There was an event recently for my Toastmasters club where we were encouraged to read a poem. It was at that moment that I realized that I haven’t encountered poetry in years. I think I avoided it because of the strict rules placed upon poetry and because so much poetry is so bad. Nevertheless, I’ve decided I want to rediscover poetry and one of the first things I encountered is that there are far more poetry types than just iambic pentameter, limericks and haikus. In the spirit of play, I’m going to play around with one of these other types of poems.
Rondeau
A Rondeau is a French form, 15 lines long, consisting of three stanzas: a quintet, a quatrain, and a sestet with a rhyme scheme as follows: aabba aabR aabbaR. Lines 9 and 15 are short – a refrain (R) consisting of a phrase taken from line one. The other lines are longer (but all of the same metrical length).
Here is my first attempt at this form:
My Workplace Desk
What stays respite around my workplace desk?
Is it my golf course shot, so picturesque?
Perhaps my pencil or pen collection
Leads me astray to self-recollection.
I finally have pause from my workplace stress.
My telephone is hushed upon my desk.
Loud post-it notes punctuate all the stress.
There sits uneaten dessert confection.
My workplace desk.
What morsel of info jostles my desk?
E-mail interruption! On whose request?
Furnish me not, your petty description
Which hinders all hope of any direction.
Your unwelcome e-mail I find grotesque.
My workplace desk.
I have to give myself credit for trying to cram to the form and attempted rhyme scheme, but I was certainly doomed from the word “desk.” Let’s try again –
Weather Forecast
The weather forecasts a blizzard of snow
With drifts as high as the heavens will go.
I fasten my seatbelt and start to drive
Despite warnings from the forecast to skive
I have things to do. Bring on blizzards blow!
The scenery was a Vincent Van Gogh.
Sitting at home, I would enjoy the show.
Instead I would risk my life on this drive
Weather Forecast.
I drive and drive, but the going is slow.
I curse and blaspheme the falling of snow.
The hour is late and I will not arrive.
People will question if I will survive.
I have lost some feeling in my big toe.
Weather Forecast.
I like this one a lot better. Its pretty funny.
McScarry_StrikesBack 