A Comfy Kind Of Restless

Boo! 😉

Almost 4 solid weeks of writing poetry have passed, now!

 “Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a “duplex.” A “duplex” is a variation on the sonnet, developed by the poet Jericho Brown. Here’s one of his first “Duplex” poems, and here is a duplex written by the poet I.S. Jones. Like a typical sonnet, a duplex has fourteen lines. It’s organized into seven, two-line stanzas. The second line of the first stanza is echoed by (but not identical to) the first line of the second stanza, the second line of the second stanza is echoed by (but not identical to) the first line of the third stanza, and so on. The last line of the poem is the same as the first.” [from Day Twenty-Seven (napowrimo.net)]

Having looked into a few more of Brown’s poems, I see that he doesn’t always keep his line at the end identical to the first – see this poem. But, within that poem, he does make the repeated lines identical! So I decided to keep 10 syllables to each line, incorporate rough repeating lines, and make the last line pretty close to the first… 😉

So: what if I’d the sense to be so brave:

Not hatched some beautiful children at all?

Children I love enough to stem beauty

Filtering through me; unbidden, flowing.

My filtered flow would delight readership,

Of strangers – thousands unhugged by my arms;

Arms now stripped of hug hanker by Covid

Only filled by the children I have spawned,

Childish toys, now, my ring of makeshift friends,

Marooned upon an island flecked with gold.

My golden years a way off, green behind;

These settling, middling, comfy-restless days.

My unsettling, and beautiful, entwined!

I’m wondering: in which sense that’s not brave…?

This is definitely not the easiest of poetic forms! I’ve tweaked and tampered a lot with this one since I started it just after lunch.  It was not a 15-minute wonder, that’s for sure.  I’m posting it before midnight so that I don’t keep myself awake tapping at it into the small hours!

Only 3 more days of NaPo to go!  Meet you here tomorrow 😉

Monty X

[pic is from here]

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