This is my 15th year of challenging myself to write fourteen 14-line poems in November. You can browse past efforts here, or you could even buy one of the five little books I’ve made out of them – here. Pretty much all the poems are in the form of the Onegin stanza, so called because it was used by Alexandr Pushkin in his epic poem Eugene Onegin, which you can read in translation at this link.
This year, to make it more interesting (for me, and hopefully for my readers), I’ve added an extra constraint. The first line of the poem has to be exact words I read or overhear as I go about my day.
This morning, listening the Waleed Aly, Scott Stephens and Stan Grant on ABC’s The Minefield, I remembered to keep my ears peeled for an appropriate line, and got one almost immediately. (It’s mere coincidence that my first verse last year was also in response to the Minefield, and Stan Grant gets a mention in the comments on that post.)
Verse 1:
The presence of a word like evil,
words like vampire, demon, troll
on streets here on All Hallows' Eve'll
titillate a sinless soul.
Bloodied bones and headless torsos,
manic laughter from the shadows,
devils, succubi, afreets:
prelude to a bag of sweets.
Then we sleep, or read the papers.
Nightmares happen, fright gets real.
Hamas,Bibi, fossil fuels,
plastic, wannabe dictators,
all that’s precious bought and sold:
words to make your blood run cold.
I’ll try for something more cheerful in Verse 2.
Me fail? I fly! 