Slaying Dragons

John W. May

Narrative

Blood
Deep red
Rims a blade
Glinting silver.
"Is that the last of them", he echoes out.
His friend, peering down the cavern, shows doubt:
"I don't think so."
Both move in,
Cautious,
Slow.

About this poem

A friend of mine encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone and try a poetic form I've never tried before, namely, a tetractys (tet-tract-us). This form requires five lines of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 10 syllables in succession (rhymed or unrhymed). My try at it is a double inverted tetractys.

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Submitted by Vixility on August 19, 2023

Modified by Vixility on August 20, 2023

: 12 sec read
: 27 Views

Quick analysis:

Scheme	ABCDEEFGHF
Closest metre	Iambic dimeter
Characters	187
Words	40
Stanzas	1
Stanza Lengths	10

Full analysis for Slaying Dragons »

John W. May

John W. May has lived in Colorado all his life. He currently works in the field of ophthalmology and loves to mountain bike and read about history. John first became a lover of poetry in 2008 after having read a poem by John Milton. He has been reading and studying the works of various poets since. His favorite poets are Emily Dickinson, Fyodor Tyutchev and W. B. Yeats. more…

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Vixility
Fun poetry form to play with. I actually have a few other ideas that might work well with it. Glad I ran across your own impressive piece.
LikeReply 18 months ago
JokerGem
Nicely done, pal. To diagram a scene so well with a limited pallet--well, this just reads like a snippet from the page of a story that people would love to read the rest of... challenge fulfilled✍️
LikeReply 18 months ago
- Vixility
  I felt some of my past/present tenses of the original seemed to show some contradictions, so I did edit the poem a little so that all of it falls into the present tense.
  
  Again, this was a fun form to work with—thank you for recommending it! more »
  LikeReply8 months ago
- JokerGem
  I’m glad you took my suggestion! And you did a double inverted like me but you can always keep going (if you’d want) and start with one again...for the constrictions, there still are possibilities...everyone bites on that story-telling style- that’s just not a strength of mine. more »
  LikeReply 18 months ago

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"Slaying Dragons" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/166868/slaying-dragons>.

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Quiz

Are you a poetry master?

How may lines and syllables are in a Japanese Waka poem?

A 50 syllables in 7 lines

B 30 syllables in every other line

C 31 syllables in five lines

D 15 syllables in 7 lines