Today I am so glad to be alive
Give thanks; that I have made it through the night.
Against the odds again I will survive
To take you on, I won't give up the fight.
You thought you would just take away my sight
And of my very life you would deprive,
But I won't let you claim me, try you might
Today I am so glad to be alive.
And I am making plans to help me thrive
Because I have awoken with insight,
My strength and courage I will now revive
Give thanks; that I have made it through the night.
A brand-new day with hope my future's bright
This fear of death; I'll let my mind archive
Just reach into my soul with all my might
Against the odds again I will survive.
For never more my doubts I'll let contrive
To bring me down or shudder at your sight.
These demons from within, away I'll drive
To take you on, I won't give up the fight.
And therefore, take my pen so I can write
Forever on and upwards shall I strive.
Just trust that everything will be alright,
And greet each morning, when I do arrive
Today I am so glad to be alive.
People still seek to improve lives,
Proudly wearing red, white, and blue.
They have endured much bitter strife
With opinions of many hues.
Women deserve the right to choose.
People seek lives both rich and rife
With honesty and kind muses,
But they still seek to improve lives.
I'm keeping my Bald Eagle dice
To guard myself against a ruse
And protect myself from snake bites
Hidden beneath red, white, and blue.
Citizens are attached with glue
To the Internet that rises
For new, online interviews.
The youths have sung to such great heights!
Kindness prevails beneath clouds white.
Love all around these states is cool--and
Living united's a delight
With opinions of many hues.
Our faithful oath has been renewed
To build a community high.
Help others who need joyous cues.
Friends in America are kind;
People still seek to improve lives!
America is a free land
Where citizens work smart and hard,
An excellent place for a band.
Everyone kind and full of heart.
So nice to have a flat, green yard.
Americans work with their hands.
A safe country for which they guard,
America the fast, free land!
Be sure to lend a helping hand.
It's not hard to send a greeting car
When Fourth of July feasts command.
Thriving citizens who work so hard!
For two-five-oh years, off the charts!
The territory rolls so grand!
All of our music playing's starred.
An excellent place for a band!
The stars and stripes make a grandstand
With yummy barbecue grills charred.
And beaches from host to coast sand.
Everyone so kind and full of heart!
I would never try to discard
The honest values of the heartland
That we hold in lofty regard
In this grainland with its store-brand.
America is a freakin' free land!
Ridin' horses in the twilight.
My fate's to wear starred cowboy hats!
I'm on the road all day-n-night.
Receivin' a bright moonlight bath.
I've been travellin' this long dark path.
Will be ridin' till all's made right.
I've gotta calm the inner wrath.
Ridin' horses in the twilight.
The sun going down is a sight.
Makes me wanna have a quick chat,
But my horse keeps ridin' with might.
My fate's to wear starred cowboy hats.
Cowboys don't need to carry maps.
They ride on into the black night,
And bathe in moonlight after laps.
I'm on the road all day and night!
Flyin' high on my horse in flight!
If there's a fuss, I'll stop all that.
Riden' high to escape the strife.
Receivin' a bright starlight bath!
Just thought I saw a blue bobcat!
But ain't no cause to feel no fright.
Cause this is my true habitat!
And I'm lovin' my lucky life!
Ridin' horses is my birthright.
[Chorus]
I'm gonna keep on ridin' on yonder.
Yep! The Grand Canyon's awaitin'....
The cowboy's Rondeau Redouble!
Dancing in Boulogne-Sur-Mer
I was dancing in Boulogne-Sur-Mer
when a young woman stopped me,
and said, “Madame, you are superbe.”
She told me twice, Madame you are superbe
But I didn’t feel superb.
Hadn’t for a long time, if ever at all.
How is superb supposed to feel
when you're dancing in Boulogne-Sur-Mer?
Later I visited my doctor to
ask if there was anything she could give for
treatment of the human condition; explain the
woman had told me I was superbe.
The doctor laughed, and said
there was nothing for it I could take,
apart from anti-depressants,
if you're depressed, are you, not superb?
She asked if I needed to take a break. Shall I sign you off, she said?
Maybe some time spent, alone in bed?
