Category: Poetry

Grief is forever. It doesn’t go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, breath for breath.

Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

Grief is weakness and strength; an ending and a beginning; a shattering and an anchoring; it is a journey without a predeterminable destination.

Wishing everyone happiness and light
and ending with a promise that the next post will be a joyous one…

There is a cost to every decision we make – there is gain, but also loss. How we find balance depends on factors that are different for all of us…

Safe
Heartbreak-free
Alone
Lonely
Floundering in
Deep oceans
of the Darkest Despair

Did I save my barely beating heart only to lose my soul?

Images courtesy Lukas (Cracked Stone) and Engin Akyurt (Silhouette Photo of Woman) on Pexels.com

Last week was the first I’d heard of the Square Poem or the Square Stanza. It is an utterly fascinating concept and [not-surprisingly] quite hard to pull off.

The trick is that the poem should read the same vertically down the page and horizontally across the page. Obviously then, and also to make it a true ‘square’, the number of words per line must equal the number of lines. This form is attributed to Lewis Carroll – you can read his creation here: The Society of Classical Poets.

After a zillion tries, here is what I came up with. This is 3×3 square poem:

Until life ends
life is love…
ends love…beginnings

Here’s where it shows what I mean about the poem reading the same way down the page as it reads across the page

Here is another one – this time, a 4×4 Square Poem

Pain is sullen companion
is persistent distracting rhythm
sullen distracting relentlessly punishing
companion rhythm punishing me

Try writing one yourself. Remember only that the more words you strive for per line, the harder it becomes to write something that makes sense.

There are other mathematical forms of poetry – and also what is called the ‘Classic’ Square Poem [or the ‘Syllable’ Square as opposed to the Carroll Square] – where the number of syllables per line equal the number of lines in the stanza. Read more about the various forms in the links in this post.

Have fun experimenting! I did…

Is it greed;
insecurity;
a hunger for power;
hatred for humankind
and for every living being?
How is war ever an answer to anything?
How can war answer the questions of food security, and health, and happiness, and shelter for all the creatures on this planet?

Tanks trundle down blameless streets;
merciless feet march ever onward
trampling the fruit of other men’s labor;
the blood flows rich red, quenching nobody’s thirst;
war changes everything – everybody loses – and still…
yet another president reaches for the bugle

These Haikus are about the power of Nature to help us find solace in a world gone crazy.

Heartsick, I espy
golden rays through lush foliage
…Spring’s cure for angst

– and later that day –

Moonlight, clouds, and stars…
such flirts – shimmying expertly
to ancient rhythms

Sometimes, winter is more than just a time of year. Sometimes, it is a desolation that grows out of hurt and harm…

Break me into pieces
of an obdurate puzzle,
but what if I still don’t fit
into your schemes and dreams?

Manipulate me into shapes
that I don’t know the names of;
dress me in colors
of submission and despair.

Stretch me thin
accomplishing things I abhor;
but what if I am elastic
and spring back to the way I was before?

Bind me in ropes
that purport to protect
but all they do is catapult me
into a rebellion long overdue.

I dream me a future
I dream of songs to sing
My soul, grown weary,
yearns for balmy spring

Memories – good and bad – serve a purpose.
They remind us of times when things were beautiful and we had hope
and they warn us of what could go wrong despite the best intentions in the world.

Here’s a poem about that…

I house memories in my heart
It’s overflowing with some
I should throw away
to make space for ones
that bring me joy
but how do I measure joy
if not against the pain
of heartbreak & angst?
You left but I cling
by a thread I will not cut

I will forgive but not forget…

Every so often I find myself sabotaging my hopes and dreams.
Too ambitious, too new, too unusual, too extravagant, I’ll say,
and I’ll close my mind to what could be.

Here’s poem about that…

Smoke and mirrors
can’t disguise
that the enemy
lies within

Dreams and hopes
cannot abound
in a mind that
won’t call in

A slave to convention,
dare I dare
to give shape
to my heart’s desires?

If I risk the familiar
– in a barrage of self-love –
will I find the friend
within my skin?

Sounds sinister, doesn’t it?
Well, I hope you find the following Haikus anything but ominous…

I resolve to love
changing shapes and colors of
my Autumn body

Eyelashes tremble
under the delightful weight
of early snowflakes

The pitter patter
of a lonely cloud’s anguish
a broken heart heals

These love stories are thanks to the #VSS365 daily word prompt given by uber creative hosts over the last few days on Twitter…

Our love lights up
the night sky
The moon, abashed,
hides behind propitious clouds…
It’s all the prompting we need
to steal
long-denied, lingering
kisses

My love’s beauty is rare
yet when the sun and the moon duel
she is eclipsed

Your love
snakes around
my freedoms
and liberates me
from their
anfractuous coils

Breeze on skin,
green grass, winter canopy,
a kiss adds spice…