Tag Archives: villanelle

Rain

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Day 11 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt:

Take a look at Kyle Dargan’s “Diaspora: A Narcolepsy Hymn.” This poem is a loose villanelle that uses song lyrics as its repeating lines (loose because it doesn’t rhyme).  Your challenge is, like Dargan, to write a poem that incorporates song lyrics – ideally, incorporating them as opposing phrases or refrains. 

I kept with the villanelle form, using the strict rhyming rules to give you:

Rain

Rain, rain, go away.
Your splitter-splatter irks this crone.
Come again another day.

Schemer of blight and decay,
You chill my heart and steep my bones.
Rain, rain, go away.

Keep to your clouds and drift away.
I wish to ruminate alone.
Come again another day.

To your gods I do not pray,
Though many sins I ought atone.
Rain, rain, go away.

Lightning, thunder, those may stay.
Harsh winds attend my rheumy moans.
Come again another day.

If your path I cannot sway
I’ll lift my face, my plight to own. 
Rain, rain, go away.
Come – if you must – another day.

The only other villanelle I’ve written can be found here.

If Only

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Day Five of NaPoWriMo. Lots of choices for the prompt today. I chose to write a villanelle, which is defined as such:

The classic villanelle has five three-line stanzas followed by a final, four-line stanza. The first and third lines of the first stanza alternately repeat as the last lines of the following three-line stanzas, before being used as the last two lines of the final quatrain.

Clear as mud? I thought so, too. But I gave it a go anyway.

woods1

If Only

If we only had the time –
just imagine if you would –
all the mountains we could climb.

Wouldn’t it be fine?
Leisured strolls in shaded woods
if we only had the time?

If we let the years unwind,
wove the hard times with the good,
all the mountains we could climb.

We’d pick peaches in their prime,
dine beneath the cottonwoods
if we only had the time.

If we heard the clock bells chime,
left our worries where they stood,
all the mountains we could climb!

How might our futures be defined
if we only understood?
If we only had the time,
all the mountains we could climb.

Also posting on dVerse, where the poem form for the month is the villanelle.