1
Sometimes the mind becomes a dragonfly,
brushing against the petals of a water lily,
while a heron stands on one leg, lost in meditation.
2
Over the fence of the jasmine garden,
night-flowering jasmine falls into my courtyard,
softly, drop by drop.
3
A butterfly has slipped into the weaver's room,
and suddenly
the whole place flashes with colour.
4
A city morning. Along the asphalt road,
here and there,
water snails have crawled out of the drains.
5
Beside the cremation ground
where my father and mother were laid to rest,
a periwinkle stands laden with flowers.
6
Upon the face
of a gravestone
rests a red dragonfly.
7
On the fallen trunk
of an uprooted tree,
new leaves gather the morning sun.
8
In the middle of the fields, a shrine to Manasa;
beside the Brahmin priest,
a motorcycle.
9
A Poush night. The northerly wind cuts through.
People in distress light a fire with scraps of wood,
trying to chase away the cold.
10
In the month of Chaitra,
drumstick pods hang from the branches,
like the sticks of a dhak.
Suddenly, the crashing sounds of broken glass
as all the doors closed with nowhere to pass
Time stood still as so many innocent souls breath their last
the tragedy which happened unexpectedly so fast
with blood and fire mixing together on the ground
the city transformed into a great battleground
the hand of terror forced its way with a heavy sound
to hit a target for which it was mount to bound
So many left with unfinished dreams after the blow
to leave the world in darkness moving away the glow
no one had a clue even to use a whistle for anyone to know
that within a few seconds the towers will come below
Perhaps this would never had happened should one foresight
while everyone was so busy about their duty under the light
to commit themselves with intelligence to do everything right
unknowingly they got caught by evil in life to lose the fight
The memory of that one day no one can erase from the mind
which continue to stain the hearts of those who escape death behind
The statue of liberty will forever mourn those patriots who are gone
as well as the earth with open arms sit and wait for hose unborn
The vessel of my breath even the wind cannot shake
I carry it through the silence perfectly made without a mistake
It gives me the inspiration no one will ever understand
to fulfill every dream in my mind and to listen to my command
The mirror of the moon allows me to lift myself whenever I fall
I believe in the light of truth to always answer my call
I weep from my heart before any teardrop could touch the ground
the invisible lamp continues to search for the mystery unfound
No weapon can access what nature have placed in my hand
the seeds of thought I sow in my dream is buried into the sand
To balance the scale of time with the weight of destiny continues to flow
to keep the candle of inspiration alive for the lamp of truth to glow
The architecture of knowledge I build to shape into a frame
have made me what I am and where to imprint my name
The dark
So quiet
Its tireless
Its scary
The dark
So loud
Its so weary
Its so free
The dark
That's where it gets you
It holds you
It shows you
Your mind
So busy
So everything
Yet so nothing..
...just because it's dark...
.. it's again night.
I find myself reflecting on many things I have long forgotten,
including the invaluable wisdom imparted by my elders.
Yet the memories of the pain inflicted by others remain vivid
as I navigate the complexities of friendships and past betrayals.
I have also released numerous reassurances that were extended to me.
"You can trust me," they often proclaimed.
I try to overlook the fact that a large breadfruit serves as a meal
for my siblings and me, while our dog receives only a small portion.
My weary mind strives to preserve my memories.
the faces of familiar individuals gradually fade from my recollection.
The promises and falsehoods from our leaders linger lightly in my thoughts,
drifting like a feather in the breeze. I sneeze—particles of brain cells.
Today I chose to take it easy; I wish Metal AI could decipher this as well.
Who thought it would come to this?
I can’t live in the computer space but I know within it there’s quiet.
I almost think here.
I kind of like that it can’t really be pulled apart and seep noise if I can just keep my volume down
That is becoming more simpler as I age.
Just a place to keep my ears from being visible to my foe,
That makes them crazy
They still work as hard to be better at it
Well that thing
I don’t study computers much
They just took up space in the dark for so many years.
I have come to realize that every moment of my life
Has been solely about meeting and falling in love with you.
That has been my life’s purpose and I didn’t know it til now.
The complex secret of life
is simplicity itself:
you're born, you live and you die.
