A close up view of White Clover. It is hard to believe that this is a common weed!

It is day 30. The final day of poetry month and my challenge to myself to do a new poem and form each day. And surprise! I did it!

For the record, this month I explored the following poetry forms: Alouette, Free Form, Lune, Cleave, Shadorma, Palindrome, Ottava Rima, Triolet, Cascade, Fibonacci, Lai, Imayo, Sijo, Luc Bat, Epulaeryu, Terzanelle, Tetractys, HexSonetta, Sedoka (a Katouta x2), Minute, Tanka, Etheree, Than-Bauk, Bref Double, Alliterisen, Haiku, Limerick, Reverse (not to be confused with my own quirky creation, the ReVerse…more on this later…), and finally a revisit of the Cleave…I had forgotten I already did this form and it is, after all, one of my favorite forms! Of course there are so many other forms…classical as well as new forms being created to this day. This brings me to my ReVerses which have nothing in common with the Reverse poetry form.

As is my weekly practice, I like to look back, lifting a line from each poem of the previous week to create a ReVerse of my words. it is something I started doing years ago when I first started to write. I always have a favorite line in each poem and thought it would be fun to create a new poem using those favorite lines. I have not found a form that does this in all my research, though there is the Cento, which is a collection of lines from the poems of several authors – not a writer’s own work.

Inspired by the many classical and experimental new forms, I am left with only one solution. To create my own new poetry form!

And so I give you the Shi Sai (pronounced SH-ī with a heavy inflection on the Sh and a silent second s). It is Japanese for “re verse” or “re poem”. I used a Japanese translation because many of the earliest forms of poetry originated in Asia. And it has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? To make it official:

The Shi Sai, a form created by Kat Myrman in April 2016, is a poem created by taking one line of verse from several poems of an author’s own collection. The shi sai is done as a review of a series or collection of poems and therefore, each line should flow in chronological order of the dates the poems were written (from oldest to new). The lines chosen should be the author’s favorite from each poem. This form works best if the author resists the temptation to read the full new poem before all the verses have been added. (It helps one to resist the impulse to change a line to make it “fit”)

And so, I give you my shi sai then, on this last day of April. A look back at an amazing month that has one last story to tell!

something’s amiss with your mind
a dizzy streak of laser precision
it won’t be a secret
time to weep, to let things go suspended in cerulean blue
new life on the wing
moments of clarity
they say in time the truth will be revealed,
like moth to flame is drawn into the light
off to do our business then
it follows strict rhyme
minds, spinning in sound bites,
my garden thrives in a compost
releasing is an art, you know
drunken noodles sweating
I remember you in spring
extremes of longing, that bend on a breeze
our secret morning trysts
promise in a glass half full
bestowing grace
between cool silken bedsheets
heavy droplets descend
waning runs red
souls revealed line by beautiful line
waxing poetic perfection in words
graced in amaranthine blush
then one day she fell down
you hardly speak anymore and
turn to ash aching for warmth

kat ~ 30 April 2016