Triolet Trilogy

With Joy
With joy we take this chance to meet
to find a love we pray is true
and hope fate makes our lives complete.
With joy we take this chance to meet
two strangers passing on the street
about to find a love that’s new.
With joy we take this chance to meet
and find a love we pray is true.


With Doubt
With doubt our love has been denied
our faith in trust and hope betrayed
the fate that comes when truth has died.
With doubt our love has been denied
by secrets we could not abide
and games we both should not have played.
With doubt our love has been denied
our faith in trust and hope betrayed.


With Sadness
With sadness I must say goodbye
I wish that I could stay with you
But fate has sung time’s lullabye.
With sadness I must say goodbye
a searing teardrop in my eye
that shows my love for you was true.
With sadness I must say goodbye
I wish that I could stay with you.

Author's Note: A triolet is a one stanza poem of eight lines in iambic tetrameter. Its rhyme scheme is ABaAabAB. Tthe first, fourth and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines. I originally wrote With Sadness, posted earlier on this blog. I then thought it would be interesting to do a trilogy with a beginning, middle and end, following the same theme. Let me know what you think.

With Sadness - a triolet

With sadness I must say goodbye
I wish that I could stay with you
But fate has sung time's lullabye.
With sadness I must say goodbye
a searing teardrop in my eye
that shows my love for you was true.
With sadness I must say goodbye
I wish that I could stay with you.

Every now and then it is fun to experiment with poetic form. A poet I admire very much (I have a link to the right - 'secret poems from the times literary supplement') recently posted a beautiful little triolet so I thought I'd try one. Interesting format. What do you think?

Flirtation

For him, love is forever.
It is not some fleeting emotion,
but an absolute, an essential,
like breathing is to existence.
From the corner barstool
he watches with his peripheral vision
as the petite brunette with a pixie haircut
leans to her conspirator’s ear,
whispering what he hopes is a secret,
something fantastic, he imagines,
an item too important to express openly
in the usual barroom banter.
He wonders if this pretty girl
who appears, to him, to be
floating like a fresh white lily
above the brackish water of the tavern floor,
understands that he is ready
to share his deep passion,
his faithfulness, his very soul.
He hesitates before approaching her table,
worrying that it is no secret she shares,
instead, the giggles and sidelong glances
reflect her disdain for his hesitation,
or even worse, disgust
at the gin blossoms growing in his cheeks.
He settles back onto his barstool,
the hastily downed whisky no remedy
for the rosacea, nor his timidity.
The wince from the sharpness of cheap bourbon
conceals the brief expression flashing across her face.
Had he seen it, he would have wondered
if it were disappointment or relief
at his retreat.
For her, love is forever.
It is not some fleeting emotion,
but an absolute, an essential,
like breathing is to existence.
She wonders why
the cute guy with the delicate brown hair
and rosy cheeks has turned his back on her
when she thought he was about to approach,
thinking he must think I’m too plain
or...

Author's note: Another jigsaw, from words given the same night as Wedding Gift, this time by my niece, Kennedy (her fiance Ben gave me the Wedding Gift words). This time the words were "fantastic, absolute, gin blossoms, forever, remedy, lily, ready, secret, banter, essential."

Wedding Gift

Age is never kind.
Reluctantly leaving the now fading dream
of vaguely disjointed memories from his long past youth,
of a bright-eyed girl in white silk
and cherry blossoms covering the lawn,
he rubbed the sticky goo from the corners of his eyes,
‘eye boogers’ is what we called them when I was kid, he thought,
wondering if they were some kind of infection of the lacrimal system
and possibly related to the bucktooth prostitute
snoring softly under the dirty bed sheet next to him.
Leaning over to rouse his companion
he pulled back, repelled by her Sunday morning whore breath,
stinking of whisky, cigarettes and semen,
muttering to himself, Ben, you retard,
it’s your Golden Anniversary,
50 years with the same faithful woman,
and here you are, lower than a deer tick
hoping a fifty dollar bill will breathe life
back into your wrinkled scrotum.
But he knew the old woman at home wouldn’t care,
had stopped caring decades ago,
when he would wander off for a Saturday night
of boozing, gambling and whoring.
He saw his life as kind of a Cajun James Joyce novel,
like one long run-on sentence
in a babbling stream-of-consciousness,
hard to understand, but rich with feeling,
filled with a monotonous sameness
accented occasionally by poor choices.
The dream whispered faintly in the back of his mind,
and he knew the girl in the white dress was his bride,
the dream the memory of a time
when her lips tasted of hummingbird nectar.
For a moment he remembered his vows
and dressed quietly in shame.

Author's Note: Another jigsaw poem, the words given to me by my niece's fiance during the 25th Anniversary Party my bride and I celebrated on the 20th of March. It was late into the night and after opening some monster (in flavor and alcohol content) brews when we discussed writing (both my niece and him are both writers), poetry and priming the creativity pump when it seems the well is dry. His words were: bucktooth, retard, cherry blossoms, deer tick, wrinkled scrotum, Golden Anniversary, hummingbird nectar, eye boogers, Sunday morning whore breath and James Joyce. Ok. Pretty strange collection of words, plus it's only supposed to be ten single words, not double words and certainly not phrases like Sunday morning whore breath (what the hell is he thinking?). Thought he would trip me up, he did, but welcome to the family Ben - you'll fit right in!