Trisect

The following desription is reposted with permission from Form and Formlessness, with thanks to Erin A. Thomas, who also writes on Allpoetry as Zahhar.

My 1st trisect poem. The trisect is my own semantically complex poetic form which I will use to help me with developing my use of depictive language.

E merge nce


Fortress

walls of paper kept the world at bay
cubes of indistinction none would see
where settled there within a watcher peered

the dusty brown a perfect camouflage
propped against a wall or by a hedge
passed a thousand times by reckless feet

corrugated fibers held the wind
so that the space inside was made to form
a child’s island haven from the storm

sometimes it was a spaceship among the stars
sometimes a moon-base on a barren scape
sometimes a roving tank all battle-scarred
but always it provided safe escape


Goliath

shaped from molten vats of ore
molded by a burning greed
riveted with violent force
pieces merge to fill a need

manifest from heavy silence
oils surge and slowly drip
uncertainty across the roads

power charges through its frame
explosions channeled in its chest
to serve a senseless master’s will

tires grind an alley’s dirt
shadows steer a ghostly wheel
the phantom grill athirst for blood


Impact

black lightning strikes the living clay
evaporating life from every limb
suspending consciousness alone
void of breath yet interfused with fear

tires spin throughout the dark
an engine roars above a twisted neck
inches from a lifeless face
psychic tethers anchored in vibration

a heedless monster lumbers back
the shelter shattered open like a nest
blood resumes its former course
and wild bones reanimate the flesh

a figure stands and staggers numb with pain
screams and scampers filled with terror
headlights rear and fade away
a child’s bones left fractured like his mind


The first segment focuses on cardboard. I used to create cardboard forts when I was a child—sometimes very elaborate—and hang out in them all day long. Some of them would be portable, and some would be built in vacant lots or alleyways blocks or miles from home. They were always very well camouflaged, so my little hideout would remain my little hideout. The portable ones I’d often setup at the edge of a busy parking lot, made to look like a pile of scrap cardboard, where I’d hang out and just watch people without them knowing. These simple forts were a safe haven for me, a private place to go and be away from troubles and worries. And I had my share.

The second segment focuses on the automobile, the car. I remember reading up on their manufacturing process and design, and the primary materials used in their construction, before starting this segment.

The third segment focuses on a little mishap I had in one of those cardboard forts as a 14 year old, which involved a car. It was in an alleyway a few blocks from home. City blocks. Los Angeles City blocks. About a mile away at least. I had some big fight with my mother that day and decided I’d just have my own space that night in a cardboard fort I and a friend had built a day or two before. It was a beautiful fort, with four separate compartments, each of which were big enough to lay out flat in. The whole thing was masterfully camouflaged with various sorts of debris from the area, including dead palm branches and branches of other sorts. In the end it looked like a slash pile, just a bunch of branches and other random materials tossed into a pile—but it was hollow, and there were access points.

That night as I slept a car slammed into the fort and ran over my right arm, shoulder, and neck, breaking the upper arm longways from near the elbow across to the top near the ball socket, and blew a piece out of the ball socket itself. My neck was severely sprained—which is of course a miracle. It was possible to make out the tire treads on my throat. How I happened to be aligned such that the tire didn’t snap my head one way and pop my skull off the spine like a bottle opener I have no idea.

This was my first NDE. I have no way to prove it, but I just know. I know what I experienced, and I was dead for at least a moment—and a moment is long enough to be dead. Sometime I’ll dedicate some poetry and discussion to that experience. But as I “returned”, after the car had somehow managed to back up off me without running over my neck a second time, I sprang up in a panic, and it came toward me again, then stopped, then backed all the way down the alley and around the far corner, as if in a mad rush to escape affiliation with the mishap. I’ll never forget the sight of those headlights.

I was near a series of hotels. And each time I knocked, with my left arm since right wouldn’t respond, the owners would come to the door and I’d ask for help and they’d slam the door on me. It sucked. In this manner I ended up up making my way half a mile to an apartment complex my mom had lived in a year or so before, where some people knew me, and an ambulance was called.

Ethnographic Haiku

Ethnographic Haiku: 7 stanzas. Syllable Count: 5-7-5
Relationship of particular subject or community with the environment.
Evoke at least 3 of the 5 senses ( touch, taste, smell, hearing, sight ).
Each stanza symbolic of one day with the entire poem representing a full week in the life of your particular subject community.

Poetry Caching in Spring

A realtor box
with free poems staked in yard
awaits visitors

Some walkers pick up
poems, thinking house for sale
crumble, toss poems

Rain seeps in the box
dribbles down smudging pages
Sun will curdle them

Walkers sit on wall
resting, reading poems, put
in backpacks or hands

Yanked up by the stake
to mow lawn, rests on trash cans
near camellias

Hail pelts plastic
casing, white as snow, soft ping
droned out by traffic

Stick-on, raised letters
offer poetry to all
who come to pass by

http://www.rainbowcommunications.org/velvet/forms/
My Thanks to Linda Varsell Smith for her contributions above.

Note: The form is Titled, and apparently punctuation is optional.

Pun-Ku

I would like to add still another new poetic form which I call the PUN-KU. Here are the requirements for writing one.
(1)    Unlike the haiku that allows for a less than strict adherence to the 17-syllable rule, the pun-ku must be exactly 17 syllables long. 
(2)    It contains only four (4) lines arranged syllabically as follows:
Line 1: 4 syllables     Line 2:  5 syllables      Line 3:  4 syllables    Line 4:  4 syllables
(3)    As for the end-rhyme pattern, Lines 1 and 2 do not rhyme. Lines 3 and 4 do.
(4)    The pun-ku must contain a pun on one or more of the words used in the poem.  The subject matter deals with human nature, is light, humorous, or witty.
(5)   The title of the pun-ku can only be one- or two-words long (or short).
Here are two of my pun-ku for examples.

LOVE’S MYSTERY
nothing is more
paradoxical
around these parts
than two cleaved hearts
#

TIMBER
strong lumberjacks
locate forest trees
then saw their bark
despite the dark 
#
In the first example, the pun is on the word “cleaved,” which has two opposite meanings: “to cling together” and “to split apart.” In the second example, the pun is on the word “saw,” which can be defined as “a tool for cutting” and “the past tense of the verb ‘to see.’ “
You might have fun writing a few pun-ku of your own!

Pasted from http://salbuttaci.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-is-pun-ku.html

Specifications re-stated
The Pun-Ku is:
A poem of 4 lines, created by Sal Buttaci
Syllabic: 4/5/4/4
Rhymed: xxaa
Formulaic: Must contain a pun on one or more of the words
Titled: Title must be ONE or TWO words.

My example

One Pail (Pun-ku)

He volunteered
though Jill was fetching
when up the hill
Jack went with Jill.

© Lawrencealot – October 25, 2014

Mirror Cinquain

  • The Mirror Cinquain is:
    • decastich (a poem of 10 lines)
    • syllabic, 2/4/6/8/2/2/8/6/4/2 syllables per line.
    • unrhymed.
    • titled.
This is a mixture of the standard Cinquain and a Reverse Cinquain. Basically a standard followed by a reversed.
So, using the usual syllable counting convention, a mirror cinquain = 2,4,6,8,2 blank line 2,8,6,4,2 syllables. This pattern repeats for longer mirror sequences.
 
Example Poem
 
Soulful Husbandry    (Mirror Cinquain)
Two wolves
lives in each of
us to make us what we
are, though we train them how to serve
our goals.
They both
compete to make us what we are.
So train them well and choose
the wolf that you
will feed.
© Lawrencealot – February 20, 2014