For full nine months forlorn widow,
Every nine hours by window;
Men watching their every shadow,
Still hoping for her Ricardo,
Who'd promised her Eldorado,
This doing in a Choice Meadow...
Now, The Incommunicado,
Gone her main source of Bravado
And Volunteering Troubadour,
To her a Buck she to him Doe,
Ricardo, not innocent, though...
Slain for vanishing with Grang's dough
It was in Historic Forcados,
Where I’d first touched Pride of Barbados:
I’d run into A Talking Salvador
Long arguing with Unshaken Ricardo,
Whose interest were in Stark Bravado,
His body partly building with Mamador …
Bravado-Loving and Preaching Ricardo
Would sooner he became A Matador
Than A-Many-Times-Decorated Commodore,
This proclaiming in a corridor,
Where on display, besides Mamador,
Were nourishing-seeming tomato
And as nourishing-seeming pimento.
“If you were a Commodore
For all your sung bravado,
You wouldn’t last with A True Bull!
Even energized and you were full!
You wouldn’t assert you had The Beast won
Between A healthy and Sickly one …”
A Commodore’s strength is his ship
Plus the holstered pistol on his hip,
No frightening neck muscle sticking out
When chooses he to ‘MARINERS!’ shout.
Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto
Motherless at two weeks of age, sought her.
Within his heart and mind, imagined her.
Age ten, before life had hardly begun,
He, whose talents his family did shun,
Loved her, felt her. She closed his eyes each night.
A boy arose to man with victim’s sight.
Life, splashed with discord from the beginning,
Sometimes sent his thoughts fast-forward spinning.
A Chilean born poet, communist
Political materialist…gist –
A Poetry Pulitizer Prizewinner.
Whose poetic successes still linger.
His legal “pen name” is no mystery.
Pablo Neruda died in state by cancer’s fate.
© Dane Ann Smith-Johnsen
May 20, 2010
Poetic form: Rhyme
"A poet goes in search of poetry
To Neruda poetry came to search him.
He knew not from where it sprung.
There were no voices, faces or words
Poetry touched the man without a face".
Surrounded by foreign language
And alien culture, without literary community
He learnt what true loneliness was
Turning inward he wrote Residence of Earth.
He was in his true element in Spain
He wrote love poetry inspired by Matilde.
Neruda presented woman and nature
Often passionate odes to love and nature.
To him “Love is a journey thro’ waters and stars
Love is a war of lightning- two bodies ruined
By a single sweetness – a genital fire
Transformed by the delight”.
(This is a fictional poem)
I built a time machine and I went back to 1952.
Ricky Ricardo kicked my ___ after he sang Babalu.
I told him that his song sounded like a big piece of crap.
He cussed me out in Spanish and gave me a good slap.
He started beating on me until I hit the floor.
That was over a month ago and I'm still sore.
I had never taken a beating like that before.
I'm not going to travel through time anymore.
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.