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.

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.