Moving Day Dreams

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a bit of silliness, Elaine Stirling, Malayan fixed verse, pantoum, poetry for fun

I’m pretty sure I dreamed of a palm tree plantation
hand in hand with Merwin or maybe Gauguin
where words swell on trees like ripening citrus
rhyming lolls in hammocks with white cardboard fans

hand in hand with Merwin or maybe Gauguin
a giant yellow cat with eyes like Branwell Brontë
rhyming lolls in hammocks with white cardboard fans
warns me not to set fire to his bed again

a giant yellow cat with eyes like Branwell Brontë
knowing how much I’ve already discarded
warns me not to set fire to his bed again
I assure him that caves are too wet to burn

knowing how much I’ve already discarded
where words swell on trees like ripening citrus
I assure him that caves are too wet to burn
I’m pretty sure I dreamed of a palm tree plantation

~~~

with thanks to JC for the inspiration

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

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Love Your Villain Like You Know Him

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a bit of silliness, characterization, Elaine Stirling, Halloween verse, poetry for fun and learning, villainy, writer's craft

This is more an exercise in characterization than a poem. If writ in prose, it would sound campy, and I hope it still does. For thousands of years, probably longer, rhetoric, prose, and poetry lived together in the same fine house. Delivery was what mattered, and flow—and perhaps, one’s table manners. Somewhere, I believe, they still cohabit.

I lurk
in shadowed
porticoes
in fear
my outcry splendid
in its firework
might reach
some ear, and
frozen by its
opposite,
that no sound
from my
orchestrated
anguish will be
heard—but if
it is…aah, if it is,
and if the Earth
brought to her
knees in dazzlement
by my fine argument
agreed to crack the
bones of those whose
tyranny I am so certain
of—what if they all,
of sudden, turned,
those men of might,
those women of
sagacity, and in
their final groveling
moments that they so
deserve they saw that
it was me who singled
out their villainy?

I would
be doomed.
I am already
doomed for having
wished the ones I
fear a ghastly end.
I bring ten-fold dark
curses on my head
and so I lurk…
and let you think
that I’m a jerk.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

Neighbours: A Creepy Little Horror Poem

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a bit of silliness, Elaine Stirling, eleven syllable lines, hendecasyllabic, humour, minding one's business, my crush on Alfred Hitchcock, nosiness, parody, perception, poetic justice, poetry

Those people that keep to themselves, curtains drawn,
have you seen? Never say where they go when they
smile, say hello. Something funny going on,
you can tell ‘cause he walks slow and sneaky, way
after dark, doesn’t smoke—what’s the point? He should
stay in the house, it’s not safe in the park, and
the woman, her arms black and blue with tattoos
so the bruises won’t show, mark my words! No good
ever comes when you let loose your guard. A hand
will reach in, snatch it all. Don’t sing me the blues
when your house crashes down. You heard it here first!
…
Ka-ta-boom!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image from the 1954 Hitchcock film, “Rear Window”