Epigram ‘n Aphorism Samwiches

Demons

Demons hold
a small compartment
in compulsive, human souls,
only to dine on themselves.

7.8.23
22 syllables of ironic logic?

Form:Naani 20-25 syllables
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"Invalid Post"  
candlelight

gloaming in your black
shadows engrave memory's wall

murkiness in shallow
curling wisps linger in silhouette traces

your cool soul in a hot night
illumed by candelight

mere flicker of twilight
steady flame-stick by inhale grows

glimmer of hope
in life of obscurity after death —

dim symbol, warm sight
here ever by your candlelight

low your glow, I know
a fire in cavern of shadowy dreams

a beacon it seems
dull protects against insignificance

eclipse mindless meandering tonight
resurrected by your candlelight


1.9.23
18 lines, inter-rhyming (interloping) free-verse
is that a thing? it is now. (it both is and isn't free verse )

maybe, punctuation later? line breaks until...

The candlelight symbolizes... birth, death, resurrection, and sacredness. It also represents the light amid the darkness of life, bright future, vitality of the sun, or uncertainty of life and transience. Candles lit at the time of death give light to the darkness of death and symbolize the light in the afterlife.

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Your candle-lit eyes illumed on dull me.
Protracted nights in suffered darkness you cured.
In the hay barn, we planned stay until dewed frost.
But, the lowing herd plodded home to find us.

Out, these gray clouds hover, curl and stretch.
Love beneath the dim dull, ready to be disgraced.
Our souls could pour an ocean in this place
but this deluge floods hearts lost without trace.

She could not swim depths of a rising, open sea —
on her stealth craft, untethered, floated far from me.
Awash from the high tide, I looked back aimlessly.
Four decades since a bright dream, once hopeful reality


1.23.23
4.21.23 edit

Write a poem about the
past, present, future
in that order.
(3 quatrains, 12 lines)

Example:
Heroic Quatrain:
“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
    The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
    And leaves the world to darkness and to me.” 

Provided in final PPC entries: "Last PPC entries (MV)"  Pantoum

Stanza 1: ABAB
1 First line (A)
2 Second line (B)
3 Third line rhymes with first (A)
4 Fourth line rhymes with second (B)

Stanza 2: BCBC
5 Repeat the second line (B)
6 Sixth line (C)
7 Repeat the fourth line (B)
8 Eighth line rhymes with sixth (C)

Stanza 3: CDCD
9 Repeat the sixth line (C)
10 Tenth line (D)
11 Repeat the eighth line (C)
12 Twelfth line rhymes with the tenth (D)

Stanza 4: DADA
13 Repeat tenth line (D)
14 Fourteenth line rhymes with first (A)
15 Repeat twelfth line (D)
16 Repeat the first line (A)

1.24.23 

"Invalid Post"  

Oaks

Thousands of waves upon
thousands more — disturbances ripple,
distort giants waving green flags,
anchored in grove on bluff shores —
rolling billows break in your glass,
reform harder, 90-miles-per-hour, rooted.

Gnarl-arms flex,
thousands of brown fingers hold
thin, slimming — lose an aging few —
unfeathered, flying in this torment.

Collective hair, a clustered crop,
bobs, bows to a hungry blue-gray surface —
a choppy, sploshy scene.
White crests add to division, curl
and thump a messy lot. A lone oak
tree, survivor of frequent storms, reminds
how hard the heart-core, thickening —

doused by angry spit of invisible fires
not able to swallow your lot.

Thousands upon thousands of acorns
spawn in just a year, offer not one more
soaring kin to tower in such a rueful bay.

Spare your children from this place —
cede not another to this earth, haven for
a thousand years more. Tempests
cannot sway or uproot your clan, as I
hold steadfast, as each of you.


3.8.23 (when I should be sleeping - work at 5 am)

Use these words in your poem:
storm, oak tree