Guise

the cat's disguised as a cinnamon loaf
in the basket under the treadle machine
my arms are torn and the backs of my hands
the cat's disguised by his cinnamon bands

what the wind whispers it might not mean
my head is shorn      the backs of my hands
feel the first patters of an oncoming rain
this wetness whispers what i can't explain

a jet lays a trail of condensation down
over the splattery pattern of the rain
low low ceiling aglow with city light
jetstream dipped way down south tonight

in the basket on the treadle of the sewing machine
the furniture aflicker with candlelight
sandalwood aloft in the living room
cat's on his back in the guise of the moon

If you’re interested in this sort of thing, the form I’m using in this poem is known locally as the “randometer” after Randy Sproat, who invented it. My best description of the form is: A series of quatrains in which the first line of each stanza is repeated in the fourth line of the same stanza, and the third line of each stanza is repeated in the second line of the following stanza. End rhymes are optional, as is the number of stanzas, and no meter is prescribed, giving the name of the form its double meaning.

I don’t repeat the prescribed lines verbatim. That might be cheating, you decide. What I like to do instead is to borrow some feature—a word, a phrase, or something close in sound or meaning—from the first and third lines and repeat that. In this one I also borrow from the second line of the first stanza (otherwise the only line in the poem that does not “repeat”) for the first line of the final stanza and from the first line of the poem for the last line of the poem, because it makes me happy sometimes to bookend a poem that way.

So…are you interested in that sort of thing?

If you don’t mind, leave a comment, yea or nay.