Dark Connections
Take me to your dark place,
that database within your psyche
where memory has no face,
just vague guilty connection
to obsession,
paranoid delusion,
combining of separate events
meaningful
malevolent
coincidence.
Give voice to fear
peel back the layers,
ride it on through
to the end.
No harm will come
if you harm none.
Ride it through,
until the lesson’s through.
Ride it through.
Now Rattle Your Bones
Shelter upwind from clouded memories,
away from where demons of the past swell,
lurking downwind from future melodies,
straining to hear what only time will tell.
As warm breeze dwindles dead and time stagnates,
past demons rise to play with lost marbles.
Sanity is swindled as mind gyrates
in time to music, offbeat and garbled.
But as wind picks up, bone branches they sway,
rattling dances tenderising gristle,
winding the smell of rancid meat away,
fiend song whittled to faint fetid whistle.
When past demons fade downwind between clouds,
sing a new song loud and dance in the now.
The Battle Between Form and Free Form
How do you decide what form to use when writing a poem? Do you choose a form before you begin to write it? Which is better - free form or form? Where can I learn about the different forms?
You don't really decide on form when writing poetry, it seems to me that the poem decides that for you, which was the case for the two poems above.
Try writing two poems on the same theme. For the first poem, choose the form and then write your first draft. For the second, write your first draft and then look for a form that would suit, editing where necessary. The second way is best in my opinion, but there's always exceptions.
Look at how your draft sits on the page, check for a natural rhythm within the flow of the words and exploit that - it should take little editing and it should never be forced. If you choose the form first and then write the poem you'll probably find that the poem becomes stagnant and unnatural upon re-reading - it should flow off the tongue with the natural rhythms of your language.
Sometimes, no matter how hard you look, you will not find a traditional or modern form that the poem will edit into - if this is the case, then create your own form, re-edit the original draft, cutting out anything that jars with the flow of the poem, check the syllables on each line, let it fall into a rhythm of it's own, it can rhyme if you like, try mid-line rhymes, try no rhymes at all.
You may just create the next popular form in modern poetry, failing that, you may have just written a kick-arse free-form poem.
Play around with form as much as you like - it's your poem. Try taking a traditional form and mutate it into something else. Free form works just as well as form, so the battle would be a dead heat in my opinion.
Experimentation is key.
No comments:
Post a Comment