March 1, 2011

Experiment: The Revival of Clerihew [justin]

A few ground rules:

  1. Four relatively short lines
  2. AABB rhyme structure
  3. Feel is neo-whimsical, satirical maybe, possibly making some of that non-sense up, with a touch of “Do you mean that or are you just trying to be clever?”; compiled in a sitting with no long pondering or musing.
  4. All revivals have something new; the “biographical subjects” here are then to be somewhat personified entities though not human.
Hello Hope
I understand why you mope
It’s often hard to be the middle child
All alone when Faith abandoned and Love reviled
 
Glorious Gluttony
On my lips like honey
You are a virtue that shows us our worth
Against a vice, there’s no need for rebirth
 
Excellent Enemy
Coals on your head, ebony
True teacher of love which you launder
Your eyes remind me of my Daughter
 
Listen here Library
Words aren’t your primary?
There is dust on your pages and limbs, amputee
But people still flock for your collection of DVD
 
Goodbye Grudge
You house guest of sludge
I’d like to get stuck with you on an island in Polynesia
But as you know your death is by my common amnesia
 
Simulacra say...
Who will we be today?
No senses are needed in this now golden age
Cause our souls are now housed on a profile page
 
Christmas cause
No time to pause
Knowing not my family is like a rib with a shiv
I wonder if Jesus ever felt forced to give?

2 comments:

  1. Jenna St. Hilaire3/8/11, 7:04 PM

    Shoot... accidentally deleted my comment. Hope it doesn't show up twice now...

    This was fun to read--excellent experimentation on an unusual form. I loved that you rhymed Polynesia with amnesia. Hope and Grudge and Enemy and Simulacra were my favorites, I think.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous3/30/11, 10:05 AM

    I will respond to this post, first, in the form of Clerihew:

    Irony, I invite
    Your rhyme schemes seem trite
    But beneath is the burning of satire
    Which galls me more deeply than love's fire.

    Anyway, I loved this collection. The shorter poems, if done well, always pack a bigger punch. Their poignancy is in their brevity. That's partly why I've been in a neo-haiku phase for the last.. almost year now. Okay, one more, for fun:

    Come on, Commentry
    You grant me entry
    But do you not find it comic
    The ways in which our words are atomic?

    ReplyDelete

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