Category Archives: 8 8 8 4 8 8 8 4 8 8 8 8 4

Counting Shleeeph

For the sake of keeping in step with Jane’s Challenge “A Month with Yeats” – Day 4, I offer this silly little verse. I had been working on a lovely, mystical yarn on and off today, and dozed for a second with my finger pressed on the cursor, deleting all but a few words. Gone forever! Of course I couldn’t remember what I had written, and with the day fading, I plunked these lines together to satisfy the task at hand. I’m not as happy with it as I had planned to be…but maybe that is the point of Yeats’ words, in the prompt for today:

“…till the morning break

And the white hush end all but the loud beat

Of their long wings, the flash of their white feet.” W.B. Yeats

I’ve sensed their presence late at night
swooning close to count my breathing
‘midst restless dreams and tiny deaths
until the dawn

I don’t know if they are angels,
faerie folk or something grim
every night I reap their favor…
another day

won’t say I am superstitious
but just in case they’re listening
I say a prayer my soul to keep;
it doesn’t help me sleep…for that
I count some sheep

~kat


Blame the Muse

 “… the dark folk who live in souls
Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees;” —W.B. Yeats

705px-The_Scream

The Scream, 1893 by Edvard Munch

incessant goading fills our heads
to do the dreaded things we fear
passion riles the weakest hosts
and blames the muse

but muses simply plant the seed
it’s passion’s fire that drives men mad
surrendering to wild extremes
renders us razed

yet middling is not the course
that moves faint hearts, nor feeds the soul
embracing darkness, shadow, light
each bearing virtues of their own
our angst assuaged

~kat

For Jane Dougherty’s Yeat’s Challenge Day 2 based on the verse above and using the “new” form suggesting a metered trio of stanzas with the following syllable count: 8 8 8 4 8 8 8 4 8 8 8 8 4 .