A Little of This & That

While there are many poems written with rhyming patterns, free verse is usually my preferred style of poetry. That’s not to say I haven’t tried my hand at sonnets and villanelles and such. I have, and some of the results were pretty good, even if I do say so myself. But for me, struggling with meter and rhymes makes me lose track of what I wanted to say when I started the poem. Again, not always a bad thing, just not the way I like to write. When today’s prompt said to write a form poem or an anti-form poem (It’s a 2-fer-Tuesday.) I started thinking which way should I go—to form or not to form?

That was the question. I’m not anti-form, just anti-rhyming form, so I settled on writing poems whose form relies on the syllables in a certain number of lines. Funny choice really, since I’m not generally a numbers person, but there you go. And since these forms are short, I ended up writing several of them. None of them have titles, so I’ve left the name of the form with its line and syllable counts above them to give you a little clarity. I hope you enjoy them!

Haiku

5/7/5

Cold wind blowing through
windows and under the door
winter comes with it

Windblown snow flurries
seek cover under dead leaves
gone in the whirlwind

Shadorma

3/5/3/3/7/5

You say I
should think before I
say anything
Your eyes roll
scolding like I am a child
Take your own advice

Cinquain

2/4/6/8/2

Christmas
is coming soon.
That is what they tell me.
Forty-four days feels years away.
It's not.

Nonet

9/8/7/6/5/4/3/2/1

Overwhelmed by the things beyond 
my control, I want to curl up
into a ball, roll away
where no one will find me.
What I want can't be.
I'm forced to deal
with it, like
it or
not.

~Elise Skidmore ©2025