Best Variations Poems
Variations on the Malay Pantun : The Old Man and the Short Story - VII-IX Continued
for Georges VOISSET, the "Master Keeper-Nurturer" of the Malay Pantun
Check out: www.stateless.mysite.com/Pantouns-20-Aout-2017.pdf
(The pantun line varies between 8 and 12 syllables and is most commonly found in the anonymous quatrain form. Cf " Poietics of the Pantun ", pp. 49-67 in T. Wignesan. Sporadic Striving amid Echoed Voices, Mirrored Images and Stereotypic Posturing in Malaysian-Singaporean Literatures. Allahabad : Cyberwit, 2008, xix-244p.)
VII
The One-Act Play's the favourite Old Men's roman fleuve
Experience shows Old Men how to keep the Wench in hell
They know how to stoke the Imagination with love
They need no how-to softwares to write a novel
VIII
The One-Act Play they say is still Old Men's mainstay
Though on Freytag's Triangle they slip down climax
The Wench cannot make Old Men still come up their way
Not so the Youngster his horns gore Wench's false syntax
IX
The Wench always seeks to milk Old Men in side-burns
Old Men know One-Act Plays don't box-office burgeon
Nor drips invested in banks ensure big returns
Not so the Youngster who banks his bit in oven
© T. Wignesan - Paris, November 11, 2018
Categories:
variations, age, humor, love, sensual,
Form:
Pantoum
Variations on the Malay Pantun : The Old Man and the Short Story (Continued)
for Georges VOISSET, the "Master Keeper-Nurturer" of the Malay Pantun
Check out: www.stateless.mysite.com/Pantouns-20-Aout-2017.pdf
(The pantun line varies between 8 and 12 syllables and is most commonly found in the anonymous quatrain form. Cf " Poietics of the Pantun ", pp. 49-67 in T. Wignesan. Sporadic Striving amid Echoed Voices, Mirrored Images and Stereotypic Posturing in Malaysian-Singaporean Literatures. Allahabad : Cyberwit, 2008, xix-244p.)
IV
During the intervals of the play the actors
Spy on older folk queueing outside the lone loo
The Wench in the hall twists and turns on spectators
Not so the Youngster his pen stiff in the igloo
V
Middle-aged couples in the audience flick through
The programme not reading even the title page
Long years since they thumbed dog-ear-ed novels stuck in glue
Not so the Youngster who jumps high from page to page
VI
Old Men trundle back to their seats trailing wet patches
Not regretting over-coat flirts with hat-check Wench
Old people read novels in bed but in snatches
Not so the Youngster who throws into works his wrench
© T. Wignesan - Paris, November 10, 2018
Categories:
variations, age, humor, satire, sensual,
Form:
Pantoum
Variations on the Malay Pantun : The Old Man and the Short Story
for Georges VOISSET, the "Master Keeper-Nurturer" of the Malay Pantun
Check out: www.stateless.mysite.com/Pantouns-20-Aout-2017.pdf
(The pantun line varies between 8 and 12 syllables and is most commonly found in the anonymous quatrain form. Cf " Poietics of the Pantun ", pp. 49-67 in T. Wignesan. Sporadic Striving amid Echoed Voices, Mirrored Images and Stereotypic Posturing in Malaysian-Singaporean Literatures. Allahabad : Cyberwit, 2008, xix-244p.)
I
The Old Man often stops by the hedge or dark bush
His back to the World, the Youngster can hold his own
The short story is written through spurts in a rush
Not so the novel which calls for much breath word blown
II
The poem most write confines itself to the page
Cousin brother to the short story told in a day
Old Men take less time to leave the Wench in a rage
Not so the Youngster whose novels always end gay
III
Plays are staged with intervals peer to the novel
Essays take longer to read than the short story
The Wench smokes cigarettes waiting to stoke yell
Not so the Youngster whose next essay's more gory
© T. Wignesan - Paris, November 9, 2018
Categories:
variations, age, humor, imagery, poetry,
Form:
Pantoum
Variations in c note
On the scales arising nocturn
Bellows swing tapping onto Harlem
All rights reserved
A.Camacho jr.
1996-2015
Categories:
variations, cool, dance, music, new
Form:
Haiku
Variations on the Malay Pantun : The Old Man and the Short Story - X -XII - Continued
for Georges VOISSET, the "Master Keeper-Nurturer" of the Malay Pantun
(The pantun line varies between 8 and 12 syllables and is most commonly found in the anonymous quatrain form. Cf " Poietics of the Pantun ", pp. 49-67 in T. Wignesan. Sporadic Striving amid Echoed Voices, Mirrored Images and Stereotypic Posturing in Malaysian-Singaporean Literatures. Allahabad : Cyberwit, 2008, xix-244p.)