No, I said. She suggested I chose values,
acceptance, rebellion, indifference or hope.
I went away, bemused
realising there is no choice
to be made, you need all values
in your armour to face despair
when you’re dancing in Boulogne Sur mer.
What is the future of the Human race
The USA’ is no leader today
Wrecking the natural world -a disgrace
Netanyahu is a war thug forevermore
The mid east war -total insanity
Humans act horrible I do deplore
What is the karma of Humanity ?
Two polar fates for Humans I embrace
Green party politics can save the day
Non Green politics we are dead -I say
What is the future of the Human race ?
Biden listens not to peace activists
Biden’s Vietnam -college protests I relay
The peace activists are not anarchists
The USA’ is no leader today
Humans greed will destroy us I decry
We ruin old growth woods without a trace
Read Bucky Fullers writings I reply
Wrecking the natural world -a disgrace
Bones ache, yet heart sings our Lord's praise,
He accepts us just as we are,
Unmerited grace does amaze,
For He has led us safe thus far.
He is that shining Morning Star,
Who sets my heart, with joy, ablaze,
His love for us is beyond par,
Bones ache, yet heart sings our Lord's praise.
The Cross has attracted my gaze,
For our sins, Him, they did mar,
Unto Jesus, my soul I raise,
He accepts us just as we are.
The only Sinless Avatar
Came down to blot our yesterdays,
For us, His body, they did scar,
Unmerited grace does amaze.
He's Just and righteous are His ways,
How did we come on His radar?
Indebted to Him, all our days,
For He has led us safe thus far.
Incomparable and bizarre
Is His love, I'm left in a daze,
If I could take up a guitar,
For Him alone, I'd play always,
Bones ache, yet heart sings.
The thoughts we think, what is their source
Emotes rise and fall in a blink
It’s clear that love employs no force
Time is now head and heart to link
Dark desires and fears, our heart’s chink
Heartfelt penance follows remorse
Else waywardness will make us sink
The thoughts we think, what is their source
It’s better we change our life’s course
We already are on the brink
Love reads not codes written in morse
Emotes rise and fall in a blink
To join love in heart’s skating rink
Conscience has shouted itself hoarse
Warning of sins that in heart slink
It’s clear that love employs no force
Love alone is real of course
From the stream of bliss, nectar drink
Drowned in fears, we’ve drifted off-course
Time is now head and heart to link
Is love not colour of our ink
Know God is our only resource
The choice is ours to swim or sink
Pulsations of joy, let’s endorse
The thoughts we think
31-May-2023
The Dancing Plague of 1518: Collaboration with Dilly Dally
A plague cursed, until death they dance
Until forever lasts this plight
Moving hypnotic deep in trance
Onlookers revel at the sight
From days to weeks, from dawn til' night
Hysteria spread the expanse
Collapse in exhaust by firelight
A plague cursed, until death they dance
Can I dance myself free perchance
Repent and be rid of this smite
I bleed amidst this endless prance
Until forever lasts this plight
Exhaustion sets with hope just slight
Up to Saint Vitus' healing glance
Limbs swinging limp, glazed eyes contrite
Moving hypnotic deep in trance
Free me of sin, my soul enhance
Crosses on shoes to quell the fright
Quicken the end, I beg advance
Onlookers revel at the sight
They fell in numbers, losing might
By now all but God looked askance
Dance to rest and read the last rite
All life is but a game of chance
A plague cursed
May 22, 2023
Head and heart we know; where is soul
Let’s find the truth; game’s hide and seek
Once we know, we play our true role
Blocking wasteful energy leak
First things first; know we’re strong, not weak
Soul’s living light, scriptures extol
Let’s go within, take a sneak peek
Head and heart we know; where is soul
We feel not joyful, feel not whole
We’ve dipped not in bliss, our heart’s beak
Seems we’ve drifted from our life’s goal
Let’s find the truth; game’s hide and seek
Dare to dance with love, cheek to cheek
To reclaim joy our ego stole
Nectar flows, drink from the bliss creek
Once we know, we play our true role
Lust has blackened our soul like coal
Awake! Time’s not now to be meek
Fill completely with love, heart’s hole
Blocking wasteful energy leak
Desire but makes our future bleak
So do as conscience does cajole
Love’s easy whilst fear speaks in Greek
Be bullied not by thoughts that troll
Head and heart we know
05-May-2023
How I longed for and every morn,
For a decadent slice of cake,
At beginning of every dawn,
Was hooked, my heart did often ache.
