Ascension by Mark Harris

This is a style of poem is called a villanelle, and it's my first attempt at creating one. It's a French form, consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. The rhyme scheme is ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA; it was a challenge to get everything to fit. The last line of each stanza ( and the last two lines of the last stanza) are repeats of the first and third line of the first stanza. It'll make more sense when you read it. 

Ascension

Fly, fly through the boundless blue

Hark to the call of the sun

So the world will remember you.

Look to the light, keep it in view

Soar through the sky ‘til time is done

Fly, fly through the boundless blue.

No choice but to continue.

Higher, higher, Daedalus son,

So the world will remember you.

Almost time to say adieu,

You climb too high towards the heavens.

Fly, fly through the boundless blue.

The wax of your wings will burn through

Blinded by light, Blind to reason

So the world will remember you.

Icarus, the one who flew,

Scorched by the flames of the sun.

Fly, fly through the boundless blue,

The world will remember you.

Guest Post - 'Memories of a Life', by Joshua Akinbami

Clinging to memories like leaves on trees;

In autumn, let them fall and rest to bed,

As a mind on regret cannot be free,

For if I worry they will wreck my head.

They cut deep like words from a loved one,

Nesting themselves in your very fabric,

Waiting for a moment to sing a song

Which vibrates to your very being, so tragic.

But you must dance with fate and meet your doom,

For within it is the beauty of Daphne:

Opium of the gods, so do not gloom,

Be joyous and happy for what now you see.

What lies in your mind is all poetic,

Deny this fact and live to regret it.

Guest Post: 'Passion' by Joshua Akinbami

Is it wrong to want to be immortal?

Time reminds me that this body is weak;

It shall go back to the earth, it’s mortal.
I have not long to become what I seek.
Full devotion to thy highest passion;
Dionysian sacrifice to art;
What my heart beats to, saneness in question.
This I love shall kill me, this my escort
Through varied dimensions, through history;
It may seem hubris but can I not live?
My life fading away in a hurry.
I long to awaken and feel alive, 
Before my bones dry and my soul is dead,
I must create art, it is this I wed.

The Crooked Stile and The Black Forest by Mark Harris

I've been having a go at poetry over the last week or two, having started it with my uni course, so here's a couple of them. Nothing too fancy here, no iambic pentameter or Old English alliterative verse, just two scenes that came into my head. Enjoy!

The Crooked Stile

                        Stands solemnly

      All on its own

                On it is carved

A heart once red

                    But worn away

The Black Forest

Her grubby, grasping hand reaches through the leaves,

As a cold wind tears through the black forest.

The trees whisper, the wolves howl.

Heart racing, she quickens her pace.

A murder of crows explode from above her,

Black wings beat to a cacophony of chaos.

A lashing branch paints a red line across her cheek.

She cries out with a deadened voice.

On and on she runs through the maze,

Lost and disoriented, as Cimmerian days crawl by.

Eternally running through the black forest,

She runs away from her nightmares.