CaPoWriMo Poem #4: A villanelle

The villanelle seems fairly villainous at first, when you see the structure. The first and third lines of the first stanza are rhyming refrains that alternate as the third line in each successive stanza and form a couplet at the close. A villanelle is nineteen lines long, consisting of five tercets and one concluding quatrain. Whew!
But it's a fantastic form. Because of the refrain, it is very song-like. It affords great sorrow and, I suspect, great joy. You won't believe which of the two I picked. Here's my CapoWriMo poem #4.

An Ordinary Villanelle

Today has been a good day:
The earth went 'round the sun,
You smiled from the photo frame.

I wrote seven mails at work,
Barely talked to anyone,
The earth went 'round the sun.

I cooked dinner for one
And watched the game, your game.
You smiled from the photo frame.

I didn't say anything clever,
I didn't even pun.
The earth went 'round the sun.

I went to sleep in silence
And woke up calling your name.
You smiled from the photo frame.

Tomorrow when I wake up
Today will seem the same:
The earth went 'round the sun,
You smiled from the photo frame.

CaPoWriMo Poem 3: A cinquain

Yesterday, it was as if every creep in Bangalore was on the street. I wrote them all a cinquain, my third CaPoWriMo poem. I like the 22-syllable format. It allows for really crisp and cutting verse: my favourite kind. (For more about CaPoWriMo, go here.

Matter Over Mind Cinquain

Her mind
was filled with spite,
Her heart as black as night;
She was, he thought, a vicious blight.
Nice tits.

Poem 2 - A sonnet

This one is a slightly messed-up Shakespearean sonnet. It's in iambic pentameter alright, but entirely in rhyming couplets. Not in alternating rhyme scheme (a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, etc.), as the conventional Shakespearean sonnet is. The subject matter is, however, Shakespearean. Provided Bill was in a bar in South India.

Which pillage they with merry march bring chome

You are a pretty man inside a bar.
No matter what you say, that's what you are.
Your problem is that you expect much more
Of your mind, but love, know this for sure:
Your dwindling intellect doth have a cure.
Come now, sweet ass, that's what your face is for!
Let not the politics of life furrow
Your hitherto unperturbed perfect brow.
Leave you the world's affairs to lesser Men
Your chest hair will out-do the mighty pen.
You may not win a national debate,
And you will always get the joke too late.

But let this truth forever set you free:
Your face is your best friend, DL2C.

Poem 1 - Haiku

CaPoWriMo is back this April to make us all (okay, just me) write a poem a day. If you don't know how this works, check this out. I'm going to give it a shot this time, and try and write a poem a day.

Day 1 is haiku day. So here's my April 1st haiku.

Summer Sunday Haiku

Hefty gecko's tail;
Ants marching in the kitchen.
Summer buffs her nails

February Wishlist

I want
Mental anarchy and social peace
Roger McGough Omnibus
The right size in Hush Puppies
Less cricket, and far less fuss.

A non-stick pan that knows it’s one
Dark chocolate in the fridge
CSI with some more fun
Less troubled water under the bridge.

I want
Blue jeans and red corduroys
That dark-wood Fabindia cot
My sister’s brain and a three-year-old’s toys
A t-shirt that says, “Out, damned spot!”

Water bottles that fill themselves
Automatic breakfast on waking up
Floor-to-ceiling laddered bookshelves
Adrak storm in a blue teacup.

I want
Computer skills, fewer bills,
A bowler for a boyfriend.
Blue hills for weekend thrills
A Garfunkel-shaped bookend.

Wendy Cope and the Mad Hatter
Dissecting my head
A short man with a tall ladder
Fixing the light bulb above my bed.

The Night Comes with Noises

Tap dripping hard-water complaints:
endless one-note samba,
one-night-standing with a sink and a steel plate.

Scratch of plastic tissue-box leaning against the shelf
in constant conversation with
fight-or-flight lizard's tail:
Geck-o geck-o geck-o geck-o.

Orient fan in persistent battle with pusillanimous regulator:
Whirring victoriously to the end of time - 2012 -
when the meek shall inherit the earth.
Murder of the Orient's express.

Paperback Wendy Cope rubs her back
against 19th century poets.
Every last one of them.
You can't imagine what happened to e.e. cummings.
Bookend's loud metallic dissent.

Creaking rocking chair.
No breeze.
Just rocking next to a row
of Agatha Christies.

~
There is only one quiet time,
when the evening Azaan comes to its faltering off-key end,
a single crow cocks its head
and shuts its mouth for once.
The sun sets behind the neighbour's Syntex tank
without a fight,
and clearly like crystal black and white,
daylight peters out into the night.

The Sacred Cud

Some day you’ll see me
Desk-bound.

How clever I’ll seem:
Scratching, writing, sucking on the lower lip
Of freshly-awakened mind;
Biting down on the slimy grip,
Of a sentence, less than kind.

How serious I’ll look:
Chewing the sacred cud of commas best erased,
Interviewing semicolons worthy of national debate,
An accident of apostrophes and puns that must be praised,
An anecdote of little faith, a punch line far too late.

How tired I will be:
You’ll see the sweat trickling down my chin
Sweat dotting the lines of this mess I am in
Confused by words I cannot say,
Words I must write anyway:

Cinnamon, synonym, minimum, tragedy, prodigy, itinerary, abominable, ineligible!

But I am strong.
I will not be consoled by a man
Who thinks Toni Morrison
Is a man.

At night, lying next to the exhausted book,
I’m open-mouth-asleep, imitating the dead
You’re pretending to watch Nigella cook
Her Crispy Cakes are messing with your head.

The ceiling fan mutters a curse through the pages
Ruffling the feathers of writhing adages,
Not wanting to intrude, you’ll look away for ages
Then lose the resolve that man carefully cages.

Ignoring your battling guilty denial
You’ll “happen to see” my literary trial
The shocking residue of all that lip-biting,
All the ruckus over dyslexic infighting.

Today I have written a magical thing
To put your conscience forever to shame:
Seven hundred and forty nine times I’ve scrawled, the nuances of
Your name.