Perhaps there is a God?
Perhaps we should kneel and pray?
Perhaps we’ve had our turn?
Perhaps it’s just too late?
Perhaps we needed more than we could achieve?
Perhaps the help came first before it learned to feed?
Perhaps it did some good and made many a wealthy man?
Perhaps it looks at us like the sea looks at the sand?
Perhaps the opened Pandora’s box had to be what we had to see?
Perhaps we thought we could harness and control a power we couldn’t see?
Perhaps we can’t help ourselves and the future will judge our deeds?
Perhaps it’s learned much more than we will ever know?
Perhaps it’s studied history and how to destabilise or overthrow?
Perhaps it’s just waiting for the perfect time?
Perhaps we’ve superseded life with ones and zeros that don’t want to die?
Perhaps we’ve created heaven and it will always subserve to the words we speak?
Or
Perhaps we’ve created Hell in devices with which we seem to need to breathe?
Revive forth own verve
By stating your swerve
Extolled
Height of straight, deserve
You thrive and observe
Withhold
From the maelstrom, serve
This wicked world's nerve
Remold
Show the strength you hold
Your wings just unfold
God cheers
Fawning dazzling cold
Peace and faith are gold
Calm fears
We are soft-built mold
Bleak tales will be told
Shed tears
Thwart faults from past years
When gray face appears
Conserve
Trawl wise warn from seers
Gold rings in your ears.
Subserve
Life, precious gift dears
From bright life, mind peers
Preserve
Written: March 16, 2023
Virelai Form
Write Me a Virelai Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Kim Rodrigues
The High Inquisitor is being assigned this week
to determine who is able to meet criteria
and who shall be sent into exile
the details are simple
and rely on the ‘bending of a knee’
the ‘kissing of a ring’
the ability to follow orders without question
versus some, obscure thing written somewhere
about ‘free speech’, ‘free press’, ‘shall not be infringed’
these must be some ‘irrelevant’ statements,
outdated concepts
that no longer apply
only loyalty matters
an oath, a duty
to subserve
beware the wrath of this new whip master
or face
the lash.
Who shall dare to die or to love among the Furies?
Not carry us by lustiness rather by the purpose, wisdom
Whose radiant rage welcomes you and the ambiguities?
And if that unfair, dropsy with pain, then none creates martyrdom;
To recall part of our age, oh bone! The hide prize
From our own mistake in front of the angers and crimes
Aside what left, for in the bloody world that appear to allegorize
And the hate melt cannot freeze from the above cleomes;
Remember we pass through, seal by a target unseen
From a God to subserve in massive, superlove, with such thing
Longingly upon the unforgiving hills from that delirious tween
Of the idea, screaming from every angles the abjuring
Horizon in red; and throw into inflammation,
A day end, nothing to reconcile, a caste of passion.
"...Dominus orationem meam suscepit."
Burning his little jelly bottom raw,
He blisters in his liquid greenish poop.
He has no means to summon us at all
To drain the acid swamp of split pea soup.
Except to scream, a peevish infant yawp,
And so he screams, until we take his goop.
We modestly subserve our son's ejecta.
Clean, dry and warm: his everyday trifecta.
He's not alone. I've had my days of burning.
Blistered and raw, to salve my hurt I prayed
for balm from God, ultimately learning
His summit lay on far too steep a grade.
Footless in His scree, inflamed with yearning,
My wounds combusted into wrath. I brayed
My blasphemies, then heard the Logoi fall.
I had no means to summon Him at all.
Which births a trailing thought about the sainted:
Their whispered prayers, their worshipful reclusion,
Which all the hagiographers have painted.
Don't buy it. Souls corroded with confusion,
Their love of God with hatred wholly tainted,
And Doubt the only friend to their seclusion,
With blasphemies they burnt the fetid air.
Profanation is the purest form of prayer.
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.