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October 30, 2015

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Photography, Poetry

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Squashed Sonnet

Gourds

Freckle Goblin wriggles under gourds,
tired by a night’s divine carousing.
Freckle dreams of youthful fun in fjords.
After chasing ghosts, he can’t help drowsing.
Boom! He wakes to sulfur scents and peril.
Freckle peeks. He spots fair Glisten Rue.
“Enemy!” he hisses, turning feral.
“Flee, you witch!” he snarls. She pouts: “Listen, you
ruined parties, chased a lovely spirit.
This will be your Halloween goodnight!”
“No, my lady,” Freckle shouts, “I fear it
will be you destroyed!” He swings his right.
Acorn squash, gourds and pumpkins tumble.
Mashed and bashed, she flees. Trip and stumble!
Goblins rule on Halloween night —
even scary witches flee with fright.

Copyright 2015 Brenda Davis Harsham

Pumpkins

Notes:

Happy Halloween!

The first 14 lines of this is a sonnet, rhyming ABABCDCDEFEFGG. It didn’t feel quite finished to me, so I threw in a bonus couplet for those trick-or-treaters reading to the end. For the meter nerds in the crowd, it’s written in trochaic pentameter. In plain English, each line has ten syllables, alternately stressed and unstressed, with maybe a few variations. It took DAYS to write!! Now that’s frightening!

This is linked to the Third Annual Spooky Writing Challenge at the Writing Works in Progress Blog. Also, this is my entry for Poetry Friday (if a bit late in the day), hosted this week by Check it Out. Yeah for poetry! Thanks to all the great poetry writers and fans in Poetry Friday’s crowd!

Poetry Friday Badge

31 thoughts on “Squashed Sonnet”

  1. I love your spooky challenge Brenda, it was worth spending days on it!! 😀 I think Freckle certainly knows how to deal with those witches! 😉 And I love your pumpkin pictures. Such a variety in the first one. We get so used to seeing the orange ones, it’s as if they are the only colour. Where did you find so many?

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  2. Pingback: Spook Roster | Writing Works in Progress
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  7. Thank you for sharing your impressive sonnet! Good luck in the contest! I love the narrative/dialog, to say nothing of the technical “stuff” that it’s too late at night for me to fully wrap my head around…But tomorrow..tomorrow I will re-read and more fully appreciate what you’ve created in “light” of the heavy-duty poetry technique. God bless you! Thanks!

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    • LOL No need to wrap you head around the technical terms unless you really love it. I’m learning more and more that good writing uses rhythm that works, kind of invisibly. But all this work goes into making it invisible. 🙂 Thanks for commenting.

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      • It’s all that work that keeps me fully challenged with a restricted (5-word) squeezed poem. Hats off to you. I truly am impressed (& bit intimidated). For a mixed metaphor: have my hands full just taking baby steps! ..God bless!

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