A Midsummer Night's Massacre

1

“Again” Acorn asked “and avoid all allusions

And also ambiguity!

Truth must be located and disseminated

Throughout the constabulary!”

2

“But brother, believe,” bellowed Bramble and Briar

“Bereavement brings blood and brings bile.”

“He’ll be free to go as soon as we know

What happened in that leafy pile.”

3

“The chaotic cacophony,” Cinnamon cried

“Crescendoed calamitously.

And besides collecting, disturbing, expecting,

Four giants horrifically

4

Decided to drop deciduous death

On daffodils and dandelions.

The pile grew higher, the funeral pyre

Of thousands of petals and scions.

5

Every expression of every ego,

Each exclamation of Earth,

Was roundly ignored by the gigantic horde

In their apocalyptical mirth.

6

Fiercely, the fatal flames finished their foes,

A fannable furnace of fear.

Infernal justice? Killing leaves musters

No obstacles. Palpably queer

7

Grew the gargantuan guffawing gits,

Gleeful and ghastly and gay.

Maybe the dance or the fatal parlance

Of the fire pleased ‘em, who can say?

8

Hellishly howling at their hateful holocaust,

Hideously heaping on hurt,

They regretted the plight, once they caught sight, of

A hedgehog alight in the dirt.

9

Insensitive ignorance, I’ll illustrate,

Immolation indecent and ill –

Rescued summarily, this urchin verily

Wailed a xenophobe’s yell,

10

Jittery, jeered at, just jeopardised.

My jealousy jabbered and jumped –

Why should this urchin deserve such attention

While all of we flora are dumped,

11

Kept for kaput, KO-ed and kowtowed,

Kicked by these keen kings of karma?

Between blood and sap, what difference is that

That they watch us burn, and stay calmer?

12

Left in the lurch, leached of liaisons,

Laboured a little lone leaf,

Zounds, and besides, continental divides of

Entirely fiery grief

13

Masterfully menaced the muddled up mite

Meticulous in their malaise.

They burned him to bits, the venomous shits

Caught up in a blistering craze.

14

Near to this nasty, non-natural negator,

I needed a nearby niche,

For I stood in the way of this murderous flame

And I burn as one bruises a peach.

15

One opportunity offered oasis,

Obstinate to be obliged.

How I just kept living, myths now omitting,

Promises quail regicide!

16

Pilching peripherally from the perimeter

Prior to perching, the pest!

The head of the clique snatched leaves with her beak

To line her palatial nest.

17

Quaking and quivering, quashed by this quandary,

Queasy and quelled by this Queen,

I hoped beyond hope that she’d pick this poor dope

To anoint her newborns’ nursery.

18

Rejoice, oh rejoice, I rebutted the razing

To relate this rebellion real!

Simplicity tickles, unbearable victuals

Wasted that xenophobe’s yield.

19

Salvation sensed, I submitted a signal,

A scent of such seductive strength

That in a few seconds, my soon-to-be weapon

Had lured her to snatch up my length.

20

Tucked away tightly, transported from threatening

Titans, though terrified,

I resolved swiftly that I did not wish me

Wallpaper, no matter how fine.

21

Using my utmost, I unleashed an update of

Unbearable uber-scent:

Zounds, atishoo, banished Cinnamon drew

Exhalation from good herbalment.

22

Vicious velocity veered the victim

To vex and vandalise,

For the sneeze’s own torrent was so abhorrent

It blew her nest into the skies.

23

Wailing and wittering, they wobbled world-wards

Weak of wing, woefully so,

The plummeting progeny of royal homogeny

Splattered like eggs on the road.

24

Xenogenous, oh xerotripsis xylophagous

No xenial xenagogues here

Impishly jettisoned – kindred, listen!

My narrative’s o’er, persevere.

25

Yanked o’er the yawning yield of yester-yipping,

The yolk of the young o’er a yard,

I soared on the wind from the site of such sin

And landed here, safe from harm.

26

Zipped like a zephyr, zig-zagged and zoomed

I was no zealot of zen,

But though I panicked, I could not have planned it

My escape was Mother-Earth’s ken.

27

I’ve answered your questions, I’ve told you my story.