X
Go West on horseback and fire pistols point blank
Union Pacific galloped at City Lights
The Wench prefers red-hot fire not bullets blank
Old Men let horses ride bareback on Wench sans tights
XI
Go West on quick-shunting trains and let fall frontiers
Go East on horseback and churn Post-Colonial craze
East or West the Wench licks the Master's rears and tears
Not so the Youngster his Beat poems Old Men praise
XII
Shunt not trains which Kipling coupled lest they break wind
Old Men returned from the East rest traumatic
The Wench can take any Beat grind save the hind kind
Not so the Youngster e'en pistol-packing mama flic
© T. Wignesan - Paris, November 12, 2018
Categories:
variations, age, humor, literature, satire,
Form:
Pantoum
SNOWBIRD VARIATIONS
chirping merrily
black midst an awful whiteness
fat snowbirds seeding
once in a while
a twiggy branch comes alive
snowbird fluffing
lazy winter’s watch
overcoming tedium
suddenly – snowbirds
a beautiful frost
flaming red against the snow
winter cardinal
the frost coated limbs
winter’s cold magical scene
blackbirds brush the sky
Categories:
variations, nature,
Form:
Haiku
The Coming…
(Mood Variations…)
The long hot summer yields to the arrival
of the cooling fall.
Despite the coming treat to survival
towering trees proudly stand firm and tall.
Sticky, sweaty, steamy nights
have now all gone;
giving way to the cool ebony breeze.
Horny frogs and crickets
no longer sing their eerie song;
squirrels organize
their cupboards in the trees;
and ivory towers grow on
graves of fall’s fallen leaves.
In the early evenings’ misty wine
sun of change set the close of day,
leaving hued shadows to sway
on the footprints of changing time.
The angels of the sky have flown far away;
leaving a strange peace to seek out another day
to find sanctuary in caverns of hope.
Seasoned lives prepare for what winter nature will send their way;
as echoes of rain mock the variations like a cruel joke.
Strange how nature’s circadian rhythms
bring about change: yet the more things change,
the more they stay in the same range.
No one saw the ambiguity of the coming strange schis
Dawn seemed to have struggled this morning---
Returning from her nocturnal journey,
She slowly stretched, yawned, and arose
To the appointed occasion
Sending dim, golden rays piercing through
Shades of lazy grey clouds
The whistling wind wails, whooshing through the trees
And winding around corners
Bring awakening alarms that hands cannot stop
Nor ears can ignore
The weight of sleep lifted; the window shades of dark orbs
Open to the set time
Oblivious to the exact moment of designed closure, only
Aware of the here and now;
Thanksgiving is offered for one more day of struggle:
To be free of the shackling mind games they play,
We prepare to fight another day.
Only God could have made this chosen day
We cherish
To teach the children the liberating way
That they not perish
In the ongoing struggle to be totally free
Culturally, politically---
And economically be.
Closing in on an all-time high, wars remain in vogue:
Peace has been vetoed
Military-industrial complexes are the nation’s money lode
There is no other road.
At the conference table, negotiations continue
To collect dust
And the compromise remains us.
Categories:
variations, allegory, analogy, black african
Form:
Prose Poetry
1.
grass stained summer feet
dandelion seeds drifting
children spread like weeds
2.
grass stained summer feet
dandelion seeds drifting
Darwin smokes his pipe
3.
grass stained summer feet
dandelion seeds drifting
fittest put down roots
4.
grass stained summer feet
dandelion seeds drifting
butterfly physics
Brian Johnston
December 15, 2015
Categories:
variations, life,
Form:
Haiku
Haiku With Variations (Both Sonnet & Free Verse)
Haiku Number 2
hail rides air updrafts
raindrops crater planet's skin
your breath’s clouds, fall skies
May 12, 2016
Mother of a Winter’s Night – Shakespearian Sonnet
Her distressed sighs rise up like nascent hail,
(Tears blown to ever colder zones of sky),
Where frozen prayers see gravity prevail,
Release their pain on what they think is lie.
These raindrop tears sew cratered fields as well,
While farmer's labor washes out to to sea,
(Those tender roots that split rock - time's to tell),
But impact strips her lover’s legacy.
And with the fall as cold means leaves turn blue
New growth goes dormant and awaits Spring’s lease,
Confusion reigns as her breath’s clouds subdue
And haiku’s calmer images release.
If I am wrong let no one take offense
She’s not to blame, but my own lack of sense.
May 14, 2016
Poet's Note:
Please excuse the paraphrase of Shakespeare Sonnet #116's couplet. :-)
Mother of a Winter’s Night – Free Verse
Your distressed sighs are the updrafts
That hurl nascent hailstones skyward,
Freezing tears colliding, clumping as they go
Into tortured spheres that could kill a horse,
Certainly knock shingles from the newest of roofs,
Or pound a field of sunflowers straight into the ground!
My vulnerable fields cratered by your tears,
Whether in their frozen form or flowing wet,
Top soil now enroute to the sea itself,
As if the history of its creation were of no consequence,
Tender roots that pried a farm from solid rock,
Swelling into cracks that are always present,
Turning stone to fertile soil.
The sea’s surface, that not so long ago
Mirrored a most gorgeous sunset,
Now a tortured and a rabid foam,
Laid to waste, craters overlapping craters,
Gone in an eye blink, all my love a non-event
In geologic time it seems.
Winter has come early as your breath’s clouds
Mask all reason and confuse me,
A bitter chill fills every corner of fall’s skies,
Even leaves turn blue and cannot breathe,
Oxygen sucked from the room we live in,
My only recourse is poetry and prayer.
