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Tag: French verse forms

Our Secret: rondeau

Published on June 24, 2025

What is the secret we all seek?
Despite the clever words we speak,
our desperation grows and thrives,
infecting every segment of our lives,
convincing us that we are weak.

And those who struggle, we call freaks,
and frightened, hide our flaws and leaks
away from others’ prying eyes.
That is the secret.

We passively exploit the meek,
and shame our smartest nerds and geeks.
into neat boxes to survive,
destroying their creative drive,
in service to the working week.
That is our secret.

24 Jun 2025

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No Time: rimas dissolutas

Published on June 20, 2025

There is no time, we cannot start again.
The clocks do not run backwards on command,
nor do the years reverse their gears on queue.

You cannot substitute a now for then,
nor rearrange the instance where you stand.
There is no try again, just simply do.

Besides, who wants to just relive the past,
imagining again those glory days
or that crushing defeat? Who needs the stress?

It’s only memory that really lasts,
until it disappears into a haze
that we call history. Well, more or less.

There is no time but now, and it exists
for just this moment only, and no more.
What starts must surely finish when it’s done.

So let it go. It’s useless to resist.
Besides, what good is all forever for?
There is a thing as having too much fun.

20 Jun 2025

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Anthem: kyrielle

Published on June 12, 2025

Who is it that makes up the rules
for peasants, leaders, sages, and fools,
who builds the narrow seats in schools
to educate a growing nation?

What hand dictates the right and wrong,
transcribes the loyal subjects’ songs?
Who peals the bells and sounds the gongs
for evolution of the nation?

How do we choose the road ahead,
denying self, where we instead
trade in our swords and rocks for bread
to feed all of our great nation?

When does the better day arrive,
that distant future, when our lives
are more than scrimp to just survive
and we become a whole nation?

12 Jun 2025

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What Urgency: descort

Published on May 13, 2025

What’s so urgent
all of a sudden?
It’s not like the world woke up yesterday
as a hot mess,
broken into tiny fractions
by some new denominator.

Where have you been?
Wake up and smell the coffee;
some of us been drinking a pot a day
since Reaganomics
trickled down from the septic tank
on our teenage heads.
Some even longer.

My grandpa had a book titled
“The Antichrist in Rome”
in a worn leather cover from before the depression.
Was he born in 1900 already woke,
or just poor, orphaned, son of a drunk fiddler
who toured the Great Lakes
looking for the sporting life?
Who knows.

What has changed since then?
Not much,
if we’re “being honest.”

Illusions come and go. Some die harder than others.
My second generation immigrant self
was chewing out of its
cocoon
before the last election.

13 MAY 2025

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Who Sings Your Battle Song: chanso

Published on April 29, 2025

If you would sing a battle song
to rally troops, to right what’s wrong,
be sure to check it in advance,
lest those mute puppets that will dance
mistake your good intentions.

It must bring heat, you will agree,
and indicate what infamy
you seek to topple from its throne,
but take care what you bring to boil:
you may need fire prevention.

The army of rebellious souls
you would attract to swell your rolls –
are they just parroting your lines,
or have they sought, with their own minds,
the remedy you mention?

What will you feed them, once the song
has ended, and for just how long
do you think they will sing out loud
once casualties have thinned the crowd?
Will you keep their attention?

The crowd is fickle, after all,
and once the summer turns to fall,
how will you keep those fires lit?
Will those who sing now stick to it,
or succumb under tension?

We need the song, there is no doubt,
and voices who will belt it out
with sense and comprehension.

29 APR 2025

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Uncertain Eternity: bref double

Published on April 24, 2025

Pretend we will not meet again on some bright future shore;
once they are gone, the things we love are gone forever more.
But then again, there is no me to miss them when they go;
I likewise will just disappear at some point, even though

I’d like to think eternal thoughts, and in some future, know
the secrets of the universe, and say, “I told you so.”
My energy may linger on beyond this mortal coil,
but there is nothing past the grave except some worms and soil.

Quite honestly, that is enough; one life is enough time
to figure out just who I am. The pressure is sublime,
but keeps me honest, truth be told, and there’s some good in that.
More, and I’d be self-satisfied, and grow lazy and fat.

What would you do with endless time, nothing to figure out?
Not much more than we’re doing now, of that there is no doubt.

23 APR 2025

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Musical Chairs: ballade supreme

Published on April 18, 2025

The road is long and runs for miles
between two fields on either side:
one, sown with soybeans in long files,
the other, fallow, flat, and wide.
Each season, nature must decide
which one will yield the greater crop;
while neither seeks to be on top
it’s still a competition:
year after year, it never stops.
Such is this life’s condition.

In houses, breaking up the wild,
a battle likewise coincides:
between a parent and their child,
the old ways and the new collide.
Somewhere between desire and pride,
in discount stores and online shops
the world of criminals and cops
leads all to some perdition:
year after year, it never stops.
Such is this life’s condition.

In some gray building, facts are filed:
loans pre-approved, requests denied,
and reputations are defiled
to shore up this or that divide.
Morality’s a slippery slide,
religion just a mop.
You’re one chair short; the music stops
and weakens your position.
Year after year, it never stops;
such is this life’s condition.

You work for years until you drop,
as fodder for the ones on top
who just want your submission.
Year after year, it never stops.
Such is this life’s condition.

17 APR 2025

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