There’s something dark about this town.
It’s made my heart all broken sore.
The stars upstairs they hear a sound.
The dark hair girl she’s at the door.
I want to go somewhere and weep.
She hurts me with her darkest stares.
Through her I walk the lonely street
Of silent dreams and cold nightmares.
The scars of vice in Central Park
Arrest the man the news had lost.
He waltzes girls back to the dark
Who think of nothing nor what it costs.
These folks who tell their dreams goodbye,
Build towers up to cut the sky.
These flowers bloom and the night goes on
The T.V. tells us what’s right from wrong.
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*Notes: I’ve been experimenting with different sized ‘feet’ than pentameter. So, the above poem is just like a sonnet in its structure, except its in iambic ‘quadrameter’ or four iambic feet. I don’t know why. Just to try something different. I did another in iambic tetrameter. Oh actually I posted that a few days ago, I think. Oh yes, in this lot of three poems, it’s the first: http://www.stephenpickering.com/2010/08/28/saturday-reading-three-new-poems/I’ve also been working with some that have varying lengths. I think the best bet in the long run for me, is to let the line speak for itself, in the sense that, however it hits me, whatever length that is, just go with that. And then I think you get to a point where you don’t really need to fit the line into a structure if it doesn’t come to you that way, which naturally is free verse.
So I guess, one of the points of writing within structure, is almost like exercise. You do that (or this) for a while, then your brain feels strong enough, confident enough, if you will, to walk out on the “limbs” alone.
©2010 Stephen Pickering
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