Beetlebung and Kettlehole--April Poems

“It Was a Dark and Stormy Night”

Pummeling the roof,
grasping and rasping
obsessed with a plan,
one grisly storm
sifts from the night
my haunting dream.

My childhood dream
leaks through the roof,
wobbling in the night,
its low voice, rasping,
drones with the storm
in a wrinkled plan.

This faceless plan
of my reckless dream,
fertile in the storm,
captive beneath the roof,
ravenous and rasping,
devours the night.

The resurrected night
ravages the plan,
overgrown and rasping,
and my shadowed dream
claws at the roof,
blinding the storm.

Tossing in the storm,
the low-voiced night
hammers from the roof
the broken plan
of my fateful dream
on a crucifix, rasping.

Exiled and rasping,
I hide a storm
inside my dream,
tied to the night,
shrouded by the plan,
cursing at the roof.

I storm to the roof,
rasping, as dawn lights plan
shackles for the dreams of the night.


====================================
Sestina

From poets.org

The sestina follows a strict pattern of the repetition of the initial six end-words of the first stanza through the remaining five six-line stanzas, culminating in a three-line envoi. The lines may be of any length, though in its initial incarnation, the sestina followed a syllabic restriction. The form is as follows, where each numeral indicates the stanza position and the letters represent end-words:

1. ABCDEF
2. FAEBDC
3. CFDABE
4. ECBFAD
5. DEACFB
6. BDFECA
7. (envoi) ECA or ACE

The envoi, sometimes known as the tornada, must also include the remaining three end-words, BDF