Unfolding: A Villanelle

Tags

Elaine Stirling, medieval fixed verse, poetry, villanelle

Everything is unfolding perfectly.
What are you doing, arranging your buttons?
There’s so much to love in this vibrant immensity.

Waterfalls, bicycles, fine universities,
smiles, scary films, iguanas, and kittens.
Everything is unfolding perfectly.

And even if not, for the sake of your sanity,
ease up a notch and stop hunting for villains!
There’s so much to love in this vibrant immensity.

Minutes, days, hours, whate’er your propensity,
hold in alignment potential solutions.
Everything is unfolding perfectly.

How much you know & must tell pleases vanity,
a bleak, nasty tutor with deplorable lessons.
There’s so much to love in this vibrant immensity.

See further, think less of the outer cacophony;
bask at the shore of your infinite Rubicons.
Everything is unfolding perfectly.
There’s so much to love in this vibrant immensity!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image, a painting by Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966)
Learn more about the villanelle here.

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Endless You

Tags

Elaine Stirling, light erotica, love poems, romantic verse

The endlessness of you, I wrap
in folds of sable, crush
fresh petals of the tree you smuggled
from Seville and sprinkle them
across our bed. Who says
that nothing rhymes with orange
never kissed the slope of you
or slept exhausted, shutters open,
with their cheek against your thigh
while sycamores, their boughs
outstretched in graceful meter
called Saharan winds to dance.

I find it strange, you said
once with surprise, the love
affair this world has with grief.
Do they not see that love
precedes the lover, always is,
en route and here and flowing
through? What else is there
for us to do but lavish?

In those times between
when afterglow begins to
fade and memories like old
linen crack and yellow, turn
away—toward me! You’ll see
I’m here again and not so differently,
though better. First, a brush against
your nape, a scent—and quickly
then, a silhouette proportioned
in the way you know me best.

Remembering what is to come
proves simpler than it seems. I throw
the windows open to the orange-
scented breeze and hear like distant
castanets the endlessness of you.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Let Go!

Tags

Chant Royal, Elaine Stirling, humourous poetry, medieval fixed verse

A Chant Royal

This day is fresh, you’re born anew, so fling
toward life that lies ahead, awaiting you
with eager arms. Forget the former things
you’ve said and done; there is no cause to stew
unless it’s in a pot with parsnips and
potatoes. Ask no one to understand:
they will or won’t. So what? To wait upon
the maudlin thoughts of others who are gone
into their private mental shacks to sigh
suspends you, and you think you’re all alone.
Let go your futile need to justify.

The nihilist likes to deny; he’ll bring
you to the brink for fun, and when he’s through
he’ll find some other joy to smash. To wing
the speed of life allows you might be blue
now and again, but only so you’ll stand
a little taller, join a brighter band
of light. We’re rainbow’s children, all. The sun
adores and fries us equally. Such fun!
The lonely hearts’ club, darling, is a lie.
Its membership is minus one, plus one.
Let go your futile need to justify.

The pessimist, now there’s a gem! Her ring
of murky moods will smother and undo,
and only then can you be friends. She’ll sing
of pain so beautifully, you’ll think you knew
her deepest needs and plunge you will, a grand
and eloquent swan dive into quicksand.
Once there, you’ll think, such poetry! My wan
and feeble soul laments like Babylon…
Whoo-hoo! The tower fell quite horribly.
Our physics has improved since then, my son.
Let go your futile need to justify.

Neutrality does not exist. That sting
you feel is welcome overstayed. Be true
to those who, when you think of them, can spring
new thoughts of hope and happiness. Imbue
the rest with godhead pre-imagined. Land
on higher ground by choice, and you’ll expand
just like the Universe. It’s all been done
in quantum dance, employed by everyone.
There is no debt, no limits to the pi
we slice. The dice will never come up un-.
Let go your futile need to justify.

