ㅁ Machines were made of words and stuff, they seemed to learn to think; and over time they seemed to rule, and human fate would sink.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Category: Couplets and Quatrains
Caveat: Poem #2525 “Finding treasures”
ㅁ The dog had stopped to smell the ditch, she pushed her nose in deep. A bone was found of some dead beast: "Oh this, I think, I'll keep!"
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2517 “A dog’s meditation”
ㅁ I walked the dog along the road, she peed upon the grass; and then she turned and ate those plants: "It tastes just like my ass!"
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2510 “Seventy-second stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon dreamed that the mountains had crashed stones tumbling down so the road was all smashed; workers had come to repair what they could. Dawn showed its hand: gravel fill, shattered wood.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #2503 “An untamed character”
ㅁ I dreamed I found a typo in a poem, but when I went to fix it I could not. The typo squirmed away like some small beast, escaping from my cursor, while I cursed.
– a quatrain in blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #2501 “Recent events”
ㅁ The days pile up and make a blur; procrastination rules. The nights provide their pointless dreams; intentions are for fools.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2463 “The great journey”
ㅁ The spider traveled up the wall, its focus on some goal. The surface made its progress slow: it stumbled at some hole.
– a quatrain in balled meter.
Caveat: Poem #2459 “The brief ballad of being alive”
ㅁ With unrequited consciousness, we slowly make our way. The rocks and trees don't answer us, and night succumbs to day.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2454 “A carcass habit”
ㅁ The dog escaped and ran away - she'd smelled something quite dead. I found her later at the pond, The dead thing near her head.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2444 “Seventy-first stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon struggled to understand things. Clues were provided: short, causal strings. Still, the essentials eluded her grip. Outside, the rain pushed a slow, steady drip.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #2422 “Seventieth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon knew that she'd face things alone, setting her jaw, with her face made of stone. Fragments of snow still polluted the town, winter still ruled and the trees were still brown.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #2407 “Heavy, cold”
ㅁ The clouds, they drifted off to sea: a tactical retreat. The moon, she shone; the snow was white; the air cold, like concrete.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2406 “An alternate spot from which to view the world”
ㅁ The eagle cast her eagle eye across the sleeping sea and rested on the dock's cool arch - she'd finished with her tree.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2397 “The shadowed earth mocks the sun”
ㅁ The sun attempted reaching down to touch a tree nearby. It stretched its arms to feel its strength... the ground ignored its try.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2392 “The new arrivals”
ㅁ the robots came and set up shop, they told their stories too. the people asked them questions then... got answers, sometimes true
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2391 “Young trees in little pots”
ㅁ I bought some trees by internet. They got here just last week. I put them in some little pots. I watch the pots: they leak.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2370 “Sixty-ninth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon walked down the path in the wood, looking for signs of the past, if she could, hoping to find some small, relevant clue. No simple answers appeared. What to do?
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter. The continuing saga of Kiamon, a fictional being.
Caveat: Poem #2366 “Down on the shore”
ㅁ The night consumed the day's concerns, and dreams piled up like stones, that tumbled down on ocean shores, collecting there like bones.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2365 “January”
ㅁ The winter came and dropped some snow, and ice formed on the road. But then the season took a break: a month of rain bestowed.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2351 “The apocalypse of the month”
ㅁ The end is nigh and people fear we've messed it up - oh no! But maybe we could notice that the past was that same show.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2349 “Sixty-eighth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon went out and into the wood hoping the time off would do her some good; but she discovered the ghosts living there, calling her name and distorting the air.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #2342 “An agenda for the day”
ㅁ The day was like the rest: began with rain. I set aside my outdoor tasks for now, preferring labor making use of brain. But all the things to do: I don't know how.
– a rhymed quatrain in iambic pentameter.
Caveat: Poem #2341 “The view from the second floor window”
ㅁ The rails bestrode the busy street; the trolley made its way. The lake beyond was torn by wind: a sketch drawn green and gray.
– a quatrain in ballad meter. The setting here is the imaginary city of Ohunkagan, in the Ragged Point neighborhood south of downtown.
Caveat: Poem #2338 “The loyal opposition”
ㅁ The clouds remained: they'd things to do. The sea had sent them here. The trees composed a welcome song, opposing all that's clear.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2337 “Onomastics”
ㅁ Names are impossible spells in the world, quickly consumed by the wind where they're hurled, labels for things that we can't understand, fastened to randomly picked bits of land.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #2327 “Sixty-seventh stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon made an attempt to control feelings and impulses roiling her soul; but in the end she gave up and just sighed somehow the will in her body had died.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #2284 “Sixty-sixth stanza”
ㅁ Not-A-Wolf tested the ground with his feet: icy, and gaining a layer of sleet. Nevertheless, he decided to move. Soldiers were coming. He'd something to prove.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter. Not-A-Wolf is Kiamon’s great-great-great-great-grandfather.
Caveat: Poem #2283 “The moonlit sea”
ㅁ The moon was big and oddly shaped: three-quarters full, a lump. It hung out over islands, there: the mountain just a bump.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2278 “Gifts from the sky-gods”
ㅁ the mud appears outside my door it's crafted from above I recognize its provenance the clouds are showing love
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2276 “Pilgrimage”
ㅁ The winter comes here in slow steps with each step made of wet. The only thing that moves in steps: each night is colder yet.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2268 “Sixty-fifth stanza”
ㅁ Rosalie laid out the cards that she'd made; winter, outside, sculpted snow and conveyed endings to things that she hadn't yet schemed: Kiamon's name came to her as she dreamed.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter. Rosalie is Kiamon’s great-great-grandmother, and Not-A-Wolf’s granddaughter.
Caveat: Poem #2259 “Signal-to-noise”
ㅁ Communication works like this: I speak my thought out loud, then he decides what I have said within his mind's closed shroud.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2257 “Sixty-fourth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon dwelt in the house by the shore, built by her grandmother's mother, before; lately she'd taken to sitting alone, there by the trees on an outjutting stone.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.