"villanelles" poems
(I don't really hate pantoums, but once, when I wrote about the rules for repeating forms like pantoums and villanelles, one girl commented "I hate pantoums and villanelles. I guess I get bored easily." But this only provoked me to write a Pantoum using her words, just a little edited.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I hate pantoums and villanelles
because I'm very easily bored
when a poem goes on and on, and tells
the things that have been said before.
Because I'm very easily bored,
I get impatient for lots of stuff.
The things that have been said before
don't need repeating. Once is enough.
I get impatient, for lots of stuff
I get to hear throughout the day
don't need repeating. Once is enough
to understand what you have to say.
I get to hear throughout the day
the same old news again and again.
To understand what you have to say
should not be hard. Intelligent men
and women don't need those extra lines
when a poem goes on and on, and tells
what it's said before, too many times.
I hate pantoums – and villanelles!
May 18, 2016
May 18, 2016 at 3:15 PM UTC
The couplet's first in writing villanelles;
if you desire your work to be its best,
a singleness in purpose always tells.
Of course, the open has the hook that sells,
your reader is seduced to read the rest.
The couplet's first in writing villanelles.
Your second line resides in writer's hell,
the rhyme-rich ending word must meet the test
and singleness in purpose always tells.
Pentameter iambic works just swell,
but matters not, as many will attest.
The couplet's first in writing villanelles.
Last stanza rolls around, the poet's well
is nearly dry, their muse under duress;
a singleness in purpose always tells.
The final lines! Relax, and sit a spell,
enjoy the glow of formal poem's success.
The couplet's first in writing villanelles.
a singleness in purpose always tells.
Apr 15, 2015
Apr 15, 2015 at 9:56 AM UTC
Dream for me
a Savannah,
a sestina in reds
at Pandoras threshold,
clothed in bludgeons of light
and these tears are nothing
but the nightingales burden,
the words laden and livid as storm
across the mauve wasteland
unfolds, the sky in its deceit,
promises rain, delivers nothing,
in this room the light will ruin me,
the squall of glass slippers overhead,
on my knees, now
the abstraction of the body, opaque
I write in the limber whisper
of fingertips, deep villanelles
about love, restless love
on the skin of your back,
histories annotated
by gestures of supplication,
I drag fingernails across a fairytale
and out falls a wide-eyed harem,
April-blue veils trail their blood, narrowing
the flagrant staccato echo in my sternum,
A palm reader warns of conduits
and spells, the darkness
that puddles like lake water
in my mind, moths of Summer
a fragrant blue,
restless blue
notes like scorpions
scurry beneath the blankets,
strands of hair, stained sheets
this vacancy glows through the shears
I forget, how early, and still
the night falls here,
as how early it fails.....
Jan 10, 2013
Jan 10, 2013 at 5:07 PM UTC
I am the first page of a well-loved novel,
But often the first one ignored,
Dog-eared and transparent at the corners
From the touch of one too many hands
And witness to the enterprising twist of a smile
As my readers are privileged to only pieces of me.
You, like the binding that surrounds me,
Enclose and encircle all that I am. Write a novel
Under my skin. I’ve falsified too many smiles,
Sacrificed even the best of myself for ignorant
Delusions of caressing hands
That take and abuse my corners.
The used bookstore on the corner
Of Middlebury Marbleworks, Otter Creek and window-origami —
My salvation and river-penance. Seek my story with hands
That feel to comprehend, with novel
Softness and a tenderness that ignores
My pleading glances and indecisive smiles
As you speak in hush-whispers. Smile
With your eyes as you touch my spine — corner
Me at the exit. I want you to ignore
Faults, make peace with flaws that inhabit me
Like poetry misplaced within a novel,
Or willow branches falling too low, tired hands.
I memorized the shape of your hands
The first time we danced to Chaplin’s “Smile,”
And wrote on the broadness of your shoulders a novel
Of my sins, apologies stretching to your corners
In villanelles — repeating refrains. It took all of me
To tell you what I could no longer ignore.
Because once you start to ignore
Conflictions that exist in the nerve-endings of your hands,
What you feel becomes a burden. For me,
Sand ran out of the hourglass when our smiles
Stopped touching — and at the corner
Of Maple Street and Printer’s Alley, I said goodbye, our novelty
Gone. Still, I find it hard to ignore what used to be when you smile
As you look at her, your hands on her back in the corner
Of the room. You remain my unfinished novel.
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 12:17 AM UTC
The city's shrouded in smoke today
smoke coats my mouth, throat & eyes
& I know, I know.
