Poiku Verse

I’m cheating just a bit this week. As you know, I belong to a poetry group. We meet once a month in the basement of a church to share our poetry. Each month we’re assigned what we affectionately call “poemwork,” a prompt to work on, purely optional, for the next meeting.

It’s not often we’re assigned a form, but we were for this month, it being National Poetry Month and all. And I figured, since I was doing a poem or two for the form anyway, why not share it here as well?

The form is another variation on the Haiku called the Poiku. Instead of referencing nature and the seasons, it condenses a song into three lines. Think of it as the pop version of the Haiku.

It’s still a verse of 17 syllables, 5-7-5. But the content is based on song lyrics. Most songs have three parts – the verse, the chorus, and the bridge. It’s helpful if you can condense each one of these parts into a single line. Don’t forget to include the name of the song as well as the artist.

You’re analyzing the content of the song, distilling the most important points, and then summarizing it into your verse. Perhaps there is a thematic change between the beginning and the end of the song that you can use for effect.


Earthquake and Rapture
escalating, rushing on
world ends, but we’re fine.
It’s the End of the World As We Know It – REM


Wake on the cliff’s edge
night beckons, just one more step
to death or to life
Epiphany – Trans-Siberian Orchestra


Dreamers imagine
a more peaceful, gentle world,
Perhaps, someday soon.
Imagine – John Lennon


Paint your starry night
sanity caught in amber
no one understands.
Vincent – Don McLean


Watch the world outside
repeat tragic history.
Dream your life away.
Dreamer – Ozzy Osbourne

A Mouse Tale

When the mouse laughs at the cat, there's a hole nearby.
― Nigerian Proverb

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
― Willie Nelson

I can always tell when the mother in law's coming to stay; the mice throw themselves on the traps.
— Les Dawson

Only on a few rare occasions, when I was either very tired or the weather was just terrible, did I sleep in shelters. The mice rule the shelters, and if there are no mice, that’s because there are lots of snakes eating the mice…take your pick.
― Dennis R. Blanchard

First of all, just to be clear, the above picture is not the mouse in question.

Ever since we had that mouse problem (more than a year ago) we’ve kept a couple of traps in the basement. I’m not even sure there’s bait in them, but we’ve also left a couple of plates of mouse bait down there. And by basement I mean the laundry room and furnace room, which has a door that shuts firmly to keep curious kittens out.

Several months ago, I went downstairs to get something out of the freezer and there was a dead mouse in the trap near the furnace. I let the hubby know and he disposed of the corpse. I do not know how or where, nor do I want to.

Nothing else happened for the longest time until several days ago when I once again went down to get something out of the freezer, and once again there was a dead mouse in the trap. And it couldn’t have been the brightest mouse in the world because the hubby never re-baited the trap.

Saturday was a grey, miserable, rainy day. The hubby was off to the bowling alley to ride herd on the kids in the youth league, and I decided it was a good day to work in my office down the hall. The kittens came down with me to try to cause trouble, as is their way, but I ignored them and they soon wandered off to cause trouble elsewhere.

I could hear them at the other end of the house, and periodically I’d go check on them to make sure they weren’t getting into something they shouldn’t. Mostly they were just running races and fighting over toys. And then I realized that the one toy they were playing with was a dead mouse.

Ewwww!

Unwilling to touch it myself, and not wanting them to eat it. I got a heavy glass bowl to put over it, heavy enough they couldn’t push it off, and figured on letting the hubby dispose of it when he got home. That’s the man’s job, right?

So I went back down the hall to my office, leaving the wound-up kittens to their playing, and went back to work. A short while later they sounded like they were doing something they weren’t supposed to be, and I went to check on them again.

They had another mouse. And this one was still alive!

In the time it took for me to find a pair of gardening gloves and something to trap the mouse in, the group had moved from the hallway near the kitchen to the stairs going down to the basement.

Judging by the squeaks, the mouse was still alive, so I scooped it up and put it in my big canning pot, put the lid on it, and put it up on the stove – the kittens were unaware of where it was. And there it sat until the hubby came home.