Not fussy, fairy cake or bun,
To be sweet, I was for sure born,
Rain, snow, mist, hail or scorching sun,
How I longed for and every morn.
Traveled cities so far and wide,
At seven sharp did often wake,
To reach the famous pastry side,
For a decadent slice of cake.
Dentist warned, teeth are looking bad,
Are slightly yellow brown and fawn,
Stop or you will be very sad, ,
At beginning of every dawn.
You like to dress to always stun,
In your shoes you will one day quake
Say no, I have finally won,
Was hooked, my heart did often ache.
So, I became sober once more.
Did not touch cake since yesterday,
Yearning not as bad as before,
My decision made from today,
And every morn.
Poetry Contest Entry: Double The Fun Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Joseph May
Date; Thursday 6th April 2023
Teaching Practice has highs and lows.
Highs smell like such strong aroma,
Lows are odours bearing no woes.
No wonder it’s no diploma.
Experience has its own drama.
Highs were blissful chapters of prose.
Lows led me to a fake coma.
Teaching Practice has highs and lows.
Received drawings of a pink rose,
Sang songs for kids’ panorama,
Obviously, the line would unclose.
Highs smell like such strong aroma.
Yet I’m pushed by my dilemma,
While I'm lightly pushed by one’s ‘blows’.
Wish there's no scream of a llama!
Lows are odours bearing no woes.
Yet, I’ve learned how each student knows
How to tell water from soma.
Wake up! There’s no need for star shows.
No wonder it’s no diploma.
Therefore, this journey’s a comma,
Rather than the end or a close.
It’s why I’m proud to tell mama:
“I love them kids. It’s cause of those,
Teaching practice has.”
Date posted: 05/04/2023
Name of Contest: Double The Fun Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Joseph May
There’s Always A Call
There’s always a call to dream more,
No hindrance for another goal;
We do not know what is in store,
Our fate will continue to roll.
As long as we have a good soul,
God pours His blessings to the core;
Just always pray for strengths and all,
It’s never too late to dream more.
It’s always nice to fly and soar,
Just rise to stand at times we fall;
Every chance is an open door,
No hindrance for another goal.
Always be brave to climb a wall,
Or row the boat with a new oar;
Dribble again and shoot the ball;
We do not know what is in store.
Like earning another good score,
That will give another life’s role;
Give our best with hope on the shore,
Our fate will continue to roll.
Determination gets its toll,
Be humble, step pride that gives sore;
Let’s value all things, short or tall,
Sail more seas and place God before,
There’s always a call.
April 4, 2023 10.02pm
rhymezone.com and
howmanysyllables.com
8 syllables per line except the last(5)
164 words
197 syllables
915 characters
*Only my First try of this poetry form.
In streets adorned with neon lights,
We're sold a dream of grand delights,
But beware, for what glitters gold,
May only serve to leave us cold.
The market's claws can gouge and bite,
While we succumb to its great might,
We trade our souls for cheap applause,
And become slaves to want and flaws.
Amidst the aisles and billboards bright,
Our hearts and minds are taking flight,
Toward a place of empty gain,
And we forget to feel the pain.
The urge to buy is hard to fight,
It grips us with its endless might,
And so we spend our precious time,
Chasing wealth that leaves us blind.
In streets adorned with neon lights,
The dangers of commercial sights,
Are clear for all to see and know,
As we watch our true selves go.
We must break free from greed's tight hold,
And learn to cherish what we're told,
For true contentment can't be sold,
Nor can our worth be bought or sold,
In streets adorned.
Dear you write your note to your beat
For who cares how you right your boat
You do stand on your own two feet
So I pass my views from my throat
How you carry your weight and tote
So be that it's a one-way street
It's your shading, hue, and dark coat
It's the storm you weather and greet
Sorry you're not friendly and sweet
For you looked upon as a goat
With your head down grazing the heat
With your pent tears and insides bloat
It's your stage and music of note
It's your pasture of tears that bleat
You could care what your brother wrote
But you much rather wall and fleet
Sister, I wish you take a seat
At the table with newfound oat
And see that life's filled with a treat
So put down your fortress and moat
Sister, I also wore your coat
I, too, went thru your mill and feat
Yes I feel your streamed tears by rote
Wisely I changed my tune and tweet
Dear you write your note
3/30/23
Double The Fun Poetry Contest
Sponsor-Joseph May
Introduction
The special pleasure of reading a Rondeau Redouble lies in recognition changed by context. A line first encountered as part of an opening statement returns later carrying the weight of everything written since. It may sound more tender, ironic, ominous, resigned, or defiant without changing a word. Reading several examples side by side reveals how differently poets prepare those returns and how much emotional work a repeated line can perform.
The shared architecture does not require a shared manner. One poet may build a clear narrative in which each recurrence marks a new stage; another may create a meditative circle of images, memories, or arguments. A formal voice can make the repetitions sound ceremonial, while conversational phrasing can make them resemble recurring thoughts. The limited field of rhyme may produce musical cohesion, comic ingenuity, incantatory pressure, or deliberate unease, depending on the poet's diction and subject.
Browse the poems in this collection with an ear for transformation rather than mere recurrence. The opening passage acts not only as an introduction but also as a supply of future turning points, so its full design becomes visible gradually. One isolated example can demonstrate an approach; multiple community poems show the range of possible relationships among refrain, rhyme, scene, voice, and closure. Read beyond the first example, then return to earlier poems after encountering later ones. Comparison makes it easier to distinguish formal correctness from imaginative necessity-and to appreciate how individual poets make inherited constraints feel personal.
Reading Guide
A Rondeau Redouble asks readers to remember forward and backward at once. Each returning line invites recognition, but the surrounding language determines whether that recognition feels reassuring, troubling, comic, or revelatory. As you read the community poems, avoid treating repetition as a simple structural checkpoint. Attend instead to what has changed between appearances: the speaker's knowledge, the emotional temperature, the scene, the implied audience, or your own understanding. Comparison is especially rewarding because two poets can use similar formal pressures to create entirely different experiences of inevitability.
- Track the changing force of each return. A repeated line may begin as description and later sound like confession, accusation, or verdict. Ask: what has the intervening stanza taught me that alters how I hear this line?
- Listen to the rhyme field as an atmosphere. Because the poem repeatedly draws from a narrow sound world, rhyme can create harmony, claustrophobia, wit, or insistence. When comparing poems, ask whether the recurring sounds deepen the mood or merely announce the pattern.
- Notice how stanzas approach their appointed endings. The strongest transitions make a returning line feel both expected and newly earned. Ask: does the stanza genuinely develop toward its final line, or does the syntax seem maneuvered into place solely to accommodate it?
- Observe the opening lines as latent turning points. Their phrasing must survive later contexts, so ambiguity, emotional breadth, and syntactic flexibility can become assets. Ask which opening statements gain complexity on repetition and which remain essentially unchanged.
- Follow movement beneath the circularity. Repetition can conceal substantial narrative or psychological progress. Identify what advances-time, argument, memory, relationship, perception-and ask whether the poem arrives somewhere different despite its returns.
- Study the final echo. The shortened callback to the beginning can close the circle, fracture it, or leave it resonating beyond the poem. Ask whether this last gesture confirms the opening premise, questions it, or releases the speaker from it.
Compare several poets' approaches before deciding what the form can do. The most revealing differences often lie not in whether a line returns, but in how completely its meaning has been transformed.
Writing Tips
Approach a Rondeau Redouble as a piece of dramatic engineering rather than a rhyme-filling exercise. Before drafting, identify an emotional or intellectual situation that benefits from recurrence: a memory that will not stay settled, an argument revisited from changing angles, a ritual, a comic obsession, or a decision whose meaning evolves. The form becomes expressive when every return is part of the poem's thinking.
