Tuesday, April 24, 2012

PAD Challenge Day 24

Today's prompt from Poetic Asides is the weekly "Two for Tuesday" prompt, and a theme that Robert Brewer brings up once every month that there's a poem-a-day challange: Write a love poem and/or an anti-love poem. NaPoWriMo's prompt is to write a "lipogram" poem - that is, write a poem that doesn't use a certain letter, or letters, of the alphabet.  Variations on this include the "Beautiful Outlaw" (write about someone but don't use any of the letters of their name), and the "Beautiful In-law" (use only the letters of the person's name - the longer the name, the better, obvously).  I took up this challange by writing a love poem that doesn't use the letters L, O, V or E. This was much harder than it sounds, and a lot of common words (like "the", "of", "for", "you", etc.) had to be excluded.  Since I couldn't end any words with "e" or "ed", either, I found myself relying on a lot of participles.  I consider this more a semi-successful writing exercise than a good poem, and the meter could certainly use more work, but here it is for what it's worth:


L-O-V-E-less Poem

A strict dictum binds my writing
and it’s hard, I can’t say much,
but I admit, my bright hyacinth,
with that parfum wafting such,

I am dizzy in my mix-up;
it can mystify guys in May,
infatuating us with whiffs
in air this stunning spring day,

attracting us with juicy buds,
disarming us with charms,
making us thirst with anguish -
I’m pining for hugging arms.

My daisy, my pansy, my zinnia,
attracting my mind with a kiss,
I am asking: impart sympathy
with my quandary, intriguing miss.

My dawn starts with bright sunrays,
my night wraps up dusky dark,
I’d say thanks if I was with a maid
watching stars in tall grass in a park.

3 comments:

De Jackson said...

I can't believe you got yours to rhyme in verse! Fantastic! You need new words for "embarrass" and "begging," though. They contain the letter "e."

I did this today, too; the second one actually with the word LOVE, like you. The only way I could think to truly double-check myself was to highlight the whole poem, and then do a "find" for the letter L, then the letter O, V, and E. If they came up, I had to tweak or switch a word.

Yours is so awesome, I know you'll find a solution for those two rogues. ;)

Bruce Niedt said...

Thank you, De, for the heads-up, and to Joseph Harker, too for finding yet another elusive "e". All fixed!

De Jackson said...

Excellent fixes! Sorry I missed one!