May Meme 11 - Someone I Love

Ah, "Someone You Love!" Now there's a dangerous title: ignore it, and you look stingy; write on it, and you offend everyone you don't mention!
I very nearly missed it, anyway, because one of the people I love decided to cry for an hour before settling to sleep in his cot, and then because I love him, I decided to try egg-free baking experiments so that he can have a birthday cake in a couple of weeks.  And somebody else I love was using my computer to write a sermon research some fun early church conspiracy theories.

Nonetheless - is it cheating if my introduction far exceeds the 100 word limit? - continuing the completely unintentional exploration of form poetry (I'm hooked now), this is a Double Tetractys.  A tectractys is a 20-syllable poem with the syllable count 1,2,3,4,10.  A double one does the same thing again backwards.  I don't think it has to reflect the words themselves, I just thought it would be fun if it did.

Someone I Love

Songs

make me

remember

someone I love

I hum along, but here's the curious thing:

did I recall the music first, or did

someone I love,

remember,

make me

sing?

May Meme 6 - Words

Although the weekend has made me miss a few (I may catch up later), today's topic of 'Words' was very inspiring.  I'm also enjoying my renewed love of form poetry.  This is a kind of Kyrielle; first I made it harder by adopting a difficult rhyme scheme, then I made it easier by making the refrain only half a line long rather than the whole line at the end of each stanza; then to even things out I made it harder again by repeating the refrain at the beginning and the end of each stanza.  I can't decide whether fiddling with the punctuation in the refrain counts as cunning or cheating.


Words

Words work for me, my employees
A quarter of a million strong
buzz round my head like swarming bees
as I direct: words, work for me!


Words work for me, I send them out
to fill each story, verse or song
Some I make whisper, others shout.
They wound, move, heal. Words work for me.


Words work for me: all except one,
the master to whom I belong:
and every word beneath the Sun
Cannot explain Word's work for me.

May Meme 3 - Black and White

For what the May Meme is all about, see this post.

True story -we have black and white china, including mugs on cuphooks.  Whenever I unload the dishwasher, I place my mugs in a certain order, alternating spots and stripes with their red companions in between.  Recently my husband was on kitchen duty and put every single one back in the right place.

Black and White: A Rondelet

It's black and white

I like my cups arranged this way,

It's black and white -

And when I came back home tonight

and saw the monochrome display,

I thought - I love you. We're OK.

It's black and white.