- Choose material with stages. A static mood may struggle to sustain the repeated lines unless the images or perspective keep developing. Sketch several distinct movements-discovery, resistance, reconsideration, consequence, acceptance-so the poem can circle its subject while still advancing.
- Design the opening for future contexts. Draft several possible opening passages and test each line as a later conclusion. Favor lines with enough clarity to be memorable but enough openness to acquire another implication. A narrowly factual line may have nowhere to grow; a vague line may return without force.
- Build a usable sound palette before committing. Gather nouns, verbs, names, and flexible phrases related to your subject that share the needed end sounds. This is not busywork: it reveals whether the rhyme vocabulary supports the poem's world. If your bank is dominated by abstractions or awkward inversions, reconsider the sounds early.
- Let each stanza earn its refrain. Write toward the returning line through image, action, or argument rather than attaching it after an unrelated passage. The reader should feel a click of recognition and a shift of meaning. Vary sentence boundaries so every recurrence does not arrive with identical pacing.
- Protect the speaker's natural voice. Repeated rhymes can tempt poets into archaic diction, filler, or syntax they would never otherwise use. Read every sentence without its line breaks. If it sounds unlike the intended speaker, revise the route to the rhyme rather than defending a strained phrase as formal necessity.
- Use imagery to prevent mechanical circling. Give each movement a fresh sensory field or a newly focused detail. A recurring thought can pass through weather, rooms, gestures, objects, or bodily sensations, allowing the form's sameness to interact with visible change. Avoid explaining after an image has already made the emotional point.
- Prepare the ending without over-sealing it. The final partial echo is powerful because it recalls more than it states. Shape the last passage so that the fragment feels charged by the whole poem, not like a label added for compliance. Decide whether you want recognition, interruption, ambiguity, or release, then tune the preceding lines accordingly.
During revision, mark every forced rhyme, abstract explanation, repeated grammatical pattern, and unnecessary transition. Read the draft aloud once for musical continuity and again while pausing before each returning line; the pause will reveal whether anticipation has been earned. Finally, compare the opening and ending closely. Strengthen images, adjust pacing, and refine the voice until the closing echo feels inevitable in sound but newly consequential in meaning.
Interesting Facts
- The opening is also hidden future material. Readers first receive it as a beginning, but the poet must compose it with later destinations in mind. This double duty makes apparently simple opening lines among the most consequential choices in the poem.
- Exact repetition does not guarantee repeated meaning. A line can change function without changing wording: statement may become question, reassurance may become denial, and praise may acquire irony. Context supplies the transformation that vocabulary withholds.
- A small rhyme field can enlarge thematic pressure. Recurring sounds bind distant images and ideas together, sometimes suggesting connections the poet did not initially plan. The difficulty is productive when rhyme discovers language rather than merely limiting it.
- Circular structure can contain genuine progress. The poem may keep returning verbally while moving forward in time, knowledge, or emotional acceptance. Its distinctive tension comes from allowing recurrence and development to operate simultaneously.
- Performance changes the visibility of the design. On the page, readers can look back and verify a returning line. When heard aloud, they rely on memory and tonal delivery. A slight shift in pace or emphasis can make the recurrence feel dramatically new.
- The final fragment can be larger than its size suggests. Because it summons the beginning without restating everything, it works through memory and incompletion. Browse the poems in this collection to compare endings that sound conclusive with those that deliberately leave an emotional circuit open.
Popular Themes
Subject and structure interact closely in a Rondeau Redouble because recurrence places pressure on whatever the speaker cannot dismiss. The following themes are literary possibilities rather than popularity rankings; each can benefit from lines that return after their emotional circumstances have changed.
- Memory and grief. A remembered phrase can recur as the speaker moves through denial, recollection, anger, or accommodation. Repetition resembles the mind's involuntary return to an absence while changing contexts prevent the lament from remaining static.
- Love, separation, and reconciliation. Statements about another person rarely retain a single meaning across a relationship. A tender line may later sound doubtful or wounded, while an apparent farewell may become an invitation to return.
