Four Poems
Hello friends,
Four poems this week. Enjoy! (And if you do, please consider supporting my work by purchasing either my omnibus edition Knit Ink (and Other Poems) or something from my store.)
Alternatively, buy me a coffee on Ko-Fi!
IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (Anagrammed Lines)
It came from outer space ā
a comet of imp creatures;
a curse of meteor impact ā
to permute a cosmic fear,
to cap our mesmeric fate...THE JOURNEY (Palindrome)
Dew.
A field in alpine dales.
I rise, laden.
I plan.
Idle, if awed.PHANTOMS (Abecedarian)
A
bedroom
candle
dims.
Each
flicker
gradually
halves
its
jewel,
killing
light.
Murky
night
obliges
phantoms;
quiets,
revealing
spirits.
The
unravel ā
veiled
with
xenogenesis;
yearning
zealously.GHOSTS (Reverse Abecedarian)
Zephyrs
yawn
xanthic
wraiths,
vestiges
upon
the
stairs.
Rising
quietly,
phantoms
overburden
nascent
moonlight.
Looming
kinsmen
journey
into
hallways.
Ghosts
flood
every
dusty
cellar,
bedroom,
attic....
I like these, thank you š I hadn't heard of an abecedarian before š
The pairing of PHANTOMS and GHOSTS is doing something I really love ā one moves forward through the alphabet (AāZ), the other retreats backward (ZāA). It mirrors how we experience hauntings: the gradual approach, then the fading away.
And structurally, both poems feel like incantations. The abecedarian form has this ritual quality to it, like you're invoking something letter by letter. The constraint becomes the spell.
Also: "xenogenesis" in PHANTOMS is such a perfect word for that position in the alphabet. Ghosts as alien birth ā something emerging from nothing familiar.