We’ve all learned our lessons. Acorn, I implore thee

For now my bed beckons, for, no doubt, before me

Are days of impressions that I’ll fill with glory

When telling the tale, the incredible tale,

To every seedling and every snail,

To every forest, and mountain and dale,

The legend of how I defeated the Quail,

And from the inferno did flee, yes me, and

From the inferno did flee.

Ah behold, could death ever force Gaia’s hand

If judicious karma loves me?

Author’s note:

Xenagogue – a guide, someone who conducts strangers

Xenial – of or concerning hospitality towards guests

Xenogenous – due to an outside cause

Xerotripsis – dry friction

Xylophagous - wood-eating

I'm pretty happy with it, over all. There are some jumps in the meter, and a few slightly stretched rhymes I might come back to (jettisoned/listen in stanza 24 being the obvious one), and I did invent the word herbalment, whatever that means, but Shakespeare invented a load of words, and everyone thinks he's a genius. Which he is. And I'm not. But fuck it, I discovered some amazing words along the way - did you know that ultramontane means either south of the Alps or being an extreme supporter of the Pope? 

Anyhoo, I'm not funny like Tim or Johnny, so I'm not going to try to be. That said, if I were going to write a historical context, it would look something like this:

"The Triumverate of Alphabetical Discourse is a relatively fresh style of poetry. It's origins lie in the early 1900s, when the popularity of the world's best nonsense poet Edward lear, responsible for such magnum opi as the Owl and the Pussycat. Lewis Carroll was perhaps the originator of the movement, paying beautiful homage to Lear's work with the unforgettable Jabberwocky, though he did not invent the form. Where exactly the TAD began is lost in the mists of time, but what is known is that by the middle of the 20th century, interest in the form had been almost lost. Despite rampaging its way across poetry bars and readings from new York to New Orleans, and currying particular favour with the beatniks, who were drawn like flies to the horse by the captivating meter, the form never made its way to the dizzying heights of, say, the limerick, or the ballad. Nonetheless, it has found new popularity in the new century, and, with the rules finally formalised in all the major languages, disagreements about what exactly constitutes a TAD have boiled down from an inferno to a simmer."

: 09 Oct 2007 14:15 |  Tags: Icw Introduction To Creative Writing Poetry Stanza Tad Verse |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

How I shot myself in the foot

So, having nothing to do last Friday, I settled down to create my new verse form, as instructed. And in the long-standing Kent-family tradition of making things hard for yourself (or so I thought at the time), I thought I'd set myself a little challenge. The verse form is known as the "Triumverate of Alphabetical Discourse" or a TAD for short. The rules are as follows:

• There must be 27 stanzas, or verses, of four lines
  
• Each of the first 26 stanzas (or verses) must start with the corresponding letter of the alphabet
• For the first two lines of each stanza, every verb, noun, or other major, non-connective word (excluding pronouns) must start with the same letter as the first word.
• The second couplet/pair of lines is free except for every third verse, where the second couplet must be alphabetically sequential. That is to say, the first verb, noun, or other major non-connective (excluding pronouns) word must start with some letter (for the 3rd verse, always an 'a'), the next with a 'b', the next a 'c' and so on and so forth. The next verse (e.g. the 6th) must pick up where the previous one left off (e.g. if verse 3 ended with a word beginning with f, then verse 6's second couplet must begin with a g, or the first relevant word must).
• The first line of the second couplet (that is to say the 3rd line) must contain an internal rhyme, in the style of a limerick.
  
• The poem is to be written with a triplet rhythm, in homage to/the style of  Edward Lear's "the Owl and the Pussycat", with the first and third lines each having 11 syllables (with potential for a grace syllable beforehand), and the second and fourth lines each having 7 syllables (again with potential for a grace syllable either beforehand or afterwards).
• The final verse must have 12 lines, the first 9 having 11 syllables, the 10th having 7 syllables, and the last two lines following the previously established pattern for the final couplet of a verse that is a multiple of 3.

I'm going to finalise it later (the x verse is impossible without the internet, which I haven't had at home), and then I'll post it up.

: 08 Oct 2007 15:55 |  Tags: Icw Introduction To Creative Writing Tad |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem