Long Refrains Poems

Rondels, Roundels and Rondeaux

These are poetic forms similar to villanelles, with refrains (repeated lines) and sometimes double refrains.



Rondel: Merciles Beaute ("Merciless Beauty")
by Geoffrey Chaucer
loose translation/interpretation Michael R. Burch

Your eyes slay me suddenly;
their beauty I cannot...

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This page shows my writing process and is part of Poetrysoup's first workshop.  The workshop's intent is to reveal how revision strengthens a poem. Constructive feedback can be a gift.  Should any journal...

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The Good Girl

Penny has always been a good girl, now she is a good wife. She lives in a good neighborhood, drives a nice car, has two perfect children. Her husband is a doctor and...

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I dread the United States presidential 2024 outcome...

Whereby yours truly presages and doth abhor
nothing short of an imminent civil war
dwarfing insurrection on January 6, 2021
oddly enough even reducing
ordinary decibels to a mute whisper
madding crowd trumpeting...

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By Stanley Collymore

Never speak ill of the dead we’re constantly and solemnly
exhorted regardless of who they are or the life that
they freely chose to live, as they’re no longer
around, is the lame and unconvincing excuse
that’s...

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Back in our preverbal day
of healthy regenerating time,
indigenous wisdom
pursued peak experiences
of cooperative pleasure,
deep co-empathic embrace.

Sometimes,
especially when this pleasure was sustained,
euphoric,
ejaculatory
and reverberating in resonant cycles
of deep wombed ecstasy,
procreation happened,
preferably in the spring
when new life is more...

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Drifting on the clouds I lie
With my head pointing
To yonder skies
In a sea of dreams 
 Where mind and spirit 
Igniting natures prize
To feel like you are heaven bound 
But feet standing firmly
 On hallowed...

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Brackish-gurgling days that
Unobtrusively slid along
Past tussock grass and curled up 
Balls of Fern...
Glued tightly onto structured vanes
Of outstretched frond.
Venerable Mosses reciting epic tales,
Measured throughout Metronomical 
Strains,
Chanting methodically in harmonious
Downturn - 
Wherein contained: 
Foreboding dialects delivered...

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Mascara smudged – through the tears
I see the rumbling truth being preached
By silent prayers, gentling peace…

Doubting the whispers of yesterday’s dream,
I fall to my knees, murmuring – tender
Feelings bleeding through veins filled with 
Temptations, exposing...

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Elegy to Child Lost


                               ...

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To my life that betrayed the butterflies~
          within my chrysalis mind, 
forgive my flawed dialect, 
I no longer look upon sakura skies,
awaiting a ray of fluffy...

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To shivering seas 
   mirroring cracked crystals,
I am searching for a righteous rhyme,
to orchestrate eclipsed realms 
with blue orchids 
      and plum blossoms,
singing sunflower symphonies 
of blooming poetry,...

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Journey Journal Page
INTERLUDE
By Leon Enriquez


By light of grace
Soul knows sure place
In time and space
Where echoes trace


Here for a while
Learn then to style
Poise that thus smiles
As grief greets wiles

~~~~~~~~


Show up with poise
As inner voice
Leaps above noise
Beyond...

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The 42 Inch Hallway

We’re stepping along the musty hallway now.
I am taking us on a fast-moving memory ride;
A mind-bending groovy slide to 1965,
When Dylan music was seeping loudly like a germ,
Down the green-carpeted hallway of...

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Have you ever pondered
shadows are made of 
softness, they are not 
hard surfaced like 
those of us existing 
outside of the white noise

unable to grasp -

the invisible, 
that speak meaning to us, 
whispering their sagacious...

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When heinous fangs
of life drain
the amethyst glow
flowing above 
infected ripples of time,
I question the 
chaos that claims
serenity through 
saline serenade 
of sirens, composed 
with midnight ink
across a mazed face 
of a starless canvas,
What if these...

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Listen to the shifting winds 
carrying musical meteors,
there soars floating
letters between 
lyrical lines,
emanating runes
that reflect 
revolving rhymes
of faith within
and beyond.
For we are more than
just spectators or actors, 
in this theatrical life,
we are the assigned 
maestros...

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He’s just six and a bubbling beauty
The love that he showers on his siblings abound
Filling his world with the charms and the dreams
Yet prefers to maintain a distance from those around!

He invents and creates the...

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Alchemy of the Answers

Belief in the beauty of unrequited love blooming 
No relief as they replay the sounds of war looming 
A chief at the mane of the horse he is grooming 
A thief that...

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When nature wilts into 
                  a colorless haven, 
metaphors of death sprout 
     ...

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Poet who exhibits panache - meant...

to tickle your fancy dear reader rabbit,
perchance European G-man double agent
regarding the following poem
with kick a$$, je ne sais quois
ingenious, humorous bent
even though reasonable rhyme
mebbe worth no mo' than ten...

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Cadaverous climate controlled cave creature 

(Idea birthed, engendered, and germinated 
from Lombok Indonesia earthquakes
On 5 August 2018, 
a destructive and shallow earthquake
measuring Mw 6.9 
(ML 7.0 according to BMKG) 
struck the island 
of Lombok, Indonesia),
rendering...

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(Dedication: For Ann)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Man makes gods here to quench desire;
Urge and surge flood the pathway sight;
Sense hint and cheer in burning pyre;
Embrace warm blood in glimpse of light;
See phantoms near that play with fire.


Meet your true...

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Many times when I would here a song, I would get an almost joyful longing, but I could never pinpoint the moment in my past that I wished for so deeply.

I would feel a certain...

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Unhinged power grasps, its hold so tight,
Unyielding, unchecked, chains corrode the soul.
Distorted truths, concealing in plain sight,
In shadows lurk, devouring the whole.

What slips unheeded, slipping in the dusk?
With eyes wide shut, we stumble through each...

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