the saMe old but never Monotonous soMehow

is for Monorhyme

Monorhyme means “single-rhyme” (compare monochrome, monologue etc) and uses the same rhyme sound all through. It was a feature of ancient Arabic and Latin poetry.  It is also used in Welsh poetry.  Some of the pre-Islamic Arabic poetry called Qasida (praise poems eulogising a tribal bigwig or military commander) used a single rhyme for poems of a hundred lines or more.  Some poets hunh? kudos!

My attempt is more modest.  I'm sure the ancient Arab poets would have shuddered at enjambment (that’s one line spilling over to the next), and they would have followed strict rules of syllabic counts and beats etc, but I have chosen not to.  This is my version of the Arabic monorhyme, presented as couplets only for ease of reading.  I just don't like to read huge blocks of unrelieved text, especially if it's poetry.

A left-handed compliment for the Hibiscus

 

The hibiscus is my flower, forget the forget-me-not!

The tulip is way too frigid, and the rose blooms too hot,

the tuberose wishy-washy, very special old pale fusspot -

tries to pick perfume over looks ends up being caught

somewhere in between; okay, nice enough smell but nought

to look at. Some red-white carnations you brought

like crumpled business papers from the office, I thought.

The lotus is high-status, nothing lowly about its lot

except where it grows in the mud, totally overwrought

with its schedules of open and shut, nervy, narcissistic, shot

to pieces with its own importance in worship, and a spot

of symbolism, spare me all that forever. And don’t allot

a space in the vase for marigolds either, smell like dry rot

even at their cheerful best; the sunflower’s more of a sunspot

if looked at closely, they have the darkest hearts, so what

if the rest is bright? The orchid’s too showy, the jasmine a dot,

the lantana much too small.  Surely no-one ought

to have flowers forced on them. Even tied in a love knot.

The sweet pea is so not me, is that what you’ve got?

The hibiscus is my flower, don’t tell me you coolly forgot!

Halfway through already, my god!  Have managed to keep to the schedule of both posting and reading targets, so far so good. Discovered some new blogs and generally having fun.   





Posted for the A-Z Challenge.