I was reluctant to release it outside because it was pouring rain. But since I really couldn’t keep it inside either . . . I took it to the very back of the yard (it’s a big yard) to where we had a wooden box filled with wood and let it go there. It seemed to be moving okay, if not slowly, and went under the box where it was dry.

And then, of course, I worried about the poor little mouse all by itself in the big, scary world. It’s a good thing we no longer had a rodent sized container for it or I might have been tempted to keep it. They were smaller than the mouse that was trapped earlier in the week. I figure that one was the mother and these two were her offspring – they weren’t full grown and had probably ventured upstairs looking for their mother.

And the moral of the story? I shouldn’t try working in my office when there’s only me and the kittens around because bad things will happen

Snám Suad Form

Well, I couldn’t avoid the Irish verse forms forever, as much as I’d like to. At first glance the Snám Suad (pronounced sNaao Sooud) seems like a simple little poem. It’s only eight lines (an octostich), but don’t let its brevity fool you.

The literal translation of the name is “swimming of the sages” but the meaning is “poetic floating.” It only has 24 syllables to it, 3 per line. Lines 4 and 8 should each be a single, 3-syllable word. The rhyme scheme is: a-a-b-c-d-d-d-c

As well, it should include a dunadh, beginning and ending the poem with the same word, phrase, or line as a kind of refrain. It’s written with cywddydd (harmony of sound) and focuses more on the sounds and images than any particular meaning. If possible, line 7 should use alliteration.

Schematic:

xxa
xxa
xxb
xxc
xxd
xxd
xxd
xxc

I gotta say, this form was a little tricky to write, especially getting the first line and the single word of the last line to correspond. In my last example, the word doesn’t exactly match, but I figure it still fits. And I wasn’t able to work the alliteration in. But most of the examples I saw didn’t have it either.


Summer

the sunlight
is too bright
to my eyes
highlighting
summer green
fresh and clean
perfect scene
sunlighting.


Ice Cream

Soft and sweet
perfect treat
ice cream cone
offering
perfect taste
lactose based
eat with haste
softening


Song

sing your song
sing it strong
sing with pride
fragmentize
with the note
not remote
from your throat
harmonize

Spring Has Sprung

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.
— Mark Twain

When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.
― Ernest Hemingway

Don’t you know what that is? It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!
― Mark Twain

Overnight I went from having to scrape my car off in the morning to hunting up a tee-shirt to wear. The weather has been insanely warm. It’s like we skipped spring altogether and went straight to summer. But I tell you what, it makes me really nervous about how hot it’s going to be when summer does get here.

It’s been warm enough that for the last 3 (or is it 4?) days I’ve had the deck doors open in an attempt to cool the house down. The kittens were really impressed – all the smells they could smell now, and the sounds they could hear . . . Although they weren’t impressed when the guy behind us fired up his wood chipper.

I’d like to say that their craziness lately is due to spring, but I have to admit that they were crazy before the weather turned so nice. When they’re not parkouring through the house, they’re getting into trouble.

For instance. Dinsdale decided that the guest room no longer needed a paper lantern hanging from the closet:

And here he is with his trophy, the piece of lantern he carried downstairs to play with. And no, he is not supposed to be on the table.

And while some people might think it’s cute that one of his favorite games is fetch, it’s not so much fun when you’re trying to read or work on your laptop and he jumps up on the arm of the couch beside you with a toy in his mouth. And then he’ll drop it, and if you’re not quick enough to catch it, it ends up on the floor and you have to set whatever you’re doing aside to pick it up because apparently, once it leaves his mouth he can no longer see it until you throw it. And in the hubby’s case, he’ll usually drop it near his feet and then swat at him when he tries to pick it up.

