I have never wrote a sonnet in my life
fourteen lines of iambic confusion
I’m not as poetically gifted
as Shakespeare or Petrarch
because pentameters and quatrains
are perfectly not my style
and too flat out antiquated for my liking
It’s rhyme schemes
always oppress me
line after line
stanza after stanza
as if I’m never allowed
to journey beyond
the black lines
while shading a picture
inside of a child’s coloring book
with a box of Crayola crayons
I speak in tutored rhyme schemes
of a world etched in wild dreams
deep red hue as ample phrase
from my voice that worldly maze
Lyric torrent’s golden twang
versed in magic tone I sang
pouring heaven on a page
laced with bright notes to assuage
My mind is so prismatic,
constantly thinking all erratic,
the perfect cage,
to hold the rage,
but wait...
I am all that it can hate,
whilst inside it is trapped,
I must find a way to adapt,
but it makes me feel inept,
maybe locking it away I will regret,
I've lost it's skill,
it bends my will,
this is a deep battle that I can feel,
within a loose free verse,
shadow holds me to its curse,
bound like a mothers purse,
trying harder to just stop me,
like the jail cell in monopoly,
it screams self doubt,
but I have no doubt,
on creating rhyme schemes properly.
A fine family of foxes,
a feisty mom and her two kits
living near humans by shrewd wits.
Her constant success flummoxes.
Kits are tiny jack-in-the-boxes,
heads bobbing while mom baby sits.
NB: Other - Sextilla: A Sp. stanza form of six octosyllabic or shorter lines. In the classic period, the usual rhyme schemes were abbaab.
Breath of life in a forlorn one,
uplifted face to brace the wind,
called His name with prayer to send.
Forgive me! I have come undone.
I lost my way, now moribund,
and all I’d hoped was to ascend.
*Other - Sextilla: A Sp. stanza form of six octosyllabic or shorter lines. In the classic period, the usual rhyme schemes were abbaab,...oxfordreference.com
Triolet has refrains
The first two lines ring out
They bring it back again,
There are rhyme schemes that flow,
This is a French verse form
That threads the lines with grace
Then ends as it began
1-17-2022
Example For My Contest
My sonnet has the temper of a screaming child
because I'll not allow it to run free and wild
Mired on a pad, it damns me. "I want to fly free!"
"You're not ready," I whisper. "Put your trust in me."
It cried, trying to hold on to its pregnant dreams
blaming me for aborting expressive rhyme schemes
"Ask your muse to find more decorous selections."
On her advice, I began to make corrections.
I purged all the rhetoric and made a new start
resulting in the birth of a sonnet with heart
I danced for freedom I'd granted to my verses
No longer do I hear the yowling of curses
I will continue to write with a pliant quill
and an open mind with the ink I choose to spill
Is science an everchanging paradigm
akin to poetry’s everchanging rhyme
interpreted by those who never write
yet keep a dark thesaurus out of sight
and so when I place paper beneath pen
I seldom rate the outcome “lose or win”.
One breakthrough gave the surgeons laughing fits
when told, “between your cutting - wash your mitts”
as poets play the game of “almost rhymes”
comparing it to misdemeanor crimes
not punishable with a failing grade
a shallow grave filled in without a spade.
As poets who doctor soul with wit
ramble on and don’t know when to quit
science will not learn the lessons taught
folded within the dust of crumpled thought.
John G. Lawless
8/13/2021
Addicted to romance, I’ve tried in vain
to resurrect the unrestrained delight
I felt so long ago one summer night -
excitement of the type no one can feign.
I had it once, and I could not abstain
from tasting it. It made my soul take flight.
Then back to earth I plummeted. I write
to bring it back because it has been slain.
Romance is destined not to be revived.
It’s slain by woes and all that’s commonplace.
Life’s demons stole it; now I feel deprived.
It’s drained from me! I miss its fond embrace.
And so with poetry I have contrived
to bring it back. Alas – a useless chase.
Aug. 26, 2019 for Emile Pinet's Eight Word Challenge Poetry Contest
The 8 words used in this Italian Sonnet in order of how they appear: addicted/ vain/ abstain/ slain/ destined/ woes/ demons/ drained
Note: I do not know why poetrysoup does not correctly identify the rhyme pattern of the second stanza of this poetry form. The first part is abbaabba. Here is what Google says for the finishing sestet: Some of the most common rhyme schemes for the sestet are cdecde, cdcdcd, cddcdd, and cddece. My preference is cdcdcd.
