Abyss

He sits in the abyss,
the price of his ways.
A would-be conqueror
now a shivering wretch.

His prison is vast, cavernous,
pits tunnels, molten furnaces,
frozen hollows, rancid streams,
cavities crawling with pestilence.
Things unseen by mortal eyes
stalk the tunnels,
forge new fissures.

The first to see this place,
he repents his mistakes
and all they cost him.
Familial faces drift from memory
along with their disdain
when their son, wrapped in chains,
cast into a rent in the earth,
disappeared from the world.

The demons hunt him underground.
He takes shelter in wretched crevices,
repents and regrets, begs for mercy
from those he betrayed
and those who followed him.

The cold, the fire, the torment
eventually convince him;

Repentance has a sour tang,

vengeance tastes succulent.

NaPoWriMo #2: Rhythm and Verse and All Things Worse

So we start a new poem,
a stream of verse,
and with a rhyme scheme we begin to converse.

But how about going with the flow,
less of a structure and more of a never-ending discourse?
'Yes,' said the Poet-in-Chief, 'That's a good idea.'
But how many lines, what sort of syllabic construct should we use?

'It doesn't matter really,'

said

the Poet

-in-

Chief.

'Oh look at that, you've got the tense mixed up again.
Pick one for the next stanza and stick with it.'

Here goes a present tense poem,
tricky, but I'll try and hold 'em.
All those phrases, hundreds of them,
waiting to be placed in line.
Not a place for feeble writing,
you can try or go down fighting,
without additional lighting,
you can write some Allan Poe,
write Edgar Allan Poe meters,
the type would-be poets know,
such wondrous verse with the flow.

What about the villanelle, my old friend?
When free verse leads your meter astray,
can this tremendous form make amends?

Dylan Thomas knew, this was his trend,
he knew the power the form could convey,
what about the villanelle, my old friend?

Perhaps the sonnet could clear this mess up?
The form of love, strife, effective verse.
Good old Shakespeare used them in his line-up,
he had over a hundred in his purse
to be used when love or grief would beckon
and all his inner thoughts came spilling out,
though there are many scholars who reckon
they're not sure who he was talking about.
Yet it's handy for writing poetry quick,
the sonnet's short, rhymes and has great rhythm.
It's concise, lyrical, short and succinct,
a wonderful, potent algorithm.
Yet I wonder if we're viewing this wrong?
Let's try another form to end this song.

When all's said and done, verse is the worst,
so many meters and forms to rehearse.
Still, you can use any form or none at all
when you ride down the poetry waterfall.