I, Sibyl
Eve. A cusp. I, tarot inebriate,
as ubiety under any star
commands, presage actions. Beloved icons
in this sky specked land, tealeaves do de-base
the lies men initiate for my yearned
heart-soul dream of dreamily undreamt love.
I piteously fronted a do-love
prophetic hue, inspired inebriates,
dry quivers imbue a heavy yearning
for deductive obscure clue foreseers: star-
gazers exuding madness or pax. Based,
refilled, I held tight to my tope icon.
Awaken o dormient sleep icon,
Previewing prophets see, within this love,
seers hidden within tarot era base.
For I scoured: looped schemes, inebriated.
Reawaken me, O opal polestar,
overrule doubts, crows I fed in yearning!
Oh, and though herbal teas bewitch, yearnings
ebb, breezing, and here fawned lodestone icons
bleed. Their brethren go on. But I, starlit,
solemnly abide by mentoring love,
standing as a saint, pawn inebriate,
I, O I mourned those dead runes: my pearl base.
I do declare that I proffered basic
cards. My future spawns rabid pacts. Yearnings
course through taut laughs in my inebriate
soul. Crystals shimmer, ceding to icons,
transposing- Aye! My eye falls to truelove’s
idle widows. But look- prophets stargaze!
I reanimate without clear star-filled
dreams, leaving proverbs, His only bases
unread. I, within the pentacle, loved
arcane hope. Parables- my soul yearning,
thoughts poured forward, thoughts of an iconic
beast! Me? thought I, Such an inebriate?
I, Inebriate, hold strong, calmly star-
searching, showing iconed futures. Basing
my runes’ yearnings all, never lovelier.
---
This was written in the Spring of 2010 as part of a creative writing course. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started this project. Well, I did, but I was feeling a little masochistic at the time.
It is a sestina, which pretty much just means that the six words that end each line in a stanza are all in the last lines of all following stanzas, in a set order. That's not too tricky. Each line has ten syllables, which is a pretty common constraint for this style of poem. However the real insanity started when I decided that my "official" constraint for the poem would be Pi.
In the rough draft, the number of letters in each word was determined by the digist in Pi. The first word, Eve followed by a period, and then A Cusp reflect the first three digits: 3.14. It continued in that way through every single stanza, line, and word for the entire poem. Contrary to the suggested time frame in my LJIdol entry, it took a few days to just get it down on paper, and by that point there was hardly any point in proof-reading.
For the final draft (shown here) I cleaned it up a bit. Added real punctuation (the original only had one period, all other sentence breaks used other forms of punctuation), shifted some words around so they made a little more sense. Pi is no longer reflected perfectly, but the words that pi forced out of me remain intact!
An I still have no idea what this poem is really about. Just sayin'.
as ubiety under any star
commands, presage actions. Beloved icons
in this sky specked land, tealeaves do de-base
the lies men initiate for my yearned
heart-soul dream of dreamily undreamt love.
I piteously fronted a do-love
prophetic hue, inspired inebriates,
dry quivers imbue a heavy yearning
for deductive obscure clue foreseers: star-
gazers exuding madness or pax. Based,
refilled, I held tight to my tope icon.
Awaken o dormient sleep icon,
Previewing prophets see, within this love,
seers hidden within tarot era base.
For I scoured: looped schemes, inebriated.
Reawaken me, O opal polestar,
overrule doubts, crows I fed in yearning!
Oh, and though herbal teas bewitch, yearnings
ebb, breezing, and here fawned lodestone icons
bleed. Their brethren go on. But I, starlit,
solemnly abide by mentoring love,
standing as a saint, pawn inebriate,
I, O I mourned those dead runes: my pearl base.
I do declare that I proffered basic
cards. My future spawns rabid pacts. Yearnings
course through taut laughs in my inebriate
soul. Crystals shimmer, ceding to icons,
transposing- Aye! My eye falls to truelove’s
idle widows. But look- prophets stargaze!
I reanimate without clear star-filled
dreams, leaving proverbs, His only bases
unread. I, within the pentacle, loved
arcane hope. Parables- my soul yearning,
thoughts poured forward, thoughts of an iconic
beast! Me? thought I, Such an inebriate?
I, Inebriate, hold strong, calmly star-
searching, showing iconed futures. Basing
my runes’ yearnings all, never lovelier.
---
This was written in the Spring of 2010 as part of a creative writing course. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started this project. Well, I did, but I was feeling a little masochistic at the time.
It is a sestina, which pretty much just means that the six words that end each line in a stanza are all in the last lines of all following stanzas, in a set order. That's not too tricky. Each line has ten syllables, which is a pretty common constraint for this style of poem. However the real insanity started when I decided that my "official" constraint for the poem would be Pi.
In the rough draft, the number of letters in each word was determined by the digist in Pi. The first word, Eve followed by a period, and then A Cusp reflect the first three digits: 3.14. It continued in that way through every single stanza, line, and word for the entire poem. Contrary to the suggested time frame in my LJIdol entry, it took a few days to just get it down on paper, and by that point there was hardly any point in proof-reading.
For the final draft (shown here) I cleaned it up a bit. Added real punctuation (the original only had one period, all other sentence breaks used other forms of punctuation), shifted some words around so they made a little more sense. Pi is no longer reflected perfectly, but the words that pi forced out of me remain intact!
An I still have no idea what this poem is really about. Just sayin'.