Cleave Poems by John Bevan.

Let us begin:

Here are cleave poems from our first contributor John Bevan.

His penname is Katanga at the Great Writing Website (where these poems first appeared).

A Cleave Poem: Dancing Girls

And now bring on the dancing girls
the girls who long lift their skirts
to dance all night from dusk till dawn
in pale moonlight but then are torn
_sleepless crying from empty dreams
__darkness dying or so it seems

Two cleaved haikus: Mourning Morning

Lightning cleaves the sky, thunderbolts crash down,
__taking dawn’s virginity, beseaching our forgiveness,
mocking morning’s peace as the birds scatter.

Two cleaved Senryus: Gain – Loss

_______search the internet look out for a word
has anyone found a name that means more than desertion
_________for our new baby and a lost future

Cleave poems: © 2008 John Bevan

Cleave poem: A new experimental poetic form.

In 2006 I came up with an idea for an experimental poetic form called the Cleave Poem.

One of my aims was to examine how something can be more than the sum of it’s parts and can be 3 in 1: synergy, fusion, co-operation, dialectics, marriage, interdependence, teamwork and The Trinity.

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.

Here are 2 of my cleave poems.

0000000000000000Cleave: Charm.

______________________Don’t let him charm you
don’t listen to his promises his words like birds
_____________scattering flies that flit from brow to lash,
________ready for your flesh, stroking feather kisses on your lips
__he squawks in expectation humming in your ears,
__flapping inside your skull as he lies next to you.
_____________________Don’t! Let him charm you!

(first published in Lights out & other poems: 26 July 2008.)

***

000000000000Cleave: (untitled)

_____The thief brings darkness, she waits
____he brings the sun for her love
_held beneath his arm her heart
the light of day blazes bright
_________he is united aching
_______with his lover now sightless
________he holds her blind from the sun

(first published in Ink Sweat and Tears: 9 April 2007)