These are my 3 favorites from the 6 (translation: these are the only ones I think I did right...)
The first is an Elegy (dedicated to the Willie and Martin Handcart Companies)
The second is a Love Poem
and the third is... well... it was supposed to be a Sonnet, but I don't think it really came out that way. See, the teacher had this weird thing where our Sonnets could be free verse instead of rhymed, so I tried that and.... yeah, I think it was too free verse, because there's not much Sonnet-like meter to it. BUT I STILL LIKE IT!!!
So here ya go. Criticism's please! :)
THE FAITHFUL HEART
Here the traveler’s drift
through thick and thin
and hellish grim,
show us what we really are.
Their tale will tell it all.
Consumed by winds
And beaten by toil,
Pursued by wolves,
And devoured by snow
Your continued march
Showed the fangs of death
An impenetrable heart
Compelled by faith
And driven by trust
Humility’s lessons
And conviction’s truth
Beats the pains of skin
Loosening the frozen chains
Of nature’s cruelest rebuke
Who among us now
Comforted in satin sheets
And marvelous décor
Would sacrifice the safest shawl
And tread our ways through
Such a frostbitten peril?
Yet here the sunken faces
And blank expressions
From vibrant souls who once against
This irrational gamble toiled
Are forever laid to rest
At this trail’s end—
Or is it the beginning?
Triumphant over death,
Triumphant over life!
THE TRUTH THAT LOVE KNOWS
Movies show the pictures
And music paints the rhyme.
But reality doesn’t bother—
It’s something we all see in time.
Love knows no such thing!
For immediately she forgets
A singer’s selfless song
And painters’ simplistic vignettes
Love knows something else
For love sees more
To that awful stalwart knight
You so mindlessly adore!
Romantic poems falter
And pathetic plays shall fade
When through the looking glass
You will find you’ve been betrayed!
MY ANGEL’S TATTERED WINGS
Sometimes I may wonder, as I sit in endless sculpture,
What point there is in trying, molding from this lowly clay
This mindless creature, sampled from the slowest dust
Made to replace these thorns and thistles—
Creating something new.
Broken by the wind, and shattered by the light
Epithets engraved on her poor head’s image
And tattered wings bearing my name,
Oh what a hopeless endeavor!
Will anyone look upon my grave,
And with courage declare to friends--
In spite of moss’s growth, and fractured marble stone--
At least this person tried,
More can be said for her than I!
"The Faithful Heart": Vivid imagery. Masterful language in the second stanza--consumed, beaten, pursued, devoured. Sets up a nice juxtaposition for the third stanza--compelled by faith, driven by trust. First stanza: "Hellish grim." It seems like you have an adjective modifying another adjective with no noun. Is it a typo for "grime"?
ReplyDeleteAnd what's the deal with the Tattered Wings "sonnet"? Rhyme scheme is an inflexible ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Meter is an equally inflexible iambic pentameter. At least that's what my high school lit teacher told me. LOL. But she was sixty-five and wore gun metal gray glasses with a brightly beaded lanyard.
- Todd aka Roper from Cumberland Gate
"Hellish grim"--> no it's not a typo, it just felt right writing it that way, but I see your point.
ReplyDeleteHere's the deal with the Sonnet: apparently, the professor didn't care if our sonnets rhymed or not, and the examples he gave us from our Book of Contemporary American poetry were all free verse. So his expectations on the Sonnet were confusing, as went against everything I knew prior about them. I wrote Tattered Wings last, and was absolutely sick of poetry, so by that time I didn't want to bother with meters and such... heh, at least he gives us opportunities to revise them for a better grade!