traffic congestion as an everyday expectation
roads seem to be like a moving parking lot;
converging at the center or passing through the light.
It's a common reality, a great deal of acceptance.
People's religiosity draws me to think back in my own land.
It's a wealth of life that champions relationship with God.
there's depth and meaning in their strong ties to faith,
another perspective, insight and moment to highlight.
Some refractions of their past as people who struggled a lot;
migration experience shows how they wrestle with life.
Being uprooted and strangers in their newfound land,
their dreams come to fulfillment through human sacrifice.
I see how commitment and focusing can make a difference.
amid the travails, disappointments, and sorrows in life.
It's an engaging pattern that brings me to look into
where faith and hope can be needed to be able to persevere.
In a nutshell, Venezolanos too have their own share to be human.
A battlefield called Megiddo
is where the world will be drawn
How the story ends will be forgotten
and generals will move on
Why Megiddo? The world may ask
And the answer will be simple
Megiddo, is where the enemy is
and there he will build his temple
There are as many stories as there are stars
when they all arrive
But by then the bible will seem
like one single sentence
the common thread woven in their lives
And there the futruity will take place
One single event will engulf
the entire human race
The attempt to interchange the worlds
parallelism with the Word will move
from improbability to impossibility
in the blink of an eye
Be an eagle and fly
Never let yourself be held back
Soar high
Keeping to the track
As higher you fly
Be blind to unjust antagonism
With it be on a level of parallelism
Soar high above the cloud
For you are success bound.
Winter
Black cloud enshroud blue horizon while migrating birds tweet their last goodbye
Arctic winds weigh down bare naked branches watching blinding storms streak by
Above forsaken lodge tower sequoias like sentinels safeguarding an empty citadel
Hungry bison scrapes damp earth for green grass then uncovers a nourishing well
Immaculate summits shed kaleidoscopic colors pondering the splendor of next fall
Snowflake encrusted serpentine rivers inside the path of an imminent frigid squall
Taking agile steps shivering wolves defend lives at stake to outfox predacious gun
Aging leaves tumble toward battered ground envying the sky waiting for the sun
Penned:
01/10/2018
12:37 P.M.
West Palm Beach, Florida
beheaded blame is constant
love is a crushed, ornamentated adjective to you
yet and still i am under you submissive to your rhythmic therapy
there was a time when i was a thorn searching for a bush
nowadays i am an earthworm looking to be part of a footprint in a neglected garden
yet and still i drink the flavored saliva of your passionate persona
i am proud to be a thief stealing snowflakes of happiness from honest presentations of bliss
i become a dense dunce cutting my finger at the point of the cap that causes migraines
yet and still i lick up the majestic masterpiece disguised as a brilliant secret in continuous bloom
fruitless flagellation performs as parallelism
forever is an interrogative interest descending to you
yet and still i manage to lie to myself and call myself stable, strong and able
Euclid's Fifth
i. In Motion
It was your pale glance, like a
frame frozen for a second and then
unfreezes, the cold moist from
melting, biting my thoughts of
breaking into your ice-walled
dullness. Tonight the frigid span
of time, muteness, between the
divorce of time and space, thaws
folds and creases of the ice-cold
pause of a scene. While like a
half-frozen mime reflected from a
broken reel, scratchy, fallacious
and recurring, creeps upon its
numbed screen, my rigid,
frostbitten flesh.
ii. On Parallelism
Suckled in the wounds of regret,
better that all these fruits fall, the
green ones no more, bitter
to taste, unripened and dictated to
full, proving you are closest to me,
better that all these fruits fall, than
to pluck them, flick through under
tremulous limbs, with glimpse, with
crave quickening each pauses, I'll
point at them falling, slow and one
at a time.
Recapitulating
(Embryonic Parallelism)
While wondering and then continually waiting,
My mind was manipulating and recapitulating;
Had looked around;
Fingers were found;
To play piano really do need more educating.
Jim Horn
There's a place far away
That's the one that you love
You look at the greens and purples
Some of us will get freckles
There's a place far away
It's so full filling you are brave
There you see your walkside
As you walk up
The more lovely you behave
You see the parallelism you are breathless
Out of mind
Restless.
Faithfull
Mind powerful
You see the deep excess ,you are the access
To the new raise of awareness .
morning has broken broken dreams in the cold light of day
________________________________________________________
POET'S NOTES
With her monoku, Marlene 'Mountain' Morelock Wills (1939–2018), challenged the idea that haiku must consist of two juxtaposed images. I explore parallelism as a possible poetic device in this monoku, as well as a form of internal rhyme.
Besides the obvious meaning of "broken" (to break), "morning is broken" is an example of a contronym:
Now, as an adult, I realize that the use of “broken” in the expression “Morning has broken” is most closely related to breaking through a barrier, out of a throng, or through a surface. In fact, Merriam-Webster clusters it there: “to come into being by…bursting forth.”
PASSING NOTES: Morning Has Broken, by Christina M. Bentley October 9, 2017.
It returns to haunt,
the dilemma, of disowning
the old version of truth;
when I was searching the parallelism
for the sake of otherness.
The unreturning melancholia,
brings the surreal intruder,
I did not want to entertain.
The insane activity of heart
wants a sin uncommitted.
The flirt eyes like a tulip
between your fingers,
unrolling the tender petals.
Night throws the salt on the moon.
There were no tears.
Satish Verma