Dorsimbra

I love word puzzles. You can keep your Sudoku and your "If two trains leave the station traveling at 50 mph when do they collide in a mass of twisted steel?"

Give me a crossword puzzle or an episode of Sunday Puzzler  and I'm as happy as a lark.

Introduce me to an imperious poem format, playing hard-to-get, and I'm a goner.

Add a juicy prompt to that cock-sure poetic form and I lose the ability to focus on anything other than Solving the Word Mystery. It's like trying to keep Velma Dinkley away from a Haunted House. It can't be done.

So imagine my nerdy rapture when I found the perfect haughty form and an irresistible prompt in the same week.

The poem format is the Dorsimbra and  was created by three lovely, I'm sure, masochists - Eve Braden, Frieda Dorris and Robert Simonton - either on a bet or after a long night of sitting too near a simmering batch of meth. It is a 12-line prose poem incorporating blank verse, free verse, envelope verse and Sicilian Quatrain.

First 4-line stanza: Iambic Pentameter, rhyming ABAB
Second 4-line stanza: Free Verse
Third 4-line stanza: Blank Verse

Oh, and the 12th line should repeat the first line, and it should all make perfect, seamless sense.

The prompt came from the tremendously talented organizers of a local spoken word group, Boxcar Voices. The theme of their October performance was "Murder. Macabre."

Who, I ask you, can resist a word like Macabre?

The following poem is the result of Dorsimbra + Macabre. Please be gentle as she is a work in progress. The last stanza needs to be reengineered so as to repeat the first line, but I was working on a deadline and nailing the iambic pentameter was all I could manage.

Danse Macabre

The Angel of Death so light on his feet
begs of you one dance on this your last night.
You draw a last breath and rise from your seat
enthralled, entranced, moving toward his dark light.

Beneath a chandelier of skulls he takes your hand
shakes back a velvet sleeve and pulls you near.
As he spins your fragile form in a waltz across the floor
other specters, in respect, step aside.

When, at last, thoracic music ceases
your pensive partner bows to brush pale lips
and takes away so gently carnal life
leaving your soul to cross the river Styx.
Copyright RighteousPolka 2012 

A note to Amy and Fabs (aka the only people who read this blog, and I'm fine with that): November is NaBloPoMo and I will endeavor to post an interesting (not original) poem every day for 30 days. Meh, I may throw in something hand-crafted. Maybe a random haiku? We'll see - stay tuned.

Because I'm Bad, I'm Bad, You Know It

In my tireless search for all things poetically accesible I discovered yesterday was National Bad Poetry Day.

How did I hear about this, but you didn't? You must not follow @PeeWeeHerman.

That's right, Pee-Wee gave it a shout out. And you thought there was nothing left to be learned from the man who taught you to dance on a bar and win any argument. Silly reader.

We could debate what defines bad poetry, but that's like arguing about the definition of Art. If after 95 years we're still disagreeing over an autographed urinal, what hope is there that I can even begin to address good and bad in this blog?

Good is in the eye of the beholder and fundamentally bad poetry has a special place in my heart - because I don't know how to write any other kind.

My first attempt at prose is easily among the worst ever written. But when you are ten years old and staring out the window at a darkening sky - you notice the wind picking up before a storm and birds flying their feathers off trying to get to cover - and a rhyme pops into your head for the first time in your Smurf-centric life, it's startling.

The wind blows

The trees sway

Birds fly

It's nature's way.

Profound, yes?
Well...no. But the important thing, to me, is that I remember exactly where I was, what the sky looked like, how I jumped off the couch and dug through my dad's desk for a pen and paper, and documented my first rhyme-y thought.

Maybe your most vivid childhood memory is of learning to ride a bike or ice skate or hold your breath under water. Two of the most crystal-clear High Definition memories of mine are reading a book, cover-to-cover, on my own for the first time  (Hop on Pop) and writing that poem.

So in honor of National Bad Poetry Day I give you what is considered, by several sources, to be the worst poem ever written.

It's so bad, it's actually likable.

A Tragedy by Theophile Marzials

Death!
Plop.
The barges down in the river flop.
Flop, plop,
Above, beneath.
From the slimy branches the grey drips drop...
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop...
And my head shrieks - "Stop"
And my heart shrieks - "Die."...
Ugh! yet I knew - I knew
If a woman is false can a friend by true?
It was only a lie from beginning to end--
My Devil - My "friend."...
So what do I care,
And my head is empty as air -
I can do,
I can dare
(Plop, plop
The barges flop
Drip, drop.)
I can dare, I can dare!
And let myself all run away with my head
And stop.
Drop
Dead.
Plop, flop,
Plop.