Friday, January 28, 2011

Poetry Friday - Another Double Abecedarian

Aren't some of these upside down??  The N, the S, even the Z.

I'm just going to continue the fun I've been having lately with restrictive forms, whether or not people want to call these experiments "poems" (see comment from last Friday.) Maybe I'm not sure what a real "poem" is. I'm not sure many poets would be willing to tackle that definition. But these experiments/poems end up having a life of their own, and I just love watching them wriggle. Or, as someone else might say, they "have legs" even if they don't always have heads or arms or a torso.

If you know me, you know the drill with double abecedarians: the first word of each line starts with the next letter in the alphabet - first with A, then B, then C, etc. The last words do the reverse - they end with z in the first line, then y, then x, etc. Here, I get a bit alphabetty explaining the hardest letters of the form within the form itself, but I do manage a one-word line following the rules. That's always a triumphant moment in a double abecedarian.

Don't worry whether or not it's a "poem." Just enjoy.

Double Abecedarian

Alphabet poems doubled aren't E-Z.
Basically, you have to go A to Z, B to Y,
C to X, etc. And you hit that X,
Don't forget, coming and going. That's raw.
End a line with a V? Do anyEnglish words  end with V?
Figure our next what ends with U. Ugh. I mean U-
Gh. Some letters are just
Headaches.
I guess for
Jugular-vein, you've got the final Q.
Kills me every time, trip-trap
Little goats, the big troll is singing, O!
Meanwhile, the easy ones like D and N--
nice, numerous, dull, dim.
On the other hand, I love every opening vowel:
Plump a-e-o's, i's thin, u's thick.
Quick now, jump over the Q. Find a DJ or a raj
Ready to help you solve the mini-
Situation with the final J. Then look for a bush
That burns, and see if you can find a dog
Under the table. By the time you get to a final F,
Very late in the game, you'll have committed the
Worst possible mistakes & gone mental, you'll have had
X slap you down twice, you'll go to bed with that ABC
Yacking away inside your head, you'll be ruined, you'll be gob-
Zacked. Gob-sacked? Gob-smacked? As in l-m-n-oh-oh, oh. Mama!

The Poetry Friday round-up today is being hosted by Elaine Magliaro over at The Wild Rose Reader (Thanks, Elaine!) Head over there to see what other people are posting.  

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