Return of the jorio

It’s just four lines
Of four words each.
Can’t be that hard.
I mean, come on:

Not like the sonnet,
The villanelle, the ode
And not even close
To the wicked sestina;

No rhyme, no metre,
No stressed, counted syllables;
No getting stomped on
By careless iambic feet

And no limits, either:
Gorge yourself on stanzas;
Let rip, cut loose
Because here, anything goes.

Even the ending’s easy:
You just quit when
You’re no longer inspired
(No rhyming couplet required).

Is it a poem?
Depends what you mean.
OK, so it’s not
Shakespeare, Shelley or Sassoon

Wordsworth, Whitman, Browning, Blake,
Marvell, Masefield, McGough, Muldoon,
Hardy, Hughes, Heaney, Holmes
Or Gerald Manley Hopkins;

But if every word
Is carefully, thoughtfully chosen
Earns its rightful place
Carries its full weight

Adds to the story
Hooks them, holds them
And, were it missing,
You’d feel the loss

It seems to me
That it must be.
As to this one
You be the judge.

 
 

I haven’t written a jorio for ages: I’d forgotten how much fun this simple form can be. A good warm-up for the brain before getting down to something more exacting; or, as with this one, the perfect cool-down after being shackled to the keyboard until late by the day-job. Glad to have rediscovered it. N.

Cauchemar

What dream is this that comes upon me now;
Appearing out of nowhere, filled with fields
Of flowers, summer grass and grazing cows
Deep in some hidden corner of the Weald.
My younger self strolls easy, dog at heel
Along a sunken lane roofed in by trees
While overhead the broad-winged buzzard wheels
And all is as it was, and meant to be.
But on the grey horizon, dark clouds grow;
The grass bends in the breeze; and all at once
I see a hooded figure on the road
Ahead. No time to turn. No place to run.
A simple wish for one more carefree day
Now haunted by a fear that has no name.

 
 

Wanted to see if I could stick to the basic sonnet formula while mixing things up a bit, so I tried playing with the end-words, allowing myself more latitude than usual with the consonants as long as I maintained the correct vowel rhyme. Turns out that breaking one rule consistently and deliberately is actually just imposing a new one. Interesting. N.