Alessandro Biffignandi

My shrine to Memento Mori by rococobean

Joyous tears, the river of progress, the trail ever on to freedom, the themes, the motifs, you get it.

The mile-long rainbow flag being carried down First Avenue in New York City.

sonnet for the uncanonical, 2025

written for two-bees escapril; the prompts are 'sonnet' (week one) and 'apocrypha' (day three). i will admit that this is probably only partially a sonnet; i've never been great with meter, but the rhyme scheme and structure is mostly there! i think. either way, i had fun challenging myself.

Amateur

Once upon a recent time, there was a poet who hated rhyme. For each and every rhyming verse, he’d gnash his online teeth and curse, with all pretension he could muster that “coupled rhymes are so lackluster.”

And on he’d type, re: rhyming schemes, and freeform style’s “depths of themes". And that’s all fine and well and good: I just don’t think the critics should concern themselves re: all the fun that I’ve had ( i.e. writing this one).

My words don’t care for gnashed teeth, or high art skill, or market reach. So he can sit and seethe and gnash. But me? I’ll sit, relax and laugh, cobble rhymes both bad and worse, and sprightly spring ‘tween every verse.

-- rococobean

Empathy

I have laid my hand over the pool of pain

Fingers spread, slow like I'll frighten it

Barely broken the thin skin at the top

Of the water you nearly drowned in

The cold sucked the breath from my chest

And I cried out and stumbled back

Clutching my burning icy hand

I stare at you. How did you survive this?

Does it ever go away? The furious ache?

I'm still gasping for breath.

You shrug. It hasn't so far but you should rest.

I should rest? What about you?

I'm trying. I'm so tired.

Tears gather in your eyes like crescent moons

There isn't enough time in the world.

I lay my new scarred hand on your chest.

Care in their caress

through pain pricked fingers.

Love in the weaving

of comings and goings

Pas de deux He was a mortician. She was a seamstress. They wove stories of coming and going. All the unanswered, the unclaimed, the unknown became secondary. There was a lot of rain across a parched earth and they only saw relief of the end of a dance. But one dance leads on to another and another. The joy is in the twists, the dips always righted.

AIMEE WAI