Warm love, or: Glowing memories

Posted on by ben Alexander

A Cleave poem

in the form of two Shadormas

Chanukah festival
with bright atmosphere permeating through ~
filling our Jewish homes;
children’s hearts; families
has left glowing memories held together by warm love
lasting forever across gen’rations

How to read a cleave poem?

Simply:

  1. Read the left hand poem as a first discrete poem.
  2. Read the right hand poem as a second discrete poem.
  3. Read the whole as a third integrated poem.

Shadorma

  • The Shadorma is a Spanish poetic form made up of a stanza of six lines with no set rhyme scheme (rhyme is optional); 
  • It is a syllabic poem with a meter of 3/5/3/3/7/5;
  • It can have many stanzas, as long as each follows the meter.

#TankaTuesday

The above was written for Colleen M. Chesebro’s ‘Tanka Tuesday’ prompt.

Let’s write poetry together!

When it comes to partnership, some humans can make their lives alone – it’s possible. But creatively, it’s more like painting: you can’t just use the same colours in every painting. It’s just not an option. You can’t take the same photograph every time and live with art forms with no differences.

–Ben Harper (b. 1969)

Would you like to create poetry with me and have a completed poem of yours featured here at the Skeptic’s Kaddish? I am very excited to have launched the ‘Poetry Partners’ initiative and am looking forward to meeting and creating with you… Check it out!

54 thoughts on “Warm love, or: Glowing memories”

  3. This is so beautiful. Love how you’ve married the two parts into a whole, without detracting from the beauty of each separate part. Such a unique form: inspiring!

  4. Oooh an new form… I haven’t quite seen that before. I bet you could ‘Cleave’ with other forms too.
    If I look at the rules and they say no, I’ll do it anyway!! I’m a rebel that way!

    It is always a joy to celebrate together. We are lucky to have much respect in our interfaith family.
    Hope you and yours are over your ‘colds and sniffles’. 😀

        1. oh – you’ve got me… that would actually be quite hard. the letter limits are tough as they are without the cleave! but I could try… maybe I will eventually 🙂

  9. Fantastic David ! Top notch poem ! Your interest in writing different kind of poems is quite inspiring but your are far too high to catch up 👏👏👍🤝💐

  10. Shadorma’s one of my go-to short forms and clearly lends itself well to the cleave (at least in masterful hands like yours.) Great stuff. Thanks.

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