Cricket, Love & Easter

Three RICTAMETERS

A Rictameter is a fixed-syllabic poetry form, similar to the Haiku and the Cinquain   ( Click here See my own cinquain in an earlier blog.  ).  The rictameter starts with a two-syllable word as the first line.  Then the line length in syllables is consecutively increased by two, i.e. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10.  Then down again, from 8, 6, 4, 2.   The final of the 9 lines is required to be the same two syllable word as in the opening line.

The format was created in the early 1990s by two cousins, Jason Wilkins and Richard Lunsford, for a poetry contest that was held as a weekly practice of their self-invented order, ‘The Brotherhood of the Amarantos Mystery’, which was apparently inspired by the Robin Williams film ‘Dead Poet’s Society’.

I have attempted three versions of this format below . . .

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CRICKET

Cricket
Keep a straight bat
All that they throw at you
Face up to it with fortitude
Don’t be average be an all-rounder
And when it’s time to pull up stumps
Try to carry your bat
Don’t declare, that’s
Cricket.

LOVE

Love hurts
It burns the soul
From lust to jealousy
It does not let up from that pain
So put alongside with its times of bliss
The memories of anguished dread
When all seemed to be dead
All reason says
Love hurts.

EASTER

Absolve
The human race
Release them from their sins
Forgive them their indiscretions
Instead torment me on that cruel cross
That I might thus remind them all
That God our father loves
And all our sins
Absolves.

• – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Telling Fibs

Fibonacci poetry, or FIB VERSE, was founded by Gregory K. Pincus as a 6-line poem that follows the Fibonacci sequence for syllable count per line.
For the 6-line poem that means:

1 syllable for first line
1 syllable for second line
2 syllables for third
3 syllables for fourth
5 syllables for fifth
8 syllables for sixth

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Here are two examples of my own attempts to compose FIB VERSE . . .

( I have published previous examples of FIB VERSE which you can find by typing ‘Fibs’ into the SEARCH BAR on this blog’ )

TELLING FIBS . . .  #1. FUN

I
Me
We are
Full of fun
Trying new verse forms
Why not join me and attempt this?

TELLING FIBS … #2. TOGETHERNESS

Yes
We
Belong
Together
Forever a pair
Our destiny coupled in love

Lustic Limerick #1

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Over the next ten weekdays I give you…

A Limerick every other day
To keep my Covid Blues away …

There once was a beautiful couple,
Who did press-ups to keep themselves supple.
She said “Look in my eyes”,
He said “I love those big thighs”.
He was clever but not very subtle!

 

Today’s Door

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Today’s Door

Stir Your stumps
Get up and do it
Let not langour win
Life is swiftly passing by
Get up and face its din.

For every moment
Spent in bed
Is one less passed in living
Be up and face what life will bring
Conquer your misgivings

Today  might well
Be just the one
When all your dreams are met
When life and love meet happiness
If that’s not happened yet.

And if it’s not
What have you lost
You didn’t have before
At very least you’ll soon discover
What hides behind day’s door.

 

Your World Or Mine?

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The world in which you live is not my world,
Close as we intermingle when we meet.
However much I try to understand,
The gap between us still is bitter-sweet.

It holds its mysteries which I cannot breach,
Try as I always do to understand.
Your loves, your passions, seem to me as strange
As some unfathomed febrile wonderland.

But when I hold you in my midnight thoughts,
When dreams replace that cold reality,
It is as though we are completely one,
How trivial, how petty, our disparity.

 

Friday – ‘Cometh The Hour’

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An aphorism for each day, keeps the doctor away. Each day this week I am offering a common aphorism, just slightly embellished – for good or ill.

 

 

Cometh the hour, cometh the man;

I hope he’s waiting in the wings.

Our world most surely needs him now,

Someone who love and wellness brings.

 

Thursday – ‘Loved And Lost’

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An aphorism for each day, keeps the doctor away. Each day this week I am offering a common aphorism, just slightly embellished – for good or ill.

 

 

‘Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all;

Believe that if you will, my dears,

For me, I try to tell myself,

Better that I count the cost

Of all those ties which brought me tears.

 

 

A Pi-Ku for Pi-Day

Tomorrow, 14^th March, is Pi Day.  It has become an occasion for the annual celebration of the mathematical constant π (pi).  It is also the birthday of Albert Einstein in – actually in 1879.

Based on the Japanese POETIC FORM of the HAIKU, where the 3 lines have syllable counts of 5,7,5, a new poetic form has in recent years been designed of the PI-Ku.

In a Pi-Ku each line of the poem has, in sequence, the number of syllables in the never-ending number — pi   –  that mysterious mathematical relationship between a circle’s diameter and its circumference . . .

π  =  3.14159265 35897932384626433832795028841971693993751058 . . .

In its basic form the Pi-ku will normally have just 3 lines – of 3, 1, and 4 syllables. However, as a development of this, it is possible to extend the number of lines with syllables following the Pi sequence, stopping wherever it is wished. To continue for ever would be a somewhat tedious exercise!

With a pi-ku, therefore, the first line has three syllables, the second line one syllable, and the third line has four syllables. Although without formal punctuation, each line should end in a terminal caesura which helps to retain the sense of the poem’s content. There is no specification on the subject matter.

For those interested, a web search for ‘Pi Day’ and/or ‘Pi-ku’ will give more ideas and examples.

I give two 9-line (3.14159265) attempts of my own at this exercise below . . .

Consider
Think
Let us compose
Now
Some poetic lines
Ones which clearly convey their meaning
To all
Setting out the purpose
Of this exercise

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Talk to me
Speak
In your own words
Now
I want to hear you
Spilling your everyday musings
To me
So that I may reflect
On what our love means

Two Word Tales: #3

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Two words

‘With Love’

I lived

That gift

 

My ‘Two Word’ Verses

Throughout this week, I shall publish each day one of a series of short verses which, together, by the end of the week, will have told a story. 

 

Reverie #5: On Birth

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I remember Birth . . .

Warm womb,
emerging
into cold January,
suckled and succoured
into the life
and death 
of a warring world.

Heedless 
of pain 
of worry,
my unconsciousness
nestled in love,
cocooned in blessings,
future undetermined
but on course for
the perdition of
being ordinary.

One more mouth
to be fed,
one more life to be led;
another census tick.
Reconstituted dust
become bone,
flesh and vital blood,
to be both burden
and blessing. 

Only now,
a life lived,
aware that it is
irrecoverable
here to be forgotten.

Until resurrected
in whatever next there may be.