PAD 2022 Day 13: How to BLANK

 This poem is presented in its rough draft form for the PAD 2022 challenge and will be revised. 

PAD Prompt: How to Blank

Poetic Form: Diminishing Verse

“How to mend a Broken Heart”

The first step is to start.

Taste the pain, a flaky tart,

to inspire the muse of art.

Happiness will feel like a blink,

yet, the cracks will break the link

to the tears that smudge the ink

you chisel into the heavy stones

of time. Stop. Listen to the tones

your heartbeat creates for loved ones.

Tension between the beats will strain

the rails this pain uses to take us by train.

At the next stop, taste the rain.

Poetic Form 93: Ode

 Ode to Langston Hughes

I wonder if heaven is a big sea for you

 The waves crashing in a bebop rhythm

That eases your heart of the weary blues

    that filled your words

    that spoke to me

    as a twelve year old wandering through days

        climbing a darkened staircase

        humming that life was fine

You taught me that homework could be social commentary

You told me to hold fast

    to my dreams

I found my place in your America

  as I wrote my view of the streets

    in my own rhythm

    in my own meter

    in my own voice

Your jazz played a soundtrack for my muse

And I hope you smiled

    as I taught your words 

    to my own students

    trying my best to be silent 

        as you sang from the page

        taking them to Harlem

            as they sat in the middle of America

Your verses

    so much sharper

        than any photo or story

For Christmas 

they gave me a collection of your poetry

    I never told them that I already owned it

        both copies sit on my bookshelf

        edges tattered like a song

                that echos on Lenox Avenue

I hope you are happy now

I hope you are satisfied...

Poetic Form #93: Ode

An ode is a poetic form meant to celebrate a person, nature, or abstract ideas.

There are three types of odes.

A Horation ode has a structure of one stanza pattern that repeats throughout 

the poem--usually 2 or 4 lines in length.

A Pindaric ode has a pattern of three stanzas called triads. This type of ode 

can be composed of several triads, but the first (the strophe) and the second 

(antistrophe) should be identical metrically with the third (epode) with its own 

metrical path.

An irregular ode does not have any formalities, instead it focuses on the 

praising aspect of the ode.

Poetic Form 14: Diminishing Verse

Fading

Between them, a conflicted strain

built over time. Life traveling straight like a train.

Both feeling stuck in emotion’s rain,

while wanting to see the Jura Mountains as the river, Ain.

He wanted to tell her of the songs he writes.

She needed to know his words completed her heart’s rites.

Together at the table they lived as lonely-ites.

Silently, they wonder how love became a tangled knot.

Neither one brave enough to bridge what they know not

of. Instead they spend each day feeling love lose its...

Poetic Form #14: Diminishing Verse

Diminishing verse has one rule, remove the first letter of end word from the previous line. A poet can remove a sound, too. (I took the idea of diminishing a step further in the poem with the verses.)

Denotation Life

Happiness is just a cliché

A simile that is supposed to paint a picture perfect smile

To cover the cracks that show through your skin

This is not a hyperbole

Darkness outshines light, let’s be honest about

The paradox of this existence

The connotations are just too cloudy for anyone’s point of view

See this anecdote doesn’t have a happy Hollywood ending

There is no sequel to this short story,

only flashbacks that interrupt the narrative

Disrupting the tone of my verse

The rhyme scheme off

    because I write in free verse

    but with a sonnet mindset

I know no one will save these words as an allusion to explain

The irony of a story with no symbolism

Just a one star rating for this autobiographical soliloquy