Gorgon

I've written a couple of posts here about poetry, specifically, my love of certain works of certain poets. And in my very first post on poetry (in which I concluded with the final dozen or so lines of Tennyson's Ulysses - the apex of English poetry in my estimation) I made sure to emphasize that I am no poet.

I am no poet because I think poetry scares me. Much more than writing fiction, be it science fiction or fantasy or whatever, does. Because poetry bares your soul quicker and greater than any other form of writing. You're exposed, immediately, plain and simple. So, I've shied away from that literary form, despite being an avid reader of it, precisely because of the fear that it causes in me.

But I have written some poetry. Nothing great, mind you, but okay by my standards. I've written four poems, exactly. An epic children's poem entitled Pumpy the Kin (inspired by characters created by my wife), a Latin-ish science fiction poem in heroic meter, a poem about a gladiator about to enter an arena, and the following poem, Gorgon.

Gorgon's okay. I like it, but not the way I like some of my better short stories or my two novels. It's written in what is called cinquain form. What's a cinquain? Well, there's haiku, as everyone knows and probably has given the old college try, which is a three-line poem of 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and 5 syllables. Another type of poem is called the tanka, which is a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable-line poem. The cinquain is a poem with 5-line stanzas, with a syllable-per-line pattern of 2-4-6-8-2, and when I wrote this poem, sometime in 2002, that type of pattern appealed to me.

Gorgon

Cold dread
The viper’s lair
He treads stone steps softly
Sword glint pierces the unholy
Snake hair –

She hears
Stirring from dream
His gaze in polished shield
Backwards thrust slices and flesh yields
It screams –

And dies
Blood flesh and bone
Sizzling reptile face burns
Eyes wander down too late he turns
To stone –