The following is the first 11 stanza section of a character’s perspective in my next novel manuscript. I plan to have three different parts that are 33 stanzas of 10 lines each and are divided into 11 stanza subsections. The spacing doesn’t translate to formatting here very well, so just keep in mind that 5 rhyming couplets makes up a stanza. I wrote the following in a little over a week in a pocket notepad during my spare moments.
First silver-gray hints steal in through the window pane.
Dull thuds and thumps of rising labors wake the brain,
As world comes new to I who sing its growing song
Swaddled in blankets— morning child of rosy dawn
In name, not hue; the clouds allow no faint pastel.
Ubs Rosarum, as a scholar’s heady words might tell.
The bitten crescent apple on the shelf a tale,
An artifact of time told in the dark then pale,
Then dark again, not marked by numbers’ butchery,
But told in song and rhyme and magic reverie.
Out of the cocoon of sleep— down pale feet, off sheet!
Soles find weathered boards, bones hang from cords in meat.
Cast curtain back, bask on the wondrous avian perch
To spy the early workers as they stride and lurch
Still half sleeping in bright colors of rough-hand trade
With percussion boots in fleeting nocturnal shade.
Lines hang between windows, like a spider’s snare
That catches shirts and trousers suspended in air.
Cheery gargoyle withdraw from your beloved seat
Don coveralls and place your own boots on your feet.
Cool water from the sink, brief blink into the mirror,
A small courtesy to any who might see her.
Dark, tired brown eyes that bear no crease of care
And greet each morning under tousled, shiny hair
Of tiger’s-eye gleaming— diamond in the rough,
As Urbs Rosarum is, I’m made of tougher stuff
Than one can see upon a fleet bird’s dancing glance.
A pot of coffee boils to break the sleep-drunk trance.
Silver sky turns steel-fire with the hidden sunrise,
As shadows melt and purpose starts to crystalize.
Down, down to the street, thermos hanging at my side
A hot, metallic missile jangling as I glide
Past two steps at a time in haste but not to moil,
For the journey there is worth more than common toil,
To see the urban spine, heart, hands and fingernails,
The hard-eyed yet soft inside engine that travails
To keep this teeming city dangling from it’s thread,
Swollen, tired beyond its time, and beset by dread
That it may fail the charge of refuge in a time
When to turn away the desperate seems a crime.
Urbs Rosarum, the bulwark of our failing coast,
The emerald valley blessed to play the gracious host
To a new trail of tears driven northward by drought,
Fires, bloodlust, quakes and floods in numbers beyond count,
Some speaking tongues thought lost to faded history
And those freshly lost themselves to the chemistry
That steeps the streets and pools inert with waiting gleam
For one false step, poor luck, a youthful broken dream,
And like a fly in syrup you submerge down, down
Two steps at a time to struggle, limpen, then drown.
I turn the mind to happier things on the walk
To Lincoln Street Station in blooming hope to talk
To someone on the train and be the world’s cheery
Eyes and ears and voice, the mirror of itself as me
Within itself along with someone new to be
The partner in this dance of life with life so free
And easy when you understand that your only
Calling is to make another soul less lonely.
Be kind to me, oh city. I play a foolish part.
Perhaps you’ll humor me and will not break my heart.
I take the orange line north and the red line east,
Changing trains at Pioneer Place, another long beast
Bearing blue and white and whining through the angles
Of the urban grid amid the morning tangles
Of bicycles and electric cars, as the drones
Hover ever over with everyone on phones
Around me. I’ve never understood, although
I was born in it and ought to thirst for the glow.
But one must be the eyes and ears and voice, the mirror
When all other gazes are cast down, I am the seer.
Once on the red line, I spy my hapless victim
In the back, a young man alone and looking prim
In his collared shirt and tie, a gently furrowed brow
Of concentration above an anodyne scowl.
He’s absorbed in work that’s taking all his focus,
And he does not notice when I approach his locus
With a sly smile and take a seat across the aisle
To watch him furiously tap and type a while.
He sees me once, with a glance perhaps mistaken
That a strange girl gives him a feline, devious grin.
This town’s full of a staid and unadventurous
Type of women like librarians, serious
With cloying public morals and yet no sweetness
And no genuine love for life or simple bliss
In being part of the mess they claim protector
Status over while they seem content to lecture
The ones who have to live among it every day
And must be kind because they know no other way.
But let’s not make this song my catty means to sneer
At all the other kinds of women who live here.
To tell the truth, I’ve always rather talked to men
Because they have a simple manner of open
Conversation where things mean what they mean without
Too much linguistic mysticism to cause doubt
That what is said is said and nothing more remains
Unspoken yet assumed to make it to your brain.
Before I’m called a traitor to the fairer sex,
I love my dear mother, and she never expects
An eerie telepathic bond of woman-mind
Assumed commonly by some others of our kind.
He steals a glance at me again for the briefest
Flash while I’m lost in thought, and I decide it’s best
To pester him directly and end the silent
Swinging dance of heads and eyes and show my talent
For unwanted conversation wherein I tend
To win the person over and with charm amend
The unnatural awkwardness of my invasion
Into their calm oasis of introversion.
I cannot claim success with everyone I’ve met,
But at least this morning’s song will be a duet.
Marty Writes 
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