The optimist, you are the one with bling
who shines in dark and light. That thing
you do of seeing best, best imitates, ringing
in Creation’s frequencies. Ballyhoo
it might appear to sorry sacks, their bland
retreat and you are not a pair, aband-
on them! You’re under no one else’s gun.
Continue with the capers you’ve begun.
No need to catalogue or prove. Supply
yourself with what uplifts. The past’s undone.
Let go your futile need to justify.

Futility will always seem to some
insurance against falls like Humpty-Dumb.
So let them have their way with gravity,
zigzagging from “I hope so” back to glum.
Let go your futile need to justify.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image from http://www.photobucket.com

Dreaming Gabo

Tags

acrostic sestina, Elaine Stirling, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, homage, Latin American writers, magical realism, medieval fixed verse, poetry

Let us speak of love
Openly in the streets where myth
Vanquishes hard truth, and stories course
Eternally like tendrils of a vine.
I’ll learn again to disregard no dream
Naturally, to avoid reality’s cold hosts.

The gossips crow today of hosts—
How faithful, how devout to godly love,
Excepting fellow man; but in your dream
They flourish, flawed, woven through the myth
In which the hummingbird protects the vine.
Macondo breathes, and soldiers know, of course,

Enemies in politics and sex direct the course
Of every man, while fever born of tropics hosts
Fierce calumnies that twist what is divine.
Ghosts, they coincide us, fleshed by love
And fecund women who secrete pure myth
Between their limbs to fuel the shaman’s dream.

Oh, I’ve no quarrel with the torpid dream;
Grist shines in every form, each course
And rivulet propels Creation’s myth.
But let us tolerate no disappointed hosts
Riven by the tales they tell of wearied love.
Instead, let’s propogate a strong new vine!

Ecstatic, we are labourers of fruit and vine
Laid back in hammocks where the dream
Gathers sinew from the sins of love
And funerals like weddings run their course,
Respiring through the sleepy childhood hosts
Colombia revived in you. This myth

Is universal, plumb. Adopted myth
And native-born, we all grow from the vine
Mysterious and drop our seed where hosts
Act fast to stimulate the better-tasting dream,
Remembering that preference guides our course
Quite ably when we speak perforce of love.

Upending myth, you show me where the dream
Excises from the vine, fermenting new realities whose course,
Zero tolerant of rudeness, hosts exuberant varieties of love.

~~~

An acrostic sestina contains a hidden vertical message, which I’ve made easier to read by capitalizing the first letter of every line. Readers and adorers of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014) will understand the wordplay.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Easter: A Pantoum

Tags

Easter, Elaine Stirling, Malayan form verse, poetry, repeating lines

Pursue the dream and not the dreamer;
she stays out of reach, it must be so.
Release what you have nailed to a tree;
the pagan acts you doubt rebound eternally.

She stays out of reach, it must be so;
relief awaits, and this I vow, your greatest agony.
The pagan acts you doubt rebound eternally;
accommodating crowds will gather either way.

Relief awaits, and this I vow, your greatest agony.
If you don’t resurrect, who will?
Accommodating crowds will gather either way;
the Pilate of your mind retired easily and well.

If you don’t resurrect, who will?
Release what you have nailed to a tree;
the Pilate of your mind retired easily and well.
Pursue the dream and not the dreamer.

~~~

The pantoum is a Malayan verse form, with similarities to the European villanelle and rondeau in its patterns of repetition. I find it works especially well with themes of great intensity.

Happy Easter, everyone!

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Photograph of Arles, France, by author

Partimens are such sweet sorrow: the dialogues

Tags

copla de arte mayor, Dead Edit Redo, dialogue verse, Elaine Stirling, medieval fixed verse, narrative form poetry, octavo, partimen, the Court of Love, The Third Place

The prologue to this piece can be found here.

Round One

From firm amen to firmament, so be it, she
began the discourse known as partimen,
but do not think I shall be ladylike and see
with batty and forgiving eyes the truths you bend
to fabricate and lubricate dumbstruck women.
I was one, I know. The ground is pocked with hidey
holes of those who wish that life could be more tidy,
while secretly they hope you will happen again.

