Under the Lamppost - The FFS

 Tanka Tuesday No. 264

Create Your Own Syllabic Form 

"Create Your Own Syllabic Poetry Form & Teach Us How to Write the Form"

Oh, boy, Colleen!  This one was the most stressful, and I think I had it easy since I hauled out something I worked on a few years ago and never posted.  It was a possible U for the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge.  I recalled it was fairly syllabic, and found that nearly each line was 5/4/6.  So, I worked on those lines that needed work, pleasantly discovered (after missing the "inspired by..." part of the rules) that I could attribute my inspiration to another poem!  After the fact.  Oops.  You know what the hardest part of this challenge was?  Giving "my" form a name!   I guess that is pretty obvious!

Also, note that I did search for a named form with the syllable count of 5/4/6, and found none.  I also added a rhyme pattern. 

Inspired by The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens (one of my favorites if only for Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird), consisting of tercets.  Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird includes three tercets as well.

The FFS (for Five/Four/Six)

• any even number of tercets, paired
  
• the end word in the last line of each pair of tercets rhyme, a different rhyme for each pair of tercets
  
• that is, rhyme pattern of  

       xxxxx

       xxxx

       xxxxxa

 

       xxxxx

       xxxx

       xxxxxa

       xxxxx

       xxxx

       xxxxxb

       xxxxx

       xxxx

       xxxxxb

       and so on

• punctuation optional
• title optional
  

 

under the lamppost

meet me, I said

we’ve alibis to make

 

I'm under the gun

somebody told

they know my name’s a fake

 

I’m underwater

I’m sinking fast

I’m pretty well undone

 

I take all the blame

to you alone,

but now I've got to run

 

I’ll be under wraps

'til this dies down

a year, no less, at least

 

I have been under

their watchful eyes

I'm judged to be a beast

 

under the table

or so I thought

now under watchful eye

 

be understanding

I’m overwhelmed

but not so that I’d lie

 

my sources ran dry

something went wrong

my plans have sprung a leak

 

pretend you’ve moved

asleep in bed

when asked, we never speak

 

I now have to go

deep underground

until the coast is clear

 

I have to hurry

under the gun

take this from me, my dear

©2022 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved

#tankatuesday #syllabicpoetry #theversesmith #FFSpoetryform #tankatuesdayno.264