roina_arwen

Author's Note: This is a Cento (a collage poem), which is a poetic form composed entirely of lines from poems by other poets. I only use one line per author and have given them credit at the bottom, in the order that their line appears here. The only change I make is to add or delete a comma or period at the end of a line where needed, to help my poem flow in the manner that I need it to. Enjoy!

If It's Any Consolation...

I was not aware of the moment when
Forever ends. Never a moment holds
before a casket with a princess motif.
Having found the water behind a thousand mirages,
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
In your lifetime. A rush
to come and sit on a torn old abandoned chair
and sailing in the graying zenith of woe,
where the sleepless claim the stars talk.

He pushes on with right good will,
Patting goodbye, doubtless they told the lad
those final hours she couldn't speak,
but no one really expects us to solve anything
and here there is sleeping a buxom young girl
A spirit, though with human eyes,
your daughter's likeness must now remain.
For now, for guilty, for guiltless, no matter, the world offers neither
when she offered me as consolation.

(c) LJB 2025
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Stanza one credits: Rabindranath Tagore; Ishion Hutchinson; Kim Addonizio; Khaled Mattawa; John Keats; Katharine Coles; P. K.; Garrett Hongo; Chad Davidson.

Stanza two credits: Robert Louis Stevenson; Wilfred Owen; Michael Ryan; John Surowiecki; Johannes V. Jensen; George Parsons Lathrop; Richard Howard; Jeffrey Schultz; Hélder Faife.

Another Cento or patchwork poem, composed entirely of lines from other poets to create a new and unique poem for you. Each of the poets whose lines I have used are given credit (in order) at the bottom. Enjoy!

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"It Ain't Bragging if it's True"

This is the bar of broken survivors, the club of the shotgun, knife wound, of
these delicious improvisations we show each other,
Then, too, there are my soldiers, my great, invincible army,
who had been perfectly nice when last seen at a poetry reading.

Truthfully, I am not enough to steer clear of. To fall in love again,
Maybe I listened to the wind sighing and shivered,
I mistook the train for a thunder storm,
my adrenaline raging without cease.

You know as you feel that first solid slam you are lost.
It pinned the Amazon queen and her horse together
at a stone image serene in a neighbor’s garden,
Breathing the warmth into their soul.

A smirk emerges like a shark fin. Circles
haiku me into 17 bursts of blossoms & cold saki;
Trophies at head, and kelp for a winding-sheet
and was it exhaled in exasperation or ecstasy?

And all have one credential that entitles us to brag—
just a few highlights from my résumé.

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Credits Go To:
Joy Harjo; Vicente Aleixandre; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Juliana Spahr
francine j. harris; Janice N. Harrington; Joseph Millar; Rasheed Copeland
Catherine Doty; Tony Barnstone; Mark Doty; Arthur Rimbaud
Kristi Maxwell; Regie Cabico; Herman Melville; Barbara Ras
Emily Pauline Johnson; Nicole Sealey.