The 99 Poem Challenge (Fox-Trot-9) ✓

85. Onegin Stanza -- Don't Care Anymore

The 99 Poem Challenge
Fox-Trot-9

85. Onegin Stanza — Don't Care Anymore

I can't write anything! I'm doubting
   Myself with every word I write,
As if there is a critic scouting
   My words for countless faults, outright
Destroying every bright endeavor!
I'm sick of writing oh-so-clever
   Metaphors that my readers want!
   Why must my poems always flaunt
These rhymes with cryptic double-meanings,
   When I just want to write what's there?
   Some words of crystal truth can bear
A sharper edge with sharper leanings
   Of broken hearts and broken homes,
   On which my verse forever roams.

These rhymes cannot convey the shatter
   Of broken dishes thrown in hate,
Nor can allusions make words matter
   To those who do not feel the weight
Of your own world falling around you,
Where countless forms of hate surround you,
   Of screaming thunder, boiling rage,
   Yielding into a silent stage.
So now a lethal silence lingers,
   Choking the air with bitter thoughts,
   Tying your words in fearful knots.
So now I must type up with fingers
   The cruelest words I ever swore,
   In which I DON'T CARE ANYMORE.

(To be continued...)

A/N: The Onegin stanza, invented by Alexander Pushkin (thus, sometimes called the Pushkin sonnet), is a Russian verse form named after Pushkin's novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. It is a 14-line stanza written iambic tetrameter and using masculine and feminine rhymes.

Meter: Iambic tetrameter (with masculine & feminine endings)
Rhyme:

Line 1: a (feminine rhyme)
Line 2: b (masculine rhyme)
Line 3: a (feminine rhyme)
Line 4: b (masculine rhyme)
Line 5: c (feminine rhyme)
Line 6: c (feminine rhyme)
Line 7: d (masculine rhyme)
Line 8: d (masculine rhyme)
Line 9: e (feminine rhyme)
Line 10: f (masculine rhyme)
Line 11: f (masculine rhyme)
Line 12: e (feminine rhyme)
Line 13: g (masculine rhyme)
Line 14: g (masculine rhyme)