I should be writing in form,
in rhyme - villanelles, sonnets, terza rima
some say there's too much free verse, some say, it's like
everyone's jumped on the bandwagon
yet the most of the magazines still all want rhyme
but sometimes this is just the tune
your heart sings, a broken smile
& the way the images build up
waiting to sail like ships in the harbor
& besides, should we really be writing in villanelles when we are the Mad & I see now, the best minds of our generation, the gifted,
the naked wastrels of the coming apocalypse,
talking to lamp posts, screaming of Ginsberg's Moloch
& the wrongs they did us, yet not destroyed even as we scream locked
behind whitewashed walls in razor-blade glint & halogenic
glow of ECT or walk the empty streets at guerilla dawn
& dusk, bearing the ample weight of our drugged-up minds
like those martyrs of the old Soviet Union & clinging
on to memoirs of our stolen, interrupted, spiritual awakening,
searching for the redemption of litter in this hobo life,
changing countries like some change bed sheets,
others rooted by the invisible chains of familiarity & home, still calling
for the road, oh Kerouac, the fallen angels of tomorrow strung out on sweet
childhood memories & jazz in starved sunsets,
picking themselves up to pick at their scab wounds,
spitting at corrupt governments, bitter with alcohol,
writing poems of unrequited love to poets
far better than us, while Elvis croons
in the background & a Baboushka spits sunflower seeds
in the Russian town of my ancestors
& an open air film plays in black & white
& this colorless summer is nearly over
& they still haven't lifted their sanctions
them with their stone gods of war & psychiatry,
always lining up the next undesirables :
you could be next, yes you with the rainbow eyes
you the believer, you the dreamer of visions
Oh pity them, the children of smoke,
blind to the vagabond, the poet, the lover
lost children always seeking out the same roads
the city is shrouded in smoke
& I wonder if it's not always been there
& if we're living amongst blind men
ones that never read poems
or else how could all this happen
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 9, 2015 at 11:22 AM UTC
Oh dear villanelle
You seem to be the death of me
Trying to write you, all seems unwell
Stubborn mademoiselle
You are, only wanting a very specific rhyme scheme
Oh dear villanelle
Why can’t you be kinder, my voice yells
Word play seems a challenge
Trying to write you, all seems unwell
All lines to end with an –elle?
Why not a –eek, or a – yike or an -ouch
Oh dear villanelle
What a villain –elle
You seem to be
Trying to write you, all seems unwell
I do wish that villanelles
Will never be confined to one specific form
Oh dear villanelle
Trying to write you, all seems unwell
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 11:34 PM UTC
He awakens, sighs, bones acreak at every move.
Reaches for the boilerplate, straps on his rapier
wit (but half of once it was), takes an aching
hold of his rusty lance, and mounts the ancient keyboard.
In clattering, staccato bursts, they gallop through
acres of verse: thatches of haiku and senryu,
prim English gardens of sonnet, manicured villanelles,
and mile after mile of untamed blank verse just like this.
All along the journey, he tilts at the ogres
in his mind, swiping in steady rhythm
at possesive pronouns replacing contractions,
your/you're...their/they're...its/it's...gah!
Set to charge full speed downhill from the
Valhallan heights of two courses of college English
at unedited mounds of unexamined thoughts,
he fetches up sharply; slows to a trot, looking uphill
at the hordes of English majors
eyeing him and his keyboard
with malice aforethought.
Jan 13, 2011
Jan 13, 2011 at 4:06 AM UTC
Whose words these are I think I know.
He's on another website, though;
He will not see me shopping here
To snitch his words for me to show.
My readership must think it queer;
I post ten thousand poems a year.
Between the copies, pastes and likes
I've barely time to chug a beer.
They give their addled heads a shake
And ask if there is some mistake.
The others call me out, a creep.
Who cares? They're just a bunch of flakes.
Their poems are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have villanelles to sneak,
And lines to own before I sleep,
And lines to own before I sleep.
Apr 7, 2015
Apr 7, 2015 at 2:15 PM UTC
Sapphic poems call upon mathematic
skills, as meter meted out over three lines,
groups of two feet followed by three, again two,
ending with five beats.
Even this old formalist, prehistoric
in his method, limps along through elevens,
just like playing Jethro Tull, Lynyrd Skynyrd;
seven-four, five-four.
Hear the roar of dinosaurs in the tar pits,
stuck in sonnets, villanelles, rhymes and rhythms,
sinking slowly, praying for preservation;
creative fossils.
Apr 11, 2015
Apr 11, 2015 at 7:23 PM UTC
Do you see me?
I’ve been devouring poetry,
by the line,
by the page,
by the book.
No poem has been overlooked.
