A Paradelle (Challenge)

In a cruel joke on myself, I must note that. I chose this life, the life of a poet. I accepted a challenge to write a Paradelle, see the link for description.

I take a lot of pride in my ability to know and write in a wide variety of poetic forms. There are a few form I haven't tried yet. I do enjoy when presented with a form I hadn't heard of before, or written. A paradelle my boyfriend said, a parody of the Villanelle, see link for explanation. Both forms are strict in their form, with line repetition and rhyme in the case of the villanelle.

I was already into today's writing, so I decided to try it. It'll be easy.

Yeah, once I read the description, I kind of started to doubt my abilities. But, I also don't give up easily, except with a Sestina. I keep bringing that form up. It really need to share that poem sometime. I wrote a truly terrible sestina in college, for a poetry class. It was bad! So, a paradelle is a repeating poem with four stanzas; the first three have repeating lines that are the same (a, a, b, b, c, d), but the last two lines use all of the words in the first two (four) lines. In the last stanza you have six lines; using all of the words from the whole poem (only once for each word). It is a jigsaw puzzle of words and sense.

I did it though!

Note: as a challenge to you, Dear Readers, if I double used a word, or missed a word completely. please leave me a comment. I will revise and resubmit, because I am that type writer.

Crystal Forest Fracture

Outside, the middle of the forest

Outside, the middle of the forest,

Where nary a soul will set foot

Where nary a soul will set foot,

A soul, middle of the outside,

Set foot where nary the forest will.

Where the world begins to fracture

Where the world begins to fracture,

Built of ice and crystal

Built of ice and crystal,

Crystal begins to fracture and

The world of ice where built…

...that will not last through the midwinter

...that will not last through the midwinter,

The empire will fall in the Spring

The empire will fall in the Spring,

The Midwinter Empire will last not through

That will fall in the Spring.

In the Spring,

In the middle forest soul begins

To fracture and

Nary a foot will set in the ice world.

The Empire built of crystals will not last

Through Midwinter that will fall.