He’s really not picky when it comes to fetching, though. Sometimes he’ll bring a pompom ball or a crinkle ball, sometimes a spring. Often he’ll bring a crumpled up piece of paper. But his favorite is one of the crocheted bookworms I made them:

The navy blue one he’s carrying is kind of beat up now and is missing part of its tail. Khaos doesn’t fetch, but she does chase after whatever I throw. Unfortunately, the bookworm doesn’t have a lot of weight to it so it doesn’t go very far, so sometimes Dinsdale will pick it up and take the long way around to bring it back to me.

They’re both becoming more independent now. They’ll sleep near each other, but they don’t cuddle up together. And they don’t always have to be where the people are, sometimes they’ll go upstairs to play by themselves and then they’ll fall asleep up there.

But if Dinsdale wants to cuddle, he doesn’t give you much choice. He’ll just drape himself across your lap. But he’s just so darned cute, how can you resist?

Khaos prefers to practice her gymnastics on the cat tree, but she likes to curl up between my legs when I’m in bed, or the bottom of my chair when I have it reclined.

And have you noticed how big they are now? And they’re still growing.

Tripadi Verse form

The Tripadi comes to us from the Bangladesh region of India, originating somewhere in the 10th century. It is written in any number of tercets (three line stanzas). Lines one and two have eight syllables and rhyme with each other, and line three has ten syllables. There is also a less common version where lines one and two have six syllables each (but still rhyme) and the third line has eight syllables.

The verse is considered to be one thought broken up into three lines and can sometimes be found expressed as a single line. However, it is more typically written in tercets, giving the last line of each tercet a little more space and emphasis. There is no theme for the Tripadi, but the structure lends itself to both short and lengthy poems

Schematic:

xxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxxxb

xxxxxxxc
xxxxxxxc
xxxxxxxxxd

... and so on.

I did two examples, one in the traditional 8/8/10 format, and one in the 6/6/8 format, and just for fun did the first one in the single line format as well. I kept wanting to make the last line of each verse rhyme, either with the other two in that verse or the end lines of the following verses. But that would have given us a whole different poem. :-D


Aging

We contemplate the road ahead,
some filled with joy, and some with dread,
but eventually we choose our way.

Our winding path may be easy,
maybe it is slow and breezy,
but pressing on we will find our fortune.

And whether rich or whether poor
the life we lead will account for
how others look upon us when we’re gone.

And when we come unto the end,
when comes the time we must ascend,
we can look back to see where we have gone.


Aging

We contemplate the road ahead, some filled with joy, and some with dread, but eventually we choose our way.
Our winding path may be easy, maybe it is slow and breezy, but pressing on we will find our fortune.
And whether rich or whether poor the life we lead will account for how others look upon us when we’re gone.
And when we come unto the end, when comes the time we must ascend, we can look back to see where we have gone.


The Birds

I see the birds in trees
cheering the summer breeze
and feel their joy that summer’s here.

They flutter, fly away
as they did yesterday
but I know they’ll be back again.

Ercil Verse Form

Over the last few weeks the verse forms I’ve shared have been pretty easy. Today’s form is a bit tougher.

The Ercil form was created by James Gray to honor Ercil Brown, who was the interim poet laureate of Arkansas from 1970 to 1971. For those of you who care about meter labels, the structure is as follows: the verse is a decastich; lines 1 and 5 are dimeter, lines 2, 6, 9, and 10 are trimeter, lines 3 and 7 are tetrameter, and lines 4 and 8 are pentameter.

In English, this means the verse is 10 lines. Lines 1 and 5 are four syllables, lines 2, 6, 9, and 10 are six syllables, lines 3 and 7 are eight syllables, and lines 4 and 8 are ten syllables. The rhyme scheme is a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d-e-e

Still confused? Maybe a schematic will help.

Schematic:

xxxa
xxxxxb
xxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxxxb
xxxc
xxxxxd
xxxxxxxc
xxxxxxxxxd
xxxxxe
xxxxxe

Okay, maybe not. That only leaves an example for clarity. I’m not quite sure I caught the spirit of the meters, but at least I got my syllable counts and rhymes right. I’m not entirely happy with either of my examples, and I don’t think this is a form I’ll be using on a regular basis.