I’ve been feasting
on free verse,
blank verse,
perverse
cascades
of stanzas and rhymes,
a banquet of words
on which to dine.
I’ve been swallowing ad nauseam,
scarfing down similes,
masticating metaphors,
gormandizing poems aplenty.
Rhyming couplets,
I’ve contained them.
Sonnets and epics,
ingested.
Lyrical odes,
digested.
A thousand lines
to make you swoon.
I’ve tasted them all—
the potent and
the picayune.
Villanelles, check.
Sestinas too.
I even hiccupped
my own haiku:
Icicles melt on glazed gutters.
Water drips, prolific, bits of sunlit seeds
promising lilacs below the eaves.
Do you see me?
I hate to ask, but I’m afraid
something poetic has happened.
my head is a tureen
brimming with stars
my arms are utensils
in a darkened drawer
my chest, a room of last resort
my feet are stressed, in short
Such prosody is blinding.
Can you tell me why
my eyes are bleak?
Or why I no longer
blink?
I sense the sear of fluent tears
composing on my cheek:
endless drops, black beads,
consumptive stains of ink.
Oct 17, 2016
Oct 17, 2016 at 10:22 AM UTC
Beneath the barricades of lotus fronds
and flowers, lurks beauty, brains
all watching the goddess of shadows
seeking respite from the burning sun
and banter of imagery that clings
delicately to the fabric of questions
seeking anonymity.
Once in a while the curtains draw
and a face appears. smiling, seeking
showing a glimpse of magical moments
tempting, teasing, wonderful
carved in a flash of inner beauty
that straddles the page
and withdraws back into the
folds of wonder.
" I bet the suspense is killing you!"
Who am I?" She said sweetly.
I searched through all the pages of poetry
and people columns, ears to the ground
surging through swords and diamantes,
villanelles and wonders
swords and acrostics, aquatics
and wooded forests near tempered lakes
picnics and parks
and I watched the sunset settle
in a twilight sky of burgundy
and roses. All.
I did not find you heart beating
against my chest
or my words echoing its hypnotic
trance against your ears!
Anonymous it will be.
Feb 22, 2014
Feb 22, 2014 at 5:19 PM UTC
I'm in a cool group.
To stay on top
of my writing, and to
promote and market
my poetry, I often
publish online.
If Lord Byron could
hear that.
In this place that
I belong,
I have deadlines.
I procrastinate until
the very last day, and then
scribble some ******
lines and get angry with
myself for putting the
writing off.
I have a couple of
weeks before I need
to write a sonnet or villanelle.
I'm getting anxiety.
It's not producing the
desired effect of
hard work or discipline.
No
Not that.
It is getting me thinking.
That is sometimes productive,
and usually comical.
I'm thinking about
the 15 months I've
been sober.
For many years,
I was miserable.
Drinking and writing.
Writing and drinking.
Holding the bottle of
***** to my shivering
lips to get the last
spider of liquid.
My clothes smelled of
decay and cowardice, and
everything tasted like
rotten meat.
Now, I have a beautiful
maple desk that my three
cats like to sleep
on while I write
poems about
procrastination and sobriety.
Such fuzzy black miracles.
They twitch as they
dream of fish and catnip,
and just maybe they
dream about writing a
sonnet for me.
We are all
addicted to something.
Apr 18, 2024
Apr 18, 2024 at 6:44 PM UTC
The basement compound is full of stacks.
Six thousand plus books in alpha order.
Welcome, bibliophiles and novice poets.
The lighting is courtesy of a three-bulb tree.
A balanced diet of tomes, sonnets &
Limericks, prose poems in tongues.
A cheval glass mirror sees Wendell Berry.
The room under the stairs has anthologies.
Each volume is part of a collective whole.
Vendler on Dickinson & New York Haiku.
This one-time coal-bin has a dehumidifier
To keep it alive & free of mold.
The poets are unaware of the visits of
A baby raccoon who almost ate Auden.
They are sleeping soundly, immune to
Dog-eared magazines in the reject corner.
Lorca himself rests just above the sump
Pump & Yeats across from the water heater.
The furnace keeps Frost warm in winter
& The Lady of the Lake dry.
Come & check out the underground home
Of Thomas’ and Plath’s villanelles.
No photo ID card needed here, just a
Healthy, insatiable appetite for metaphor.
There is one requirement: patrons must
Leave cell phones at the top of the stairs.
& they must have a love-affair with the real
Thing, a desire to touch a book.
Yes, all six thousand plus volumes are, or
Were, in print – made of paper and glue.
© Lewis Bosworth, 4-2017
Apr 25, 2017
Apr 25, 2017 at 9:30 PM UTC
1.
I will baptize the sky
with new waters,
washing the Birger Sandzen pink
from the clouds.
Cattle reject their reflection in farm ponds.
Trees turn their backs to the horizon and bow.
Indigo night. Angular lights in the distance:
Freight train roars. Empty cars
headed northward.
2.
I will baptize the Earth
with new fire,
scorching stubble and sod
from the Plains.
Cattle nudge clods of dirt for sweet tendrils.
Trees shape words, but can no longer spell.
Charcoal cairns point the way to deep furrows.
Growing pains. Orange flames
headed nowhere.
3.
I will baptize my heart
with new poetry,
spilling villanelles
into my veins.
Cattle low for soft yodels from cowboys.
Trees sashay to the solos of birds.
Rosy-fingered dawns in my songs? I sail elsewhere.
Orange, blue. Twilight hues
headed homeward.
Aug 16, 2018
Aug 16, 2018 at 9:44 AM UTC
Midnight
crashes in
thunderclap headache
darkness spreading
a virus
black skin infection
hear the sea
cannot see it
mumble in sigh out
night of sonnets
melting to haikus
couplets nothing
rubies on my lips
jewels I've never known
on my hand
you
made me faint
made my (day)dreams
Technicolor
whispered villanelles
buried them
broken bones in sand
inhaled your language
stored stories
for next time
twenty-six things
twenty-six letters
play pause repeat
play pause repeat
craved you
smoke/drugs/booze
in eyes lost
backs of knees
fingers on spines
eleven fifty nine
fifty nine
reality soaks through
a ****** wound
as the message
in the bottle
you sway away
fictional fading
closed
Jul 16, 2014
Jul 16, 2014 at 4:28 PM UTC
*Where did the words go
Where did all the poetic sentences go
The descriptions about how I feel
How the river of my Soul went still
How the Ocean of my heart can no longer be sailed
How my innocent emotions were jailed
Where are the sonnets that stole my sadness
Where are the songs that saved me from madness
Where are the stars that twinkled in the sky of my faith
Where's the warm breeze that characterized my breath
Where are the couplets that were perfect outlets
Where are the quatrains that filled my sensory pamphlets
Where are the dawns of the promise that someday I will heal
Where is the time I wrote to ****
Where is the love in every corner of this sphere
Where I'm I and why I'm I here
Where is the mountain of my philosophical perspiration
Where're the blissful springs of inspiration
Where is the pan gram to use all the alphabet in describing situations
Where are the rhythmical villanelles of my unanswered questions?*
Nov 7, 2015
Nov 7, 2015 at 5:26 PM UTC
I’m still writing villanelles for the dead,
for the people with useless eyes.
If only I could write for you instead.
I let them live inside my head
and somehow they speak of my demise.
I’m still writing villanelles for the dead.
As I lay with the weight of lead,
on stormy waters I don’t capsize.
If only I could write for you instead.
I feel this rising sense of dread,
I fear I know what this implies.
I’m still writing villanelles for the dead.
Do you dream of a warm, safe bed?
Only you with the countless lies,
if only I could write for you instead.
I should have listened to what you said
when your goodbye came as no surprise.
I’m still writing villanelles for the dead;
if only I could write for you instead.
Mar 9, 2018
Mar 9, 2018 at 2:00 PM UTC
What beauty the blank page holds
Like fresh fallen snow
Before the kids shake their slumber
Before the earth has begun to yawn
And I like to watch it wake
As fragments turn to sentences
Turn to fragments
Turn to villanelles
Turn to sonnets
As people turn to leashed desk job dogs
Or artists
Or lovers
Or dust
As I turn to what this page becomes
And ay there's the rub
As endless pages in days won't
Turn to endless days in pages
But the blank page remains
Timeless
Jul 7, 2014
Jul 7, 2014 at 1:53 PM UTC
It isn't the hard work of which I hate
to pluck meaningful phrases from thin air
it's Villanelles are hard to fabricate,
I can roll my sleeves, to tackle work, mate
and tackle with will but even with care
it isn't the hard work of which I hate,
or the sad fact that self will self berate
or that one can't insert with some kind of flair
it's villanelles are hard to fabricate,
but I'll battle on, correct or delate
you've heard of the phrase lol of ''she who dares''
it isn't the hard work of which I hate,
I guess it's not part of the human estate
or of a struggling with human affairs
it's villanelles are hard to fabricate,
but, I shall end now, it is getting late
and I'm getting headaches from this page glare
it isn't the hard work, of which, I hate
but villanelles, are hard, to fabricate!
Jan 23, 2021
Jan 23, 2021 at 2:20 PM UTC