Three Poems

Hello friends,

It’s now less than two weeks until the publication of THE ROBOTS OF BABYLON, my new collection of constrained, formal poetry. It’s a book full of newly invented constraints, old constraints, and variations on traditional forms — a 104-page, full-colour hardback or paperback, currently pre-orderable from both PenteractPress.com and AnthonyEtherin.com. Please consider picking up a copy!

Three different types of sonnet this week — enjoy!

SONNET FUEL 
(Dimeter Shakespearean Sonnet, Anagrammed Lines)

To rule, sent fine,
I turn one's fleet.
Feet run to lines.
Lines run to feet....

Note, fluent sire!
Flee not its rune.
Tune stolen fire.
Fire stolen tune.

Turn: Lone, see fit:
Enlist fourteen —
seen fortune lit,
lit fortune seen.

Fit one sent rule:
Tier sonnet fuel.

---

EUREKA (Monometer Petrarchan Sonnet)

Untaught,
it hits
the wits
from nought,
and, caught
in fits,
admits
those thoughts
the schemes
of youth
concealed —
to dream
a truth
revealed.

---

DANCERS AFTER DARK
(Pentameter Shakespearean Sonnet - Bivocalism, Alternating A & E)

A fearless darkness wakes arenas dead:
The pale and dear departed dancers pass
the graves that seal them. Lanterns blaze ahead.
The garden takes a breath. Death treads the grass.

The dancers dance as dreamers taste a dream
recalled: a meagre pattern scrawled — made fate.
As heavens waltz, the garden frames a stream:
entangled hazes faded hands create.

Lament attends a theatre after dark.
Weak heartbeats, less an extant flesh and helm,
are warmed at death’s exaggerated mark....
We dancers dance, abreast the lake and elm.

That wreath, the darkness, asks we stand, redrawn,
then fall, the spark erased at beaded dawn.