Lost in the dark
a troubled soul calls out.
Their plea is meant to light a spark
to change the world, when kindness is shut out.
Who’s left to hear?
World so short on pity
imbued instead with rage and fear
intolerance and animosity.
The soul cries out in rage
but cannot leave its cage.


The rain will fall,
the sun will shine after,
the flowers begin to grow tall,
and the summer will follow hereafter.
Enjoy the sun
while it’s high in the sky
before the heat and light is done
and we are forced to bid summer goodbye.
For the seasons will turn,
but they always return.

Time to Retire

The joy of crochet is its simplicity: there is only ever one stitch in work & just a few variations of the basic stitches to master, but the possibilities of using & combining those stitches together are endless.
― Erika Knight

Crochet is such a wonderful craft! There are so many facets & variations to explore with a hook & some yarn. The creative possibilities are endless
― Margaret Hubert

Women today want to find ways to relax, but have limited time, and crocheting can be a mental health vitamin that provides that feel good place.
― Alyson Bell

Crochet is not a hobby. It's a post-apocalyptic survival skill.
— Unknown

When the hubby and I signed up for Amazon Prime, I started working on an afghan because I thought I’d be spending more time in front of the TV and a crochet project that isn’t too complicated is a great craft for that.

I found an easy pattern – a ripple crochet using the granny stitch – then I found some yarn at Walmart. It was a nice variegated one, and I figured I could alternate it with stripes of matching solid colours. There were only three problems with my plan.

First, I liked the variegated so much that I decided to do the whole afghan in it. Second, I ran out of yarn when I was about twenty inches along, and Walmart didn’t have any more. And third, I wasn’t glued to the TV nearly as much as I thought I’d be.

*sigh*

I was able to get more yarn online, and though it didn’t match 100%, it was good enough for me. And it took a while, but I did, eventually, finish the afghan, which will forever be known as my Amazon afghan.

A few weeks after that, my mother-in-law’s birthday was coming up. She was in a nursing home and I thought she might like a nice blanket for her bed, so I decided to crochet her one using the same pattern as my Amazon afghan. I checked my stash, and found two packages of yarn – 10 balls of 50 ounces each – one in a cream colour, and one in peach. This will be forever known as the Peaches and Cream afghan.

I’m not sure what happened to that afghan. It was given to her and from what I understand she liked it, but I have no idea if she ever used it. She passed away last year and I’m pretty sure it didn’t come back from the nursing home. It’s not that I want it back, I have plenty of afghans of my own. So it’s fine if it got left behind for someone else to enjoy, it just would have been nice to know where it went.

When I was recovering from my cancer surgery a few years ago, one of the nicest gifts I received was an afghan my sister in New Brunswick sent me. This was during the pandemic, so I wasn’t allowed visitors, but I could wrap myself up in this afghan and feel the love.

So when a friend was diagnosed with cancer and had to undergo chemotherapy, I decided to pay this random act of kindness forward and do an afghan for her. I picked colours I knew she’d like and away I went. It really made me feel good to know it made her feel good.

Then my brother-in-law’s wife was diagnosed with a rather aggressive cancer. Not only did she have to undergo surgery, but radiation and chemotherapy. So once again I got busy with my hook. I chose colours that made me think of her, and actually worked on it a lot during my stitchery meetings.

And a nod must go to the ladies of the Northumberland Hills Stitchery Guild for not letting me end it with the pinky/purple colour I was going to use. Even though it meant I had to leave in the middle of the meeting to go get a different colour. LOL They were right, I was wrong, and I’m very happy with the way it turned out. So was the recipient.

But I have to confess, after four afghans in a row, I was getting a little tired of this pattern. When I finished that last one I figured I’d give crocheting a rest altogether, but it’s still a good project to work on at the stitchery meetings, and it’s easier to do in front of the TV than stitching something.

So I’m probably going to keep on crocheting, but I’m going to find a new pattern. Time for this one to retire.