Safe

W.T. Benda

Safe

A Rhyme Royal

Safe is frequently bought and sold

 in the marketplace of the faceless,

 their masks of wood or hard-bitten gold

hand-carved, hand-painted, the loneliness

lost with expression. The false-positive test

is smoothed-over, the feel symbolized

as only a mask can describe.

 

An infant subsists on its mother

for resolution to every disruption;

so the broken bend to another

in the masks that cover dysfunction.

 A commerce is made of protection;

the result is that safe purchased spot

for those who can't face what life's not.




~February, April 2014

A few months back, Fireblossom used the illustrations of W.T. Benda, one of which is shown above, to inpire us to write in a form known as the rhyme royal, explained in full at the link(this is the quatrain/tercet variation, abab bcc.) I started this back then, and have resurrected and revivified  it today for Margaret's Play It Again Challenge at



real toads

Ice Blue /Your Ways

Ice Blue/Your Ways

Two Variants on the Rhyme Royal

Ice Blue

How can  the sky be so fire-orange true,

as if the horizon burned time red and gold

in a winter when wind blows trees ice blue,

and night screams as it comes in fear and cold?

Not much is sure of what we hold,

not why nor how nor any way back,

least of all the white road that's striped with black

or the peacock colors of who we are

that change as the sail trims light or dark,

just your wrist that burns with the pulse of a star,

that laid under my breast holds down the heart

made wild to fly, then fly apart,

a snake of smoke to the bonfire sky

blown on the wind of you and I.

Your Ways

Your leg lifts a sail gone slack on my thigh,

your wrist knocks its pulse beneath my far breast

holding down the heart you made wild to fly,

and fly apart, with each chamber pressed

each moment peeled, each beat undressed

blind with the shine of this folded hour

drunk with the moon in her swaying tower.

Nothing is certain, not life nor days.

Nothing is certain in dark or bright.

Nothing is certain except your ways

when you come to me here, to summer the night

on the road stark black but waved with white

against a peacock sky so fire-orange true

in a winter that blows the trees ice-blue.

~February 2014

posted for      real toads

Fireblossom Friday: Rhyme Royal & W.T. Benda

The ever devious Fireblossom (Shay's Word Garden) who is known for her allergic reaction to haiku, has chosen to tantalize us with a form challenge today, the rhyme royal. The form is written using a seven line stanza with a rhyme scheme of ababbcc, or with either of two variants: 
a quatrain and tercet,  abab  bcc  or a tercet and two couplets,   aba bb cc.  
For full details, see the Toads link above.
I have written the same poem twice, reversed, once for each of the latter two ways. I also worked a word or two in derived from the illustration below by W.T. Benda.

~WT Benda

Photos: Scruboak Sunset, Darkwood, by joyannjones copyright 2012,2014

All Rights Reserved.

Illuminated Manuscript

Illuminated Manuscript

You bring  a finger stuttering down my cheek.

Each jump it makes, a current arrows through

that pierces skin, a blue and burning streak,

a sigil in the alphabet of you.

Invisible these marks but ever true;

imagine if one finger paints so clear

what manuscripts your body’s written here.

July 2011

Posted for FormforAll at dVerse Poets Pub

 

On alternate Thursdays, Gay Cannon hosts a Form symposium at dVerse. This week, she's chosen to highlight an old poetic form, the Rhyme Royal. This consists of seven line stanzas in iambic pentameter. with an ababbcc rhyme scheme, which can be varied in several ways. I've chosen to write just a single stanza, but this form is often used in longer narrative poems.

Image: Page from the Arthurian Romances,
medieval illuminated manuscript,
northern France, late 13th century
See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons