Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Nonet’

Happiness – a nonet

June 8, 2013 13 comments

Here it is, as promised – a happy poem! And a nonet, no less.

Happiness – this was a real stretch for me. Reaching outside of my limits. Absolutely nothing in this poem dies horribly, gets cut down or meets an untimely end – guaranteed!

And I couldn’t even find a picture of sparrows (with a redistribution licence).

Not a sparrow

This is not a sparrow.

Picture credit: JJ Harrison Creative Commons licence. Any reproduction (or redistribution in its altered state, i.e. with my poem attached) must reference the licensor or author.

Categories: Poems Tags: , ,

Happy Happy Joy Joy – a nonet

June 2, 2013 8 comments

I have come to realise (and it’s also been pointed out to me) that my occasional poems and fiction (actually, not so occasional recently) have a fairly dark theme. The fiction always seems to need a dark twist, while my poems concentrate on the death of our environment, the death of our environment, the death of our environment and sometimes even the death of our environment!

Therefore I have decided to write a happier poem, in the form of a nonet (that’s the thing with nine lines, starting with nine syllables and working down to one).

This requires a big shift in my thinking. I need to think butterflies. I need to think rainbows, bunny rabbits and kitty-cats.

I’ll include a picture of a squirrel I took in a wood near my house to get me into the correct mood.

Squirrel

A fluffy squirrel.

Okay then, here goes.

Broken Lives

Demons of foul Death parade the land
Executing shivering souls
Suffering the innocent
Terror of broken lives
Ravaged and ended
Open wounds burn
Yells for help
Echo
Death

Hmm, that was a little darker than expected. I was expecting more unicorns and rainbows and fewer gruesome deaths. Stupid useless squirrel picture.

In my defence, I couldn’t think of a nine letter word to write down the left-hand side (which is a new rule I just made up) that said “happiness”. Hang on…

H-A-P-P-I-N-E-S-S

Okay, that would have done. Next time, fluffy bunny rabbits!

Categories: Poems Tags: ,

My First Nonet!

May 27, 2013 16 comments

“Nonet” or “Nonnet”? I’ve found both spellings. So no-one can decide how to spell it. That’s not a good start.

“My First Nonet.” Sounds like a starter product, like “My First Train Set” or “My First Grown-Up Underpants”.

But enough of this frivolity. A nonet (or nonnet) consists of nine lines. The first line contains nine syllables and you remove one syllable per line until you’re left with one on the ninth line. It doesn’t have to rhyme and each line can contain as many words as you like, as long as the number of syllables is correct.

I’d never heard of them until a couple of days ago when fellow blogger morrighansmuse inspired me with one of her own. I decided to give it a go, and here it is! It stopped scanning after line 3, but hey-ho. It’s probably not supposed to :-).

Rainforest

The greedy came with axes, chainsaws
Once a forest now a wasteland
Never more the verdant green
Broken stumps, scattered ’round
Nature’s beauty gone
Desolation
Nature lost
Broken
Dead