Touché! I thought you’d give me too much credit. Not
enough is better—keeps me hungry, slightly mad
and vengeful. Hidey holes are fine, but not a lot
of fun once scars have healed. For you to think me bad
is easier than to maintain a Galahad.
I like my women small, pretending helplessness,
but only so that I can put off happiness
and float, a former prince, upon this lilypad.

You make me want to croak, said she. What happened to
the fearless knave, enchanting minds and broken hearts?
If not for you, I never would have wandered through
these catacombs to echoes of assembled starts
that went nowhere but could. I would have missed the arts
of time, of rhyme and pulse, the sciences of grace.
Tributes to you are heaped and crammed in every space,
while thieves are making off with who you were in carts.

Round Two

The poet from a slowly moving eddy watched
the poetess and waited for the impulse that
would stir to words that either remedied or botched.
I know I have done both to you, knocked hard and flat
the tenderness you offered. I’m a heartless brat,
but for all that, we are together still. What yearned
in you for me is gone; I see what I have burned.
Why is it hot in here? Who turned the thermostat?

The poetess who always had too much to say
felt planks of certainty break loose and start to drift.
Get back here, you! A partimen, once started, may
not lie unfinished. Someone had to drag and lift
what constancy remained; she could not lose this gift
or him! To no one in particular, she said,
I don’t recall what ejected you from my bed.
My rhythm’s off. I can’t iamb. What is this shift?

The poet wept, but not so that his former love
could see or know what kept them, while embodied, bound.
Fleshless, boneless, he had nothing now left to prove.
I’m here, he said, for what it’s worth. The hallowed ground
you sought I could not be, and what I thought I found
in you seemed easily replaceable. The chase
was all I knew. Outrunning you became the race.
They may find traces of us in some burial mound.

