Poetry
The following scheme of poetry is ever changing.
Some of it was written here. Other pieces arose elsewhere.
Authors names are marked or linked.
please enjoy
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Love
AND Lust
Between the Lines,
Under the Verse.
by
Red Mantis
Last
night i was lost in a poem of desire in your eyes, fire
in your souL.
Oceans with waves azure, expanses of rolling golden sensuous
yoU.
Vagrant tendrils of thought carried me along future spindles
in your armS.
Existence etched on a glass shard somewhere between love
and lusT.
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Change
Red
Mantis |
Nothing
in life is certain nor constant
The winds of change blow fickle and thickly
And strange and wanton chance demonstrant
Weaves its wend in paths most sickly
Rest not the
weary soles of your deep toil
Overly long on any one soil
For even whilst reposing gently
The world revolves and shifts aplenty
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At
a dinner in the honour of Albert Einstein on his visit to
the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.
W.H.Williams, 1924
And space, it has dimensions
four,
Instead of only three.
The square of the hypotenuse
Ain't what it used to be.
It grieves me sore, the things you've done
to plane geometry.
You hold that time is badly
warped,
That even light is bent;
I think I get the idea there,
If this is what you meant;
The mail the postman brings today,
Tomorrow will be sent.
The shortest line,
Einstein replied
is not the one that's straight,
It curves around upon itself,
Much like a figure eight.
And if you go too rapidly
You will arrive too late.
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The
Way of the Tao
Keep
stretching a bow
You repent of the pull,
A whetted saw
Goes thin and dull,
Surrounded with treasure
You lie ill at ease,
Proud beyond measure
You come to your knees:
Do enough without vieing,
Be living, not dying.
by
Lao Tzu
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The
Statue
Red
Mantis
Alone,
Solitary,
Patient,
On a
murderously buffetted, isolated crag,
Beside
the salty bodies of decaying fish
There
lies a statue in a pose aghast.
It's
head is embraced, gently encased in the
Welcoming
grasp of a sunken tree's toes.
It's
frozen face, a rictus of emotion.
Nearby
stony fingers claw at encroaching nomadic
Plant
scouts; infiltrating root modules
Wielding
chlorophyll-laden blades.
A torso
twists in its mossy bed, writhing in helpless disgust,
Impotent
latissimus. A devestating fissure fractures
Its
unity, bisecting orthogonally its eroding continuity.
The
wind ceases its soliloquy long enough to catch its breath,
then
Recommences
at redoubled pace its attempt to
Drown
out a tirelessly crashing tidal tirade.
A tern
perches pertinently atop serrated ankles.
Disembodied
feet cling tenaciously to
A canted
pedestal with toes flexed, arches bowed.
Corroded
brass, encrusted with lichen embellishments and
Etched
with words is sunken into the pedestal like eyes
Embedded
in a wrinkle-wreathed face.
Hidden
in this lonely place, the plaque proffers
This
braille encoded wisdom, to be
Deciphered
slowly by gentle insect feet.
"Abandon
all hope, ye
who cease to love, fail to live.
I
came, I saw, I conquered, I fell."
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| What
is a sonnet?
A
Few Sonnets by Red Mantis
Sonnet
IX
red
mantis
Shall
I harp to thee of warm summer nights,
Within
whose hair the brilliant stars do strobe?
Whose
fragrant arms and multicoloured robe
Have
not, nor may not ever shine their lights
For
our twinned eyes to merrily behold,
Ere
yet our hour together has grown old?
For
Time in its malicious seeming play
Has
chosen that our destinies entwine.
While
Fate sees fit to transport me away,
Across
vast distances of ocean brine.
But
still I smile and eat this bitter pill,
And
swill it down with Cupid's amber wine,
To
know thee poor is Aphrodite's will,
To
touch thine heart and know thee more is mine.
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The
Seasons
red
mantis
Let
not encroaching cold our bond inter,
Nor
let hoar's ragged teeth our love defile,
But
snap the icy nose of old Winter
And
melt his frigid gaze with your hot smiles.
His
jealous heart our bond would long to cleave,
Which
forged in fall's crisp halls and leafy lanes
Doth
blaze a fiery trail on Autumn's sleeve.
Whose
passions echo like a song's refrain
And
cause the lonely season yet to grieve
Ere
soft snows mark the onset of his reign,
Which
endures until Spring's first kiss reprieves
The
frozen tears on frosted window panes.
Onward
I bid we let our passions climb,
Like
Summer's rose preserved throughout all time.
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ABOUT
SONNETS:
Sonnets
are a fixed verse poetry form of possible Italian
origin. They are composed of 14 lines of 5-foot
iambics ('da-dum'-type syllable pairs) with a highly
defined rhyme scheme.
Shakespearean
Sonnets
Typical
'Shakespearean' variants consist of 4,4,4,2 rhyme
pattern with the first three groups of four lines
called "quatrains" and the last
two rhyming lines called a "rhyming couplet".
A
Shakespearean sonnet rhyme scheme might look like
this:
A,B,A,B,
C,D,C,D,
E,F,E,F,
GG
Where
each of the letters above represents a unique rhyming
sound. [for example: ABAB would mean
that the word at the ends of the respecitve lines
were Nights, Robe, Lights, Strobe] Rhyme
schemes are varied within the whole to generate
timing and effect in the poem.
In
the case of the Shakespearean style of sonnet the
rhyming couplet at the end has added impact due
to the contrast with the three preceding quatrains.
Italian Sonnets
In
contrast, a classical 'Italian' sonnet is likely
to be composed of an octet and a sestet, thematically.
eg:
A,B,A,B,A,B,A,B
C,D,C,D,C,D
The
Challenge of Sonnets
Part
of the challenge of writing a sonnet is to stay
within the rigorous rhyme scheme. One good way to
start writing a sonnet is to work backwards and
choose the words which are going to be the ends
of each line first and then to write the lines that
lead up to those words. This can lead you to think
'vertically' within the poem and adds another dimension
to the creative process of writing poetry.
The
Beauty of Poetry
A
large part of the beauty of poems is that they make
our minds vibrate at a different energy level than
they would otherwise have achieved without reading
those words. Part of the effect is in the perception,
and part of it is in the emotions that are subsequently
evoked.
Poets
love to make you think.
Poets
ache to make you feel.
Poetry
always challenges us to perceive differently.
Read
some actual sonnets
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A
Selection of Poetry By Red Mantis:
| Poetry
and the manipulation of words on paper for pleasure
is something to which I was exposed at an early
age. One of my early scholarly recollections was
of winning a provincial book prize in grade 3.Then,
subsequently undergoing the traumatic experience
of having to stand up in front of a large crowd
of adults, present the memorized poem and accept
a gift certificate for $50 worth of books. To
this day I still recall the poem as if it was
seared on my cerebellum. I had just finished reading
J.R.R. Tolkein's The Hobbit
and was asked to encapsulate the novel in a Haiku
[5 syllable, 7 syllable, 5 syllable, 3-lines]
style poem. This is what I came up with: |
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The
Hobbit
red
mantis
From darkness through light
Against
forces of evil
The
Hobbit triumphs.
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