Creativity Forms Verses ~ Metanome

David of The Skeptic’s Kaddish and Sangeetha of Mindfills began a fun poetry partnership in April. We celebrated writing together a 100 verse renga The Hyakuin, Ripples. And within days, decided we would absolutely love to continue our writing collaboration and celebrate what has grown to be a warm friendship with new poetry projects.

We decided to explore poetry forms. A to Z. Each week one of us chooses a poetry form the other responds to. We completed our first series Form verses creativity in June ’22. We knew we’re on to something. So we wrote the next set of poetry forms A to Z ~ Creativity Verses Form. Here, we added a little twist for version2.0, with a key word starting with the same letter.

And now, and in December ’22, we’re onto our fourth collaborative writing project ~ Creativity Forms Verses. To form verses, we turned to creativity, inventing new poetry forms, A through to Z.

For ‘M’, David created the ‘Metanome’ form.

M: Metanome

David’s Metanome

Every day,
I put time aside for poetry.
I have to,
Lest the hours escape me entirely.
It's as though
My inner metronome runs on verse.
The rhythm
Of the day fades to a slurred murmur;
Leaves me to
Stare up at the wall clock sluggishly 
Until that
Moment when my fingers touch the keys
To compose
A portrayal of my present thoughts
And new words
Push away that heavy morning fog.

Sangeetha’s Metanome

Moments
Words yearn to paint
Linger 
For hours on end
Tugging
The sleeve of time
Gently
To hear rhythms
Of life
So that today
This verse
Rewinds the clock
To your
Cherished moments.

Metanome?

Line count: The Metanome has an EVEN number of lines;
- Lines alternates between short (S) lines and long (L) lines;
- The first line is an ‘S’ line, followed by an ‘L’ line;
Syllabic:
- All ‘S’ lines have the same number of syllables;
  - All S lines must have either 2, 3, or 4 syllables;
- All ‘L’ lines have the same number of syllables;
  - All ‘L’ lines must have a number of syllables, which is a multiple of the ‘S’;
- Possible syllable counts:
  - If the ‘S’ lines have 2 syllables, the ‘L’ lines can have 4, 6, 8, etc. syllables;
  - If the ‘S’ lines have 3 syllables, the ‘L’ lines can have 6, 9, 12, etc. syllables;
  - If the ‘S’ lines have 4 syllables, the ‘L’ lines can have 8, 12, 16, etc. syllables;
Thematic: Every pair of lines (‘S’ line + ‘L’ line) must include at least one time-related word.