More Poet's Place Poems

Trying to Stay Sane in an Insane World Patha Ya

Trying to Stay Sane in an Insane World Patha Ya

Trying To Remain Sane in an Insane World

Watching the news unfold
Trying to remain sane
In a world gone insane.
What does it all mean?

I do not understand
I want to scream at the screen,
What a mad scene,
Watching the news.

I have to tune it out.
feeling the blues.
Before I blow a fuse.
I need to listen to some music.

The Pathya Vat is a Cambodian verse of four lines with four syllables per line. Lines 2 and 3 rhyme, and when there are more than one stanzas, the last line of one stanza determines the rhyme for the following stanza, as described and demonstrated in the following links:


https://www.volecentral.co.uk/vf/pathya_vat.htm

Pathya Vat

Continuing my mission to bring you verse forms from all around the world, I now introduce, from Cambodia, the pathya vat. This is a form which (to the best of my knowledge) has never before been used in English - but Confucius, him say "There is no precedent for anything until it is done for first time".
The pathya vat has four lines of four syllables each, with the second and third lines rhyming. That's all there is to it.
An obscure form
of eastern verse
that is no worse
for being so.
Longer poems are made by chaining them together, with the last line of each rhyming with the second and third lines of the next. So the poem begun above could continue:
A form whose charms
not many know.
So, children, go
and write some more

Khmer poetry.
We can't ignore
this outlet for
our inner crow.
That last line wasn't required to rhyme with anything, but I felt crows ought to be mentioned - see below.