- Obsession and inner argument. The form suits a thought that repeatedly interrupts the speaker. Each recurrence can test whether the voice is clarifying its position or merely constructing more elaborate ways to avoid a truth.
- Ritual, season, and recurring time. Anniversaries, ceremonies, daily habits, and natural cycles provide visible counterparts to verbal return. The challenge is to show that repetition in life never occurs under precisely identical conditions.
- Public conflict and moral witness. Repeated lines can function as testimony, challenge, warning, or communal response. New scenes or evidence can steadily intensify the same words, giving the poem cumulative ethical force without requiring a louder claim each time.
- Comedy, satire, and exasperation. A refrain can become a punch line whose implications escalate with each setup. The constrained rhyme field may heighten verbal ingenuity, provided the poet preserves timing and does not sacrifice clarity for a convenient joke.
- Identity and self-revision. A speaker may repeat inherited labels, promises, or beliefs while gradually contesting them. The poem's returns can dramatize the difference between language imposed on the self and language consciously reclaimed.
As you read the community poems, compare writers who choose similar subjects but assign different work to recurrence. One may seek closure, another contradiction, and another comic release. The theme matters, but its transformation across repeated lines creates the deeper experience.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension of a Rondeau Redouble is that the reader knows language will return but should not know exactly what that return will mean. Technical recognizability comes from visible recurrence and sustained sonic control; memorability comes from altered consequence. A strong poem creates enough continuity for recognition and enough development for surprise. If the repeated lines merely confirm their first meanings, the structure can feel like an ornate container. If each one becomes necessary to the speaker's changing situation, recurrence becomes the poem's method of thought.
Editors listen especially closely to the opening because it carries unusual long-range responsibility. Its lines need immediate presence, yet they must remain hospitable to contexts not yet encountered. Productive ambiguity is different from vagueness: the former permits a line to turn under pressure, while the latter gives the reader too little to reconsider. Strong poets also make the narrow rhyme vocabulary belong to the subject. The sounds may become mournful, buoyant, abrasive, ceremonious, or teasing, but they should feel woven into the voice rather than displayed as evidence of technical effort.
Common weaknesses arise when compliance becomes more visible than intention. Forced inversions, filler phrases, predictable rhyme words, and inflated diction draw attention away from the poem's emotional logic. Mechanical patterning can also flatten pacing when every stanza uses similar syntax and approaches its return in the same way. Over-explanation is another risk: a poet may state what a repeated line now means instead of allowing the new context to change it. At the opposite extreme, insufficient development leaves the refrains untouched by experience. The remedy is not necessarily more incident; a sharper image, altered addressee, tonal fracture, or revised piece of knowledge may be enough.
Individuality remains visible through the choices the form does not predetermine: who speaks, what remains unsaid, how scenes are ordered, where sentences cross lines, how humor or restraint affects delivery, and whether the ending closes or unsettles the circle. Comparing multiple community poems develops judgment because it separates shared conventions from personal solutions. Readers begin to hear which repetitions accumulate pressure, which rhymes extend the poem's vocabulary, and which endings release meanings prepared from the start. Quality becomes perceptible not as perfect obedience, but as the fusion of pattern, subject, voice, and emotional timing.
Read, Write & Share
Read several community poems before settling on a single impression of what the form can achieve. Compare how each poet prepares the returning lines, manages the restricted soundscape, changes emotional direction, and handles the final echo. Thoughtful comments can mention a recurrence that gained new meaning, a rhyme that felt especially natural, or a turn that changed your reading.
Then try shaping your own subject through return and transformation. Publish your Rondeau Redouble on PoetrySoup, invite attentive responses, and join the continuing conversation between poets who share a structure without surrendering their individual voices.
Collection Statistics
This collection currently includes 34 Rondeau Redouble poems, offering multiple interpretations to read beside one another. A collection of this size allows visitors to compare approaches to recurring lines, rhyme, voice, development, and closure without assuming that every poet makes the same choices. Some writers may follow established conventions closely, while others may adapt or challenge them; those differences can sharpen both appreciation and craft awareness.
Rondeau Redouble Categories
Definition | What is Rondeau Redouble 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.