It is a well-thumbed book with
incomprehensible text
which you borrow, you read and
then pass it on to the next.
This place functions on it own
The people outside
Looks at it with different eyes
Logic happens to them
Philosophy also happens
This place is boxed up with a certain thinking
The world is not correct on how things appear before this place
History has eyes so bright for you to see
Time has evolved for so long that centuries and circles are filled with painted writings
History knows the deepness of a river and how dark ships navigated through the souls of men
History knows the beginning and the end of all the papers bound into one
This place is happily divided
And you can hear different voices
Echoing confusion into the rooms of men
There's a constant panic of a certain tradition here
And many versions are born
This place is careful about the handwriting of love
And it's timidly written on the four corners of the wall.
I think when i count the stars at night
I'm counting the numbers of luck
I want to hit my destiny
Although a pregnant cloud
Sits in the sky
And hope is held down by storm
The world is always busy at it disposal
Moving freely while cracking glasses
I think a starry night can reproduce my shine
Darkness is everywhere
Laughing at people's freedom
I see everything through the eyes of my window glass
My bard has an apple belly
And i need to bless it
Only if the stars are here to give my palms luck
I think when i count the stars at night
I'm gathering some numbers of fortune into my destiny
Everything is in the stars
And life knows how to breath there
August 28
Do you know about him
The little tall man
Living in the brown street
His lips are hard
Like where charcoal is made
He feels high more than alcohol
And always scorn his wild hair
Do you know about the natural leaf
That scorned him
For the first time
He feels his lips
With a sedative herb
And forms a circle in his skin
There are dirts
Waiting to be heaped away
He picks them up by chance
Along with a clipper
He moves with the cloud
Seeing double shadows on the way
Laughing at him
Finally at a waste bin spot
The dirts are abandoned
He picks up the clipper
This is the best place for hair cut
He sits loving the moment
While passersby share laughters
My palms has been good to you all
Since time memorial
My palms felt your weakness
Your simultaneous pain
Through the beauty of your skin
Although my palms are rough
Hardened by the toughness of the earth
Although we dreamed dreams
Under rain and sunshine
Hoping to meet peace at the mountain top
I couldn't sit on my family tree ??
Because the tide in me bore you
Looking at the cloud now
It seems beautiful over my head
I count you all among the stars in heaven
My palms will always know you
Although you have a nutritious smile
Just like my other stars
I still count compassion among you all
The experience came fast
As streams flooded my soul
I had thought of an encounter coming
But slowly slowly it walked away from my worldview
Time is such a tiny vehicle
Driving life away from plan
I least expected streams to vomit water like a sinking body
The experience came prepared
Forming river links in my soul
Even in my dream
Rivers keep running after me
I could see ornaments coming along too
I lost fishes to the running splash
Fishes i had feed with the sand of life
Life is so vegetative in the pond
And fishes are interspersed among grasses
The experience came wild
Along with rain to share a particular relationship with time
Today
A beautiful sun is set above us
Giving us a flourishing light
As cassava stems
Stand looking gracious
I believe the last face of the sky
Gives hope in abundance
Today is faithful with us
And it's close to the end of everything
I write poetry like i make love
The mood comes to swing
And my pen start digging
Emotions are purged
But first
My skin is aware of how poetry has taken a hold of me
So sometimes i think it's charm
I breath
I exhale
I feel love
And start spilling inks on dangerous papers
The mood is constant
And my pen is always ready to dig
I mean dig into thoughts
I write poetry like i make love
I swing a lot in my emotions
And scribble roughly
Sometimes it's more than that
I wrote your hair into a poem
And it looks like allium
I weaved my words into a tiny strand of hair just to get your beautiful design done
You made me write your name on sunflower ???? when i touched it
Yesterday was a better half of you
Today is a name that stands with you
Every line of your hair
Represent each stanza of my words
Every color you find admiring
Represent the smile that comes to me when i see you
I wrote your hair into a poem
And it looks like allium
Introduction
The pleasure of reading blank verse begins in a tension between a felt rhythmic current and an ending sound that refuses to announce what comes next. A line may arrive with ceremonial weight, conversational ease, or dramatic urgency, yet the poem must create continuity without leaning on a recurring chime. That combination makes close comparison especially rewarding: one poet may make the pulse nearly invisible, while another lets it press firmly beneath every statement.
