Form Challenges #5
QUINTAINS

This month's challenge is five 5 line poetry forms or Quintains. These forms are often used for much larger poems.
There are three related forms:

English Quintain

Sicilian Quintain

Spanish Quintain or Quintella.

ENGLISH QUINTAIN has no set measure or foot.
It has a rhyme scheme of a. b. a. b. b.

Fields we have planted

have ripened slowly to golden husk

soon they will be harvested

the air rich with wheaten musk

then fields once more return to dust.

SICILIAN QUINTAIN is written in Iambic Pentameter.
It has a rhyme scheme of a. b. a. b. a.

And on and on it goes through endless time

Never letting go of the person we love

Two souls always searching for a path sublime

Connected yet apart, always cognisant of

That to others they will always be a paradigm

SPANISH QUINTAIN (QUINTELLA) is written in eight syllables.
It has a rhyme scheme that can vary in presentation, but only two consecutive lines may have the same rhyme scheme.
In this one Mimi has a rhyme scheme of a. b. a. b. a.

Your quiet cries echo loudly with pain

I feel you suffer in silence

Comfort found in friendships gained

Honest open hearts lend true credence

Toss me the key, let's free your chains

We can also have a rhyme scheme using couplets with the last line linking back to the first. In this one Cyber uses a rhyme scheme of a. a. b. b. a.

A flickering flame on the wall

The sound of a coyotes call

The desert winds singing at night

Sandstorms dancing in the moonlight

Reminding lovers to recall.

I'm sure you will appreciate how graphic these last two poems are and yet so simple in what they say. It is may also be seen how a longer ballad can be created here, or by using three Quintella's we have a Sonnet with a cauda or tail.

Quintain Posts....Contents

Kathy Anderson: One Imagined.....Quintellas
Etain Druantia: Awakening...Free Quintain; Better......Free Quintain; Change......English Quintain
Leny Roovers: Anticipation; Half; Hedges; Moonlight
Rosa Rugosa: Between Projects.....Quintella
Teagan De Danaan: Black Widow......English Quintain; Metastasis.......Australian Quintain; Retribution......Spanish Quintain...Quintella

Kathy Anderson

One Imagined

Face of the sky looking down
Grace in your eyes expression
Green body of earth you see
Scenes play for viewing keen...
His face touching her body.

Arms of bowered roses feel
Charms for your emotions reel
Red petals of flowers we wrap
Bread laden with butter enrapt...
His lips move over her stemmed bud.

Skin of the lonely peeling back
Sin in these branches leaves alack
Blue skies meeting on horizons
True gardens magically make one...
His embrace round her a fact.

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Etain Druantia

Awakening

Into my life with silent footsteps,
an artist's strokes quietly painted my heart
as a master's melodic chords roused my soul.
No longer silent, my joy laughs gaily
at the brilliant colors and buoyant songs of our love.

-----

Better

She looks at photos of him and wonders,
"how can I possibly love THIS man?"
For he is not youthful, fit, or handsome
(in a societal determined sense, that is)
she hears their whisper, "could do better."

She answers the phone knowing it's him
calling from around the world, a day away
they laugh, and share, and flirt and she thinks
"how can I NOT love this wonderful man?"
his cover is battered but his soul makes hers sing

she is torn by those who think they know
and a heart with little confidence
until she recalls her empty life before
the many priceless gifts he's presented
she knows better than They, there is no one better.

-----

Change

'tis hard to change, even worse to let go,
while standing in fog, caught in life's ebb tide.
Afraid to say goodbye 'til we hear hello
of future beckoning with arms flung wide
So, fog? Or sun? Only we can decide.

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Leny Roovers

Anticipation

Your soft whispers in my ear
Bring you tantalizingly near
Though yet still far away
Sweet memories now betray
Confusingly my very senses

I feel your touch upon my skin
My body's heat from deep within
My nipples taut are reaching out
Your kiss they cannot do without
Long for relief that cleanses

Our fingers lightly touch and tease
Till all we want is swift release
The kisses that we love to share
Delay we can no longer bear
The final climb commences

Climax
At last is shared
Soft shudders of limbs bared
A loving kiss, a tender word
We sleep

-----

Half

I feel amputated without you
As if I am only partly there
Some days I don't know what to do
Without you life is just too bare
Your absence I can hardly bear.

In you I found my missing part
Together we'll be whole again
To get this chance for a new start
I could but dream of, when in pain
When I still thought I broke my heart

Yet now the scars are being healed
And trust and faith once more restored
I can show what was long concealed
What had been lonely years ignored
Our newfound love it all revealed

-----

Hedges

A week ago, it was Sunday last
I had the hedges cut around my house
They'd grown so high no light went past
The cutter was my former spouse
He helped to make a clearing fast

We worked in silence for the time it took
Though each of us was doing his own task
'tWas long ago we'd closed the once shared book
No need that day for keeping up a mask
Withdrawn we had revenge and spiteful hook

The light came back into my room
Assisted by the former groom
It was symbolic for the act
After the closure of that pact
No traces left of has-been doom.

-----

Moonlight

Last night I was awakened by the moon,
'twas bright and full and shone into my room.
Its light did penetrate my dreams too soon,
before they could have come into full bloom.
Because of that I fell into deep gloom.

The dreams had been so very promising,
they took me far away across the skies.
The moon however, caused the vanishing
of longed for loving and passionate cries.
The dream was gone, by moon changed into lies.

The only thing that was still left to me,
to chase away the feelings of dark doom,
was writing down these words to set me free.
When peace returned, I went back to my room,
in newfound dreams I joined my nightly groom.

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Rosa Rugosa

Between Projects

I wait for my boss to call me.
The phone silently teases me.
How could such boredom befall me?
Yet unemployment pleases me.
My career doesn't enthral me.

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Teagan De Danaan

Black Widow

"Step this way darling" he said
Touching her bare shoulder
Lustfully he led her to the bed
Take off your clothes he told her.
Every touch becoming bolder.

Smiling she let him have his way
Knowing the end justified the sin
Satisfied with what he would pay
And with release he felt the pain
As her venom took his life from him.

-----

Metastasis, the spores of Hell

Take good heed of the werewolf's bite
The Vampire and creatures of the night.
Those hellish creatures solid form
On which this evil feeds upon.
Have need also to fear this one.

In Lucifer's pits there grows a spore
Eating flesh, needing nothing more
Than blood or guts or living brain
Ne'r was a war with more victims slain
It's evil devised by Satan's insane.

Tell me a loved one who has not lost
Tell me in life what has been the cost.
The hero does not fear the bite
Of arrows or creatures of the night
Yet against this foe even he takes flight.

Watching loved ones eaten away
Growing weaker, more pained every day
We watch as father, as mother as husband or wife
Friends we watch painfully lose their life
And when once so strong and full of life

-----

Retribution

It made me smile hearing your name
having made me rue all those years
spent crying those frustrated tears
knowing you never felt the same
you were merely playing a game.

You and the Toad how you would laugh
watching me struggle on my path.
You and he gaining from my work
like a puppet who's strings you'd jerk
and in my sweat you both would bath.

I lost completely for a while
as the problems on me would pile.
Now the boot is on the proper foot
you are the ones covered in soot
I sip my glass of wine and smile.

-----

Should I

Should I kiss thee I think looking into those eyes
Knowing what we have started can never end.
Knowing that with the kiss and loving sighs
Our love will be forever never need to mend.
It started with a kiss and cannot end in lies

I have kissed thee, looked into those eyes
Now what has happened I hope never ends
Now I know thy kisses and loving sighs
Forever, loving, never need amends
It started with a kiss and cannot end in lies

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