Comments on "Dee Park"

Dee Park

That bloody park is found across the road

Vagrants exploding in every mode

Mongooses and green monkeys roam

Toads paddle in twisted foam

Tainted colors explode

Where foul scents abode

In land-filled loam

Ants decode

When gloam

Falls

(April 2006)

Genre      -               Syllabic Poetry

Form       -               Free Verse

Tags        -               Gothic imagery, decimeter

Comments on - Dee Park

The poem “Dee Park” falls into the genre of free verse but with some conditions placed on it. You are puzzled by this statement, no doubt. It is free verse because it does not comply with rules that apply to fixed form poetry. As long as poems do not comply with rules governing closed form poetry they fall into the category of free verse or open form poetry.

This poem glides along on syllabic count in which each line must adhere to a specific syllable count, and the length of the poem is restricted to ten lines as shown below:

Line       1          =          10 syllables

Line       2          =            9 syllables

Line       4          =            7 syllables

Line       5          =            6 syllables

Line       6          =            5 syllables

Line       7          =            4 syllables

Line       8          =            3 syllables

Line       9          =            2 syllables

Line     10          =            1 syllable

There comes a time when a poet feels compel to write dark poems, perhaps as a way to maintain equilibrium or to confront catharsis. Dark poems not only feed on such morbid images portraying death, suffering, and erosion of society’s moral compass but about anything with a dark twist. Dark poems are cathartic in nature and Gothic by birth. Gothic poetry or Gothic horror merges elements of horror and romance. “Dee Park” is a short poem and falls into the category of a modern Gothic poem. The imagery painted leads the mind to thinking of those obnoxious, pesky creatures bundled with sense of polluted waters and vermin like ants excavating the loam in the dusk for whatever reasons cannot be pretty, for dark deeds tend to be prevalent in the haunting silence of the night. Gothic foot-prints are evident in “Dee Park”. 

Among  my favorite American poets, Edgar Allan Poe  is in the loop and he wrote Gothic poetry as seen in his poem “Alone” shown below.

Alone

From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were; I have not seen

As others saw; I could not bring

My passions from a common spring.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I loved, I loved alone.

Then- in my childhood, in the dawn

Of a most stormy life- was drawn

From every depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still:

From the torrent, or the fountain,

From the red cliff of the mountain,

From the sun that round me rolled

In its autumn tint of gold,

From the lightning in the sky

As it passed me flying by,

From the thunder and the storm,

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view.

(Edgar Allan Poe)