As you read the community poems, expect differences in scale, voice, and movement. Blank verse can accommodate intimate reflection, sustained narrative, philosophical argument, landscape description, or speech charged with conflict. Some writers build long sentences across several lines; others use pauses and short units to make the measured movement feel tense or hesitant. Variations in emphasis can make similar rhythmic foundations sound solemn, restless, tender, ironic, or direct.
One isolated example can suggest that the form has a single proper voice. Browsing several poems corrects that impression. Compare how different writers handle sentence length, line endings, metrical variation, imagery, and closure. Notice where the underlying rhythm supports natural speech and where it becomes deliberately heightened. Also consider whether a poem develops enough emotional or narrative pressure to justify its sustained movement. Read beyond the first example: the collection becomes most instructive when one poet's choices sharpen your awareness of another's. The shared framework does not erase individuality; it makes differences in diction, pacing, and imagination easier to hear.
Reading Guide
Read blank verse first for meaning and emotional movement, then return to hear how the lines carry that meaning. The strongest examples rarely sound like exercises in counting. Their rhythmic order works beneath the voice, sometimes steadying an argument and sometimes resisting a speaker's agitation. When comparing community poems, listen for the relationship among sentence, line, pause, and stress. A poem may preserve its metrical identity while allowing speech to accelerate, hesitate, interrupt itself, or lean forcefully into a crucial word.
- Listen for the governing pulse. Read a passage aloud without exaggerating its stresses. A convincing line should feel shaped rather than beaten into submission. When comparing poems, ask: does the rhythm support the speaker's emotional state, or does it remain unchanged regardless of the subject?
- Watch where sentences cross line endings. Enjambment can pull the reader forward, while a completed statement can give a line authority or finality. Ask: which poet uses the line ending to create suspense, emphasis, ambiguity, or controlled release?
- Notice meaningful departures from expectation. A reversed opening, an extra light syllable, or a clustered stress can register shock, resistance, weariness, or urgency. Ask: does the variation make expressive sense at that moment, or does it seem accidental?
- Examine pauses within the line. Punctuation and grammatical breaks can divide a steady measure into contrasting units, making thought sound reflective, combative, or unstable. Ask: where does the voice breathe, and what emotional pressure gathers around that silence?
- Follow the sound beyond rhyme. Consonance, assonance, repeated keywords, and vowel color can bind passages without creating a conspicuous end pattern. Ask: what quieter sound relationships help you remember the poem or connect its images?
- Compare voice with elevation. Blank verse can sound conversational, theatrical, meditative, or ceremonial. Elevated diction may suit a large moral question but overwhelm an intimate scene. Ask: does the chosen language feel native to this speaker and situation?
- Study the final movement. Without an expected rhyme to signal completion, closure often depends on syntax, image, cadence, or a decisive change in thought. Ask: does the ending feel earned by the poem's development, or merely stopped?
Browse the poems in this collection more than once. Silent reading reveals argument and image; reading aloud reveals balance, strain, and expressive variation that the eye alone may miss.
Writing Tips
Begin a blank-verse draft with a compelling voice or movement of thought, not with a page of metrically correct lines awaiting a subject. Choose material that benefits from sustained speech: an argument with oneself, a dramatic encounter, a journey, an ethical conflict, or a meditation that changes as it proceeds. The measure should give the material pressure and continuity, while the absence of a rhyme pattern should leave room for syntax, imagery, and discovery.
- Establish the voice before polishing the measure. Draft several sentences in the speaker's natural vocabulary, then shape them into lines. This preserves urgency and individuality. Beginning with a rigid template often produces filler words, inversions, and declarations that no believable person would make.
- Let rhythm interpret the subject. A relatively even passage can suggest composure, ritual, inevitability, or control. Disturbance in the pulse can mark fear, anger, surprise, or divided intention. Variation matters most when it corresponds to a change in thought or feeling rather than serving as random decoration.