At times I've filled in a 200 page pad in a day
Yet I still had more to say
I've always liked rhyming I just find it fun
My mind is always thinking so there isn't a time when my rhymes are done
Even when I'm writing simple rhymes
You'd lose your mind by some of the things my pencil finds
I like being lyrical so sometimes I'm Bending words
I won't always rhyme with the ending word
You couldn't keep count of the pieces of paper that my pen gets through
I make a beautiful story out of the ugliness that men step through
Sometimes I like to switch it up and use rhymes that are multi syllable
I've still not yet gone fully lyrical
I grew up listening to the thoughts of Nas and the rhymes of Rakim
So you can't compete with the lines I'm jotting
Blasting Wu Tang and Big Pun to sound out the screams and sadness
Constantly trying to come up with new ideas, rhyme schemes and patterns
Loving Hip-Hop got me to start writing double rhymes
I picked up a pen and rhyming saved my troubled mind
I've always liked rhyming I just find it fun
Time to start my next poem so my rhymes aren't done
Flame of our passionate love,
Irresistible quenchless heat,
Rapture so divinely sweet,
Eternally we would pair like a dove.
And then in Nature's blissful aura,
Gently glide along the leaf-shrone
Path, shady trees that line with glamor;
Breezes passing, trembling leaves beyond.
How adorable to set flame in such a fashion,
Whispering nothings in each others ear;
A firey heat-wave like a furnace bears!
Wallowing in love's compassion.
Fire, fourth element on earth,
Drives physical, emotional, mental and
spiritual heat.
ELEMENTS Part 4: Fire
Poetry Contest Deadline: Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Sponsored by: Brian Davey
Definition of: Sonnet
Lyric poems that are 14 lines that usually have one or more conventional rhyme schemes.
Instructions:
1 new original poem in form of a SONNET. LISTEN CAREFULLY...
THE FIRST VERSE OF YOUR SONNET (1st 4 Lines) are to be ACROSTIC FIRE!
Then continue the rest of the poem in SONNET FORM which would be 10 more lines making a total of 14 lines!
I leave it on the page,
more so than in my words,
my love is like an upside down iceberg.
I burn blue with cold,
and I feel the undercurrent,
but I leave more in the air and hope that it’s current.
These stanzas and rhyme schemes
mean the world to me
but I don’t know what they say,
are you the girl for me?
If I doubt that means I care,
or atleast I think it does
-though I don’t like to go there.
A few more lines for the thought,
no matter what
my love, still burns hot.
-like a volcano,
Or the sun, though not like in other poems
That is the ice that I could never show um’.
The ice that everyone knows and loves,
you have to wait for,
and you have to get wet to explore.
I've been going through
Old poetry, my own, a motley
Collection like a dusty attic piled with
Rumpled rhyme schemes
And littered with brightly hued
Scraps of imagery, left half-stitched;
It's an interesting sort of search,
Going through old notebooks
Like wardrobes stacked with
Threadbare cliches and dusty
Scrapbook impressions of a
Younger soul; hazy reflections trapped
Under the surface of a warped mirror
And it is here that I will find
Tucked between the folds of
Outgrown naivete and melodic revery
Hidden, like pressed flowers,
Still-vibrant emotions; memories;
Surprisingly sweet
If all writing is, indeed, a mere ruse,
Why do I need an inspirational muse,
or editor my syntax to masseuse
Mind's eye is vapid and obtuse;
My brain is calling an immediate truce
Inane pretenses no longer refuse,
and with sixth sense consciously fuse
Mundane fare is now abstruse;
Morose wit critics dare not abuse,
or for lack of purpose, design accuse
Metaphors, metonymies tightly noose;
Colloquial sayings, truisms freely infuse
Slang terms, archaic words out of use,
In remediated discourse common, diffuse
Choppy meter, bland rhyme schemes choose;
No rhythmic patterns, contrived forms to confuse
Do not need with limericks, riddles to bemuse;
Trite puns, silly jabs will laughter's tonic effuse
Pome du jour
Rudderless and leaderless we will traverse
The seas and the trails
Of meter, rhyme schemes and tropes
(If we please)
And land on Moot Point - somewhere north of San Francisco.
The medium is, after all, the message (per Marshall McLuhan)
And a poem must need not 'mean' but 'be' (per Archibald McLeish)
Hence, loose the bonds of that inveterate evil thing - mind
And think tangentially, not crossing, not intersecting
(think in terms of a curve approaching its asymptote),
For therein lies the truly spiritual beings we are.
A god is immaterial here. But: Vaya con dios,mi amigo.
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