Four Poems

Hello friends,

Four poems this time, from four different constraints — and the final two poems are brand new! Enjoy! (And if you do, please consider supporting my work by purchasing my latest book The Robots of Babylon.)

A REGAL BAR (Palindrome)

Regal.
A bar.
Gin is evil.

“O, to help 
martini gin,
I trample 
hot olives in.”

I grab a lager.

---

PERMUTATIONS (Anagrammed Lines)

Atoms erupt in
mutant prose. I
turn a poem — its
matter is upon
me, to trap us in
utopian terms….

At resumption,
I must open art,
or input a stem
torn up as time —
use important
permutations....

---

These final two poems were inspired by the medieval Welsh legend of The Red Dragon and the White Dragon. The legend sees the Red Dragon (representing the Britons/Welsh) fighting and eventually overcoming the White Dragon (representing Anglo-Saxon invaders).

The lines of the following sestet (scheme AABCBC) are homovocalic — they use the same vowels, in the same order, while varying consonants:

WHITE AND RED (Homovocalic Lines)

England. Storied Wales.
The shadow hills. The dales.
The Saxons spin the angles.
Celt arrows slice and shred.
The talons’ mist entangles
the dragons white and red.

---

This final poem uses a palindromic variant on the cynghanedd, a Welsh style of sound patterning / alliterative verse. The poem is a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic tetrameter. The lines of the poem feature caesurae — with the consonants of the first half-line reversed in the second half-line.

In other words, each line is a consonant-only palindrome (with its caesura acting as a ‘mirror’ for the consonants).

THE TWO DRAGONS

A dragon rose:   a soaring red
the age of time.    I aim to fight
a duel tonight.    The giant led
the wing.... Our due,    a dragon white,
emerged untrue —    irate and grim.

Our redder beast —    its braided roar
a mad, hot doom,    amid the dim —
arose to sear,    arose to soar....

A talon tore — irate, in late —
the wing. Red hit.    The dragon white
ate fiery light.    The guile! Or fate:
the gaunt in gown,   now gone to night.

Red dragon, ward.    Drawn, guard a door.
Roam reveries.    Soar — evermore.