- Use line endings as active decisions. Place a charged noun or verb where the reader must briefly hold it, or carry syntax across the boundary to create momentum. Avoid repeatedly ending on weak grammatical words unless the resulting suspension is purposeful.
- Build sound networks inside and across lines. Because end rhyme is not organizing the passage, use recurring consonants, vowel echoes, and key phrases with restraint. These subtler correspondences can unite distant images without turning the poem into a disguised rhyming exercise.
- Vary sentence architecture. A sequence of identical ten-syllable statements can become monotonous even when technically sound. Combine long unfolding sentences with brief assertions, questions, interruptions, or carefully placed pauses. The metrical current will feel more alive when syntax moves independently against it.
- Test difficult words rather than protecting them. Proper names, technical language, and multisyllabic abstractions can distort the line if their natural stresses are ignored. Speak each word normally. Revise the surrounding phrase instead of forcing pronunciation to rescue the meter.
- Resist padding and unnatural inversion. Beginners sometimes add empty modifiers or rearrange syntax solely to make a line fit. If a phrase sounds translated from an imaginary antique language, restore direct speech and rebuild the rhythm. Formal compliance cannot compensate for weakened meaning.
- Design an ending through cadence and consequence. The final lines should complete, complicate, or decisively redirect what came before. A strong close may settle into balance, break the established movement, or end on an image whose implications continue beyond the poem. Do not rely on a generalized summary to manufacture importance.
During revision, mark natural stresses only after reading the draft aloud at conversational speed. Listen for stretches that sag, hammer, or require distorted emphasis. Then examine whether each irregularity is expressive. Tighten abstract explanation, replace generic imagery with sensory particulars, and confirm that the voice remains consistent even as its emotions change. Finally, ask another reader to listen without seeing the lineation; if the speech sounds credible yet shaped, the form is doing artistic work rather than merely displaying its mechanism.
Interesting Facts
- Regularity can make disruption more audible. A momentary change in stress, pace, or sentence length gains force because the reader has already sensed an underlying order. The same disturbance may convey panic in one poem and sudden clarity in another.
- Conversational language is not automatically rhythmically loose. Ordinary speech contains rises, falls, hesitations, and emphatic beats that can be shaped into measured lines. The challenge is preserving the impression of spontaneity while making every placement deliberate.
- Line and sentence can tell different stories. The meter gives each line a degree of balance, while syntax may surge across several lines or stop abruptly within one. This counterpoint allows a controlled surface to contain a restless or conflicted mind.
- Subtle sound echoes become especially important. When end chimes do not organize anticipation, repeated vowels, consonants, and keywords can create memory and cohesion. Readers may recall a passage because of its acoustic texture even when no obvious sound pattern calls attention to itself.
- Length changes the form's psychological effect. A brief poem can feel like a concentrated utterance, while a longer work can accumulate the authority of sustained thought or dramatic speech. In either case, rhythmic sameness must be countered by changes in syntax, imagery, and emotional stakes.
- Technical variation is meaningful only in context. A heavily stressed phrase is not inherently more expressive than a smooth one. Its force depends on what surrounds it and why the voice changes there. As you read the community poems, compare how different writers earn moments of emphasis.
- Several examples reveal the form's range better than a flawless specimen. Poets may prioritize drama, meditation, storytelling, or music, and they may interpret metrical flexibility differently. Reading across the collection helps distinguish expressive adaptation from rhythm that has simply lost direction.
Popular Themes
Subject matter and form shape one another. Blank verse gives thought a sustained current without repeatedly steering it toward rhyme, making it well suited to subjects that need room to unfold, argue, remember, or change direction. The possibilities below are literary affinities, not claims about which themes are statistically most popular.
- Inner conflict and self-examination. A speaker can reason, contradict an earlier statement, and reveal more than intended. The measured line supplies outward control while variations and pauses expose inward disturbance.
- Dramatic confrontation. Accusation, persuasion, refusal, and confession benefit from language that sounds speakable yet heightened. Shifts in cadence can register changes in power before the speaker names them.
- Nature and attentive observation. Landscapes can develop through extended visual movement rather than a sequence of rhyming snapshots. The steady current may echo walking, watching, seasonal recurrence, or the mind's passage through a scene.