May 13, 2016
Long Tooth
Poet's Note:
It was an interesting challenge to try to write the same poem three times and keep the meaning of the original haiku intact.
Categories:
variations, love, poetry,
Form:
Free verse
seven variations on the opening line of a senryu
“We seek the teeth to match our wounds”.
Kenneth Tynan
sometimes what we seek
is not necessarily
the final answer
sometimes what we seek
is the unfound, the profound
beyond dreams and hopes
sometimes what we seek
is the truth and nothing but
the awful sad truth
sometimes what we seek
is what we were prescribed
not what we wanted
sometimes what we seek
is bigger than our bellies
bigger than our minds
sometimes what we seek
is a different equation
to age old problems
sometimes what we seek
is inside us all the time
waiting to be found.
27.2.2010
Categories:
variations, poetry, self,
Form:
Senryu
When occasionally making eye contacts with young girls
That is often that they look away quickly, as they are shy
When making eye contacts with middle-aged women that
Most likely is that we were forced to retreat immediate back
It is always true of that when meeting aging ladies by eyes
In their eyes, I am quite sure that they often look rattling glad
This feeling! ah! Women grow valor, as ought to be said,
While men are accumulating timidity as time goes by
Categories:
variations, age, courage, emotions, me,
Form:
Verse
First version
I hope that I will seldom be
On some sinking ship that's on the sea;
A ship whose captain and whose crew
Have found much better things to do
Than stay and try to rescue me
From going down beneath the sea.
I think that it is only fair
That I not drown in underwear,
Nor never need I to explain
The precise nature of that stain.
Kilmer once wrote the poem "Trees",
While lesser fools write parodies.
***********************************
Second version
I think that I shall never see
A poem as nice as my TV;
With screen that in the evening glows
With all those wondrous nightly shows
That make me feel so debonair,
So warm and snug, without a care;
The game shows that do stupefy,
With ads that show me stuff to buy.
I look at my TV all day,
And when it's broke I curse and pray.
This satire’s writ by fools like me,
But Samsung made my big TV.
*************************
Third version
I’ve heard there'll never better be
Than this: “To be or not to be”,
That famous line from Hamlet's scene,
But, what the hell, what does it mean?
A line that sounds good in the play
As if it had deep stuff to say;
A line that had great style and wit
Back in the day when it was writ.
My English teach tried to explain
To us dumb kids and make it plain;
Said Shakespeare’s words were just sublime.
But mostly they don’t even rhyme!
So Shakespeare wrote these words of note
And now it's his most famous quote,
And English majors study it
To get degrees in English lit.
Categories:
variations, parody,
Form:
Rhyme
CHANGE OF AIR VARIATION
august 1st
there is a change of air
a change of sun
my autumn heart lay dreaming
of golden times to come
august 1st
is there a change of air?
i flip the calendar
breeze blows the old july page
but there’s still summer in it
august 1st
is there a change of air?
yes
it’s a head job
imagining some fall gold
august 1st
is there a change of air?
maybe but
late summer heat continues
bird’s song makes no mention
Dave Austin
Categories:
variations, august,
Form:
Tanka
As I was going to Saint Ives,
I met a man with a serious case of hives!
He asked me to scratch his back and I said, "No Way!"
I quickly doffed my hat and left there straightaway!
Jack and Jill rushed up the hill to fetch a pail of beer,
To quench the insatiable thirst of their papa dear.
Jack fell down and Jill tumbled down too,
Depriving papa of his bucket of brew!
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;
Alas, Humpty Dumpty took a fatal fall!
There was nothing left but a pile of dregs,
Consisting of cracked shells and scrambled eggs!
Mistress Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow, dear Mary?
If you'd weed it and spread some manure,
Perhaps it would grow better, that's for sure!
Hey diddle, diddle!
I saw a cat playing a fiddle,
And another tooting a bassoon!
Then, a cow jumped over the moon!!
No more booze for me at the local saloon!
It played tricks on me and I won't go back soon!
Jack, you'd better be nimble and very quick,
As you take a leap over that candlestick!
Jump high so as not to singe your fanny!
(And why you'd do that is rather uncanny!)
Categories:
variations, humorous,
Form:
Rhyme
the robin hops from the tips of the rose bush
spilling snow dust
sprinkling skeins of early dew
dusting with its uppity tail fan
a caterpillar
softly dousing concertina
then it trips up the clothesline
stops and grips it in its claws
sways and balances with its tail fanning out
chirps clucks tweets
and repeats itself
all the way down again
and up the scale
comes back once more to skip a note or two
and tumbles
sweeps past the old toy bicycle leaning against the wire fence
the claw marks hardly visible on the spray of frost-like snow on the balustrade
light ephemeral peripatetic
the dulcet flexions rising and falling on the tympana without breath of motion
or vibration
crisp colliding notes rising and falling
as the first tentative drops of drizzle before the rain
the robin gone to sing full throttle on wing
© T. Wignesan, Paris, 1997; from the collection: “Poems Omega-Plus”, Paris, 2005.
Categories:
variations, music, nature, snow, snow,
Form:
Free verse