Six Lanturnes

The LANTURNE is a traditional poetic form which has a five-line verse, normally without rhyme, in the shape of a Japanese lantern.
It has a syllabic pattern of one, two, three, four, one.
Below ,I have composed six loosely connected verses in this form . . .

  Raise
 your voice
 make it ring
don’t let it die
   sing

Vows
last long
when new but
promises  soon
   die

  Love
  yields hope
 but time tells
and soon it dies
    hurt

    Life
 brings joy
But  sorrow
Intrudes too soon
    … Damn!

 I
alas
will die soon
leaving this life
  hurts

Cry
and ask
this fool world
to  forgive  your
    tears

To Absent Friends

TO ABSENT FRIENDS

As the distended rollers break
Upon that ocean shore
I think of all the hearts that beat
But now will beat no more.

Friends who were once so close to me
Whose lives with me were one
Who now have lost their lust for life
Lost it, and have gone.

Sadness is no gift to sorrow
But memories linger on
It’s when I watch the ocean’s waves
It’s them I think upon.

Why this should be I do not know
For me there’s no release
It is the breathing of the waves
Confirms our own will cease.

Perhaps it is their constancy,
Their never ending thrust
Confirms our own ephemeral lives
Will end soon, as they must.

Another Place -2

A Devilish Dream

Photo by Cxpturing Souls on Pexels.com

Yes, I danced with the devil in my dream,
And I dallied with my demons as I slept;
Or was it you, my tender love,
Was it thoughts of you and me,
That salted all my tears as I wept?

For the bitterness, the gall which I have felt,
Brought me memories of life before I cried,
Turned my sourness to sorrow,
Lulled my aches until tomorrow, 
Lent me strength to face the future mollified.

Now, since I awoke, I’ve known an emptiness,
A sense of having missed that magic time,
When love was oh so sweet,
Our happiness was complete,
And that good night was always quite sublime.

 

In The Here And Now

Photo by Ikhsan Sugiarto on Pexels.com

REMEMBER: . . . Tomorrow was Today Yesterday!

Yesterday
Has passed away;
Tomorrow is yet to be’
So let Today
In every way
Be the best of three.

For when it’s gone
Remember well,
Never comes Tomorrow;
So live your life
In the here and now,
There’ll be time enough for sorrow.

On Incarceration

Photo by Donald Tong on Pexels.com

Now shackled by government edict.
Banned from life’s open air,
No more a future to predict,
No more a life I can share.

Sent to my room to protect me,
Locked in my cage like a bird,
Yesterday only a memory,
Tomorrow has now been deferred.

Those plans I had for tomorrow,
Expectations I’d promised to meet,
Turned into today’s plangent sorrow
As into my shell I retreat.

As Touch becomes a scabrous word,
And washing hands a must,
My world’s become absurd,
As I’ve become nonplussed.

 

No Regrets

 

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Let me kick my regrets into the long grass,
Let me mark an end to my sorrow.
The pain that I bore
Let it fade away,
Bring back my life from tomorrow.

The love that we shared it still will remain,
The times we were close will not wither.
The hopes that we had,
The love that we shared,
The pains that we bore together.

Our dreams may have faded without being fulfilled,
Along with the hopes that we cherished,
But what has remained
Has carried us through,
It’s our dreams not our love that have perished.

Till The World Ends

Detail of a Dante Gabriel Rossetti painting, modelled by his wife, Elizabeth Siddal

PROMISE TO A LOST LOVE

As the pull of the moon
And the push of the wind
Cause the waves to break on the shore,

So the lure of your face
And the pulse of your heart
Will ever my lifeblood restore.

Till the tides end their flow
And the breeze ceases motion
I vow it’s just you I’ll adore

For when the end comes
And I’m covered in earth
I’ll be with you for time evermore.

 

William Blake – ‘On Another’s Sorrow’

This poem, in its first published form is by the English poet and painter, William Blake (1757-1827).   Blake was not highly recognised during his lifetime but is now regarded as a leading poet and painter of the Romantic Period.   As an important printmaker, Blake, as he did for many others of his poems, produced the decoration himself.  The poem discusses human and divine understanding and compassion. It was first published in 1789 as the last song in the ‘Songs of Innocence’ section, part of the collection ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience’. 

ON PARTING . . . Three Rondelets

   

The RONDELET   is a poetic form originating in France.  It consists of a single septet (7 lines) with just two rhymes and one repeating refrain, in the fom of: AbAabbA.  (The capital letters represent the repeats. The 3 refrains (A) are written in tetra-syllabic (dimeter) and the other lines are twice as long, these being octasyllabic (tetrameter).

Below I print three of my attempts at constructing a RONDELET – all on the subject of ‘PARTING’ . . .

Scanned image by Philip V.Allingham of a wood engraving by Dalziel at: http://www.thevictorianweb.org

ON PARTING … 1 

Tell me to go
I know at last that we are through
Tell me to go
 The damage is to all on show
 And time is up for me and you
Better move on to pastures new
Tell me to go

ON PARTING … 2

But now we part
I know I’ll miss your every kiss
But now we part
The hurt has caused my broken heart
I am not given to reminisce
But your embrace I know I’ll miss
But now we part

ON PARTING … 3

(A similar form, but not strictly a Rondelet, the lines of the refrain being in trimeter ! )

Love me or let me go
The hurt is more than I can bear
Love me or let me go
Stop dealing me that parting blow
You tease and tempt my heart to ensnare
Without a thought to commit or share
Love me or let me go

 

The description, with examples, of this poetic form can be found on the :
  ‘Shadow Poetry’  website