- Love, distance, and intimacy. The form can hold both direct address and reflective complexity. A controlled rhythm may suggest devotion or restraint, while disruptions can reveal longing, jealousy, hesitation, or loss.
- Mortality and remembrance. Sustained cadence gives weight to recollection without requiring every line to sound conclusive. Images can gather gradually until a final perception changes how the remembered life or event is understood.
- Public, moral, or philosophical questions. Blank verse can carry an argument without becoming prose arranged in lines. The interplay of measure, pause, and image can keep abstract thought embodied and emotionally consequential.
- Journey and transformation. Physical travel, personal change, and narrative passage suit a form capable of forward momentum. Recurring images and rhythmic adjustments can show that the traveler at the end no longer hears or understands the world as before.
Compare several community poems that approach similar material. One poet may make love sound ceremonious, another conversational; one may treat nature as refuge, another as threat. Such contrasts show how theme becomes distinctive only through voice, imagery, pacing, and the particular pressures placed upon the line.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension of blank verse lies between order and the illusion of unforced speech. Readers need to sense enough rhythmic coherence for each variation to matter, but not so much insistence that the voice becomes a metronome. A technically recognizable draft may maintain its measure from beginning to end; a memorable poem makes that measure participate in consciousness. It steadies a speaker who fears losing control, drives a narrative toward an unavoidable encounter, or gives a meditative passage the feeling of thought repeatedly gathering itself.
Structure feels necessary when subject, syntax, and cadence exert pressure on one another. Consider a speaker attempting to suppress anger. Balanced lines may dramatize restraint, while crowded stresses, abrupt pauses, or a sentence that overruns its boundaries can disclose the emotion beneath the claim. In a landscape poem, the measure might support patient observation until one altered cadence marks a changed perception. Editors notice these correspondences. They also notice when images arrive at rhythmically and emotionally decisive points rather than functioning as ornaments placed inside a completed pattern.
Common weaknesses arise when the form becomes the poem's only source of energy. Mechanical regularity can flatten distinctions among grief, humor, wonder, and argument. Forced inversions call attention to the writer's calculation instead of the speaker's need. Predictable pauses make every line feel self-contained, while unexamined enjambment can reduce lineation to mere counting. Another weakness is over-explanation: because blank verse supports extended discourse, a poet may continue clarifying after the image or dramatic action has already conveyed the point. Conversely, a draft may offer polished lines without enough development, leaving its central conflict unchanged.
Individuality remains visible through the grain of the voice: preferred sentence shapes, degrees of formality, characteristic images, humor, restraint, and the kinds of variation a poet permits at moments of pressure. One writer may cultivate spacious meditative sentences; another may use terse exchanges and sharp internal pauses. Neither approach is inherently superior. Quality depends on whether the chosen movement feels inevitable for that poem. Comparing multiple community poems develops this judgment more effectively than studying one model alone. Readers begin to hear the difference between expressive flexibility and accidental looseness, between dignified cadence and inflated language, and between an ending that merely concludes the meter and one that transforms everything the meter has carried.
Read, Write & Share
Read several community poems before settling on an idea of what blank verse should sound like. Compare a dramatic voice with a meditative one, a smoothly unfolding sentence with a sharply interrupted passage, and a restrained ending with a forceful close. Thoughtful comments can identify where a cadence, pause, image, or turn affected your reading and invite useful conversation without reducing the poem to technical correctness.
Then try shaping your own sustained voice within the form. Read the draft aloud, revise until rhythm and meaning cooperate, and publish it on PoetrySoup so other readers can encounter and discuss your interpretation.
Collection Statistics
This collection contains 10266 poems, providing ample opportunity to compare voices, subjects, pacing choices, and approaches to measured language. Within a collection of this size, poets may follow familiar conventions closely, adapt them to the demands of a particular speaker, or challenge expectations while preserving a recognizable rhythmic foundation. Reading across multiple entries can therefore reveal both the form's continuity and the many artistic decisions available within it.
Blank Verse Categories
Read wonderful blank verse poetry on the following sub-topics:
contemporary, iambic pentameter, life, love, nature, sonnet
and more.
Definition | What is Blank Verse in Poetry?
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.