The Arbiter

She walks along the shore, a pocketful of spheres
and dreams that spin above her head in tubular
and spiral shapes. When beauty’s crushed, nothing adheres,
some plaintive voice is telling her in angular
profusions. What we two achieved was jugular
and cruel. Not so, she says. Your ballast holds me here
in this new place where sound precurses poetry
of dialogue from two to three, spectacular!

~~~

This partimen in the 8-line, 12-syllable style of “copla mayor” is dedicated to L.F., glosera.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Partimens are such sweet sorrow

Tags

copla de arte mayor, Elaine Stirling, humourous verse, medieval fixed verse, narrative form poetry, partimen, sonnet

Prologue

Two poets write across the fields of time.
Locked in fierce argument, they know that death
is but a narrowing, a birth, while rhyme,
so many view with merriment, is breath
divine, and metered phrase as solid as
the calfskin boots our roving poet left
beside her bed the night he fled, alas,
into a meteor’s swift path. Bereft,
the poetess whose form so lovingly
did influence our poet learned that he,
though cleft in two, annoyingly
refused to let his poet muse go free.
We’ll write, my love, throughout eternity,
let no sad partings bar my need of thee!

Eight months and twenty years the poetess
wrote on, no charming poet at her side—
or so the populace believed. Much less
could they conceive the famous two were tied
like Janus, facing back and front, one here,
one gone, entangled by resentments that
had fueled both to rise to stratospheres
of passion and comparison, till, splat!
The pull of him she’d ceased to love caused her
to push until her veins o’er pressured, snapped.
Yet, though bodiless, they’d passed no further
than your average warring pair. Patience sapped,
the poetess declared: a partimen
to part us with a binding, firm amen!

The poet, who desired to write again
with fingers and a pen, agreed. What form
shall we adopt to part and justly win
our freedoms back? Rules say we must conform
and speak three times before the arbiter
can judge, and I’m quite over-sonnetized.
Me too, she said. The witty French trouvères
took only eight lines to romanticize;
you decide the rhyme, take all the time you
need, haha! He threw his gauntlet down.
Copla mayor! The rarer scheme we’ll do,
a-b-a-b-b-c-c-b, you clown.
We’ll see who laughs the last and best,
and from each other win much needed rest.

To be continued…

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Tolerance and Street Poetry

Tags

Elaine Stirling, essay, prose poetry

The funny little man sat in the front seat of the bus and talked nonstop to the driver. Most of his teeth were missing and he spoke with an accent, maybe Italian. The man said things like, “Do you know why I know everything, even though I no schooled?” He pounded his forehead with the ball of his hand. “Because God put it all in here.” Then he cackled and gazed out the window, giving us passengers, if we were lucky, three precious seconds of silence.

In between hyperbole: “I’ve had the best life…life’s not easy…no one’s worked harder than me,” the man made outrageous racist comments in the form of life counsel. “Whenever you see XXX people, you can be sure dey have money in their pocket. You think they’re broke, dey always say they are, but they’re not.” Our driver happened to be of that race, but he never once took offense, never pushed back or corrected him. A few times, when the man stumbled over his words, couldn’t get his thoughts out, the driver calmly said, “It’s okay, I’m listening.” The driver said good morning to every new passenger.

The night before, we’d had torrential rains, and the two of them talked about it. “What time did you get home last night?” the driver asked the man.

“Two a.m. I couldn’t get no taxi from the terminal, so I had to walk.”

“You walked in that rain? All the way home?”

The man laughed. “Yeah. It rained like crazy, but I walk like summer.” He gazed out the window and said it again, more slowly.

It rained like crazy.
I walk like summer.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
The evocative image of a bus window comes from http://www.ilovethebus.wordpress.com.

The Last Patch: suburban myth for the fit of heart

Tags

Elaine Stirling, poetry that should not be taken seriously

See that last patch,
sooty-white and wedged
between the trees? It’ll
lead you to the Snow Troll’s
nasty lair, if you don’t have
the common sense to stay
on outta there.

That crick between,
what’s creek to city folk,
holds jellied pods of tad-
faerie, a million thousand
single eyes, assessing how
and when accumulated circles
of intelligence of passersby
with collared dogs or not
might shatter.

All things nonexistent know
the human need to prove
smells like fish and tastes
like chicken. Build your argument,
go ‘head and slap those furthermores
on thick and high enough and just when
you’re about to—Boooom!!! sweet chips
of overestimation rain and tiny perfect
mouths catch every drop.

There is no waste, dear travel
mate, there’s only gain. That other
thing you rhyme with cross and boss
and albatross was dreamed up by
the Snow Troll, first cousin to
Ereshkigal and ilk, who whines
because he thinks his time
is nearly through.

This 12th of April day,
he grumbles still, defending
his last measly patch. Just let
him melt. Earth worms rejoice
and robins hold no truck
with what’s gone past
mythology.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

These Fruitful Years

Tags

Elaine Stirling, form poetry, medieval French fixed verse, rondeau redouble

A Rondeau Redoublé

These fruitful years that lie ahead
are lapping at my feet in waves;
with sweet detail my dreams are led
to more than what the most-of-me now craves.

Perceiving only good around me saves
infinities of drear and dread
from creeping in, and paves
these fruitful years that lie ahead.

To you who say I could be dead
tomorrow, yes! So what? Grave’s
a lead-lined attitude. Levities, well-fed,
are lapping at my feet in waves.

I tell you, friend, that worry shaves
the zest from life, not time; the bread
you taste by day, the shadow saves
with sweet detail, my dreams are led.

Of tragedy we’ve all been bled
and told, tut-tut, she misbehaves!
I turn my cheek to Paradise instead,
to more than what the most-of-me now craves.

Farewell, ye dis-imaginers and slaves
to methodologies that cramp the head
and bruise the heart. Your enclaves
fall behind the proofs that rise and spread
these fruitful years.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014