“The Bonny Hind” as haiku:
Oh, my bonny hind
We laid ‘neath the green mantel.
Too bad you’re my sis.
“The Bonny Hind” as limerick:
I.
A fair maiden once met a young squire,
Of his name, though, she did not inquire.
With her brother she slept,
Then she realized and wept.
With a blade to her breast she expired.
II.
There once was a fair virgin sister,
And Jock Randall, he bedded and kissed her.
They discovered they’re kin,
Then she did herself in.
He survived as his sister’s incest-or.
“The Bonny Hind” as epigrammatic couplet:
I.
The sister joined her brother in the bush,
Found out, and in her chest a knife did push.
II.
He laid her down, then found she was his kin.
She killed herself—and now he’s packed it in.
The Ballad of Joe Hill as haiku:
Joe Hill spoke to me:
“Continue to organize;
No others have to die.”
“Tell All the Truth” as limerick:
Variations of truth should be told;
The entirety would be far too bold.
For like children we crave
Explanations that save
Our frail eyes from what’s bright to behold.
“Tell All the Truth” as haiku:
Don’t lie to us please,
But keep our feelings intact.
We like Truth slanted.
“Tell All the Truth” in rime royal:
Please do tell all the truth, but tell it slant--
You’ll find success in being indirect--
The truth is hard to swallow at a glance.
As many children’s fears are kept in check
With gentle explanations that protect--
The truth must be revealéd gradually
Or men will just refuse it naturally
“A slumber did my spirit seal” as haiku:
Slumber takes over,
leaving earthly fears and form
to rest with forests.
A death has me sad:
She seemed immune to death—but
Now she’s gone and died.
Sleep has taken you,
So softly, yet so unfair;
Grass grows on your bones.
“A slumber did my spirit seal” as limerick:
I once had a beloved who’s dead.
I forget her by climbing in bed.
In my mind she’s not old,
Tho’ she’s now hard and cold,
And I can’t get her out of my head.
“A slumber did my spirit seal” as villanelle:
An ice cold slumber did my spirit seal
I had no time for empty, mortal fears
She seem’d a warm thing that I could not feel.
I gazed—and gazed—but idle thoughts conceal
The touch of blades of grass and earthly years.
An ice cold slumber did my spirit seal
Did burning passions in me turn and wheel?
No motion has she now, no force, no tears;
She seem’d a warm thing that I could not feel.
She neither hears nor sees; there is no zeal.
All seasons through. Another debt; more beer.
An ice cold slumber did my spirit seal.
Thy course, bold lover of the sun revealed
—no matter she was Nature’s favored peer—
She seem’d a warm thing that I could not feel
We meet thee, like a warm and pleasant meal
But thankless Winter fatally appears
An ice cold slumber did my spirit seal
She seem’d a warm thing that I could not feel
“A slumber did my spirit seal” in rime royal:
Now you are gone; your bones do rest in sleep.
Your final breath was soft, without a care;
The hole you left in my heart was so deep.
Look to the sky, for you are in the air;
Wherever I go, you are everywhere.
Now you are in the earth, so safe and so sound.
And to my Heart and Soul you’re always bound.
Lines added to “A slumber did my spirit seal” to turn it into a quasi-English sonnet:
[Option 1:]
And always she precipitates;
In cycles self-propelled,
She falls and then evaporates--
In every state she’s held.
She touches me in gentle rain;
In slumber I drift home again.
[Option 2:]
Absorbed she is; no suffering,
No tumbled shell’s malaise
Would echo up a single ring
Through sublunary haze.
How sweetly though she did beseech
My soul beyond corporeal reach.
“A slumber did my spirit seal” as epigrammatic couplet:
I.
One day I dreamt about my sister dead;
The earth below became her final bed.
II.
I thought she’d never wither from her prime;
She’s now preserved in geologic time.