Poem Dome: Getting Tough on Rhyme Crime

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > Poem Dome: Getting Tough on Rhyme Crime

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2019 20:09

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 10:08

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Prompt: depth

Now

Yesterday, beneath creation's violent glow
Today, between the extinct and the exalted
Tomorrow, beyond the quintillionth mausoleum

He shoots craps. Hard eight.
He could quit if he wanted
But He's on a roll.

And so,
A second
Flies

# ¿ Nov 20, 2019 07:05

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2019 00:39

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

But come, my friends, as we stand here mourning, do you see the lightning?
See its glittering, like the flash of two moving hands, amid the thick gathering clouds.

-THE POEM OF IMRU-UL-QUAIS (tr. F. E. Johnson)

The Vigilantes

The miracle man's daughter mounts the stand,
And testifies her father's magic touch:
A talent honed through years of honest sweat
For coaxing out of arid skies fresh rain.
The gathered crowd is ready to believe,
Or ready to take in her beaming face.

The sun declines and leaves the full moon's face
To draw long shadows out from where they stand.
And Ned, the preacher man starts to believe
In more and less than God: this woman's touch,
Her graceless grace and eyes pale blue like rain,
His skin beneath his collar soaks with sweat.

The miracle man doesn't break a sweat.
His eyes can read hope's dawn on every face.
He tells them how his tool can bring the rain
He tells them of the mud in which they'll stand.
He sees one mark himself an easy touch,
And tells him lies they all want to believe.

"So put that money down if you believe
A man should earn recompense for his sweat."
A pause, a murmur, then a hipward touch,
And billfolds open up on Lincoln's face,
To hand over their shares in line they stand.
"Tomorrow, with the dawn will come the rain."

The morning comes, but not a drop of rain.
Eileen is absent too. He must believe
Her enjoying some tasty one-night stand.
He waits, uneasy, cold crustacean sweat
Dripping through the runnels of his face
As time scrapes through his hands, scaly to touch.

A mob arrives, their fingers bad to touch
Their holstered arms. "So where's that blasted rain?"
Eileen bursts from the church with flustered face
And runs to father's side. "Do you believe
Your lies?" they chant. Their twitching gun-hands sweat.
Eileen darts out in front of where they stand.

A trigger's ginger touch. One might believe
It thunder, bringing rain, not blood like sweat
Down brow and face to seal her martyr's stand.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2019 04:57

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2019 23:06

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Real and Imaginary

We do not hold the adder to account,
Not celebrate the triumph of the tides.
The choice of multiplying drops amount
Not to some chosen course of the mudslide

But praise, expound, the primacy of will
In human agency and rationed choice
We unmoved movers owning every whim.

But we are meat, not shells that ghosts may fill.
Does that make every song just blind meat's voice?
Or does complexity compose the hymn?

# ¿ Dec 12, 2019 04:50

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2020 19:09

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Clever Is No Match for Vicious

The fox cannot
Out-fight the snake
She aims prayers
At plans instead.

Out-fight the snake?
The serpent Iaughs
At plans, instead
Rearing, to strike.

"The serpent?" laughs
The dancing fox,
Rearing to strike.
The snake strikes first.

The dancing fox,
Still where she stood.
The snake strikes. First
Blood, and venom.

Still. Where she stood,
The fox cannot-
Blood, and venom.
She aims prayers.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2020 23:26

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

In, and line please.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2020 16:21

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Woolgathering

There is no such thing as a sheep.
Only sheep. Plural. Amorphous.
Uncountable. No way to demark
Where on ends and the next begins.
Just fractal wool in cirrus clouds around the pasture.

There is no such thing as a sheep.
Wool is just well-treated cotton
Bleached and blanched and coiled,
Harvested from the redundant vegetable lamb.

There is no such thing as a sheep.
They are only seen just before nodding off,
Or in books about flags without colors,
Or by drunks in Tallahassee.

There is no such thing as a sheep.
Aristotle wrote fifty-seven different proofs of this
And many of them are valid.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2020 09:54

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

In and flash

# ¿ Apr 5, 2020 04:27

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

There once was a man from Peru
Whose dingus was coiled in a screw
He searched all of the land
For a woman or man
With a hole with the right thread and skew

# ¿ Apr 15, 2020 03:25

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Prompt?

# ¿ May 4, 2020 04:37

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

# ¿ May 5, 2020 04:10

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Manticore

It's easy for
A manticore
To live a life
Alone

With lion's mane
To make him vain
So stylishly
Windblown

And venomed sting
Paralyzing
His prey before
It's flown

And last, a face
The likes as grace
King Richard on
His throne

The manticore
Pure carnivore
Devours meat
And bone

He doesn't see a friend unmet or partner for a deal.
But looks at everything he sees as servant or as meal.

# ¿ May 14, 2020 20:37

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Let's close out the trifecta for short forms with a round of Double Dactyls.

From the Wikipedia page

quote:

An example by John Hollander:

Higgledy piggledy,
Benjamin Harrison,
Twenty-third president
Was, and, as such,

Served between Clevelands and
Save for this trivial
Idiosyncrasy,
Didn't do much.

The requirements are: two verses, each having three lines of dactylic dimeter and one line with a choriamb, which is just like the other lines with the last two syllables cut off.
Those two short lines should rhyme.
One line, traditionally the first, is repetitive nonsense words.
One line, traditionally the second, is the subject's name.
One line is a single six syllable word.

I'm not going to give any restrictions on who you can choose as the subject. Don't make me regret that, and remember that this is a form for light/comic verse.

Sign up by June 10, Submit by June 17

# ¿ Jun 1, 2020 21:38

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Signups closed/remember this is a thing post.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2020 08:08

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 10:08

Thranguy: Apr 21, 2010; Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Dactyl Judgement

A bunch of interesting approaches here.

rickiep00h ignored all the constraints but the meter, and still came up with something that looks like it almost belongs.

curlingiron hit each one, with meter that requires a one syllable 'poem', but was insufficiently amusing, and the final line struggles to fit the meter.

Which brings us down to the two contenders. Both wrote some nice light/comic prose, largely within the form.

But I'm going to dock Djeser points for his nonsense words. They're supposed to be repetitive, and that's really crucial to the form. They're there to set the rhythm, and after them it becomes easier to parse the following lines as Dactyls rather than the more standard two-beat feet. So when you don't repeat, instead put out tounge-tripping nonsense words that require mental effort to pronounce at all, you lose a load-bearing element of the form.

Which makes it a close call. Maugrim's Double Dactyls is a fine example, has a reasonably clever joke in it. Of Djeser's three, only one really does more than relate the history. There's a bit more cleverness in the word choices in Djeser's, but ultimately, this week's win goes to Maugim

# ¿ Jun 17, 2020 09:00

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > Poem Dome: Getting Tough on Rhyme Crime