Part of an exercise on another forum. aa/bb/cc/dd with 10 syllabuls in each line. I thought some of you might like this.

Masnavi

Up in the lofty air I breathe the smoke
That devils from below me never choke
While crusted eyes squint at brightest heaven
My skin peels and chars as darkest raven
My dim eyes cannot look into the light
Painful, seeping, longing for blackest night
To take away the burdens that I've borne
Return me to a place where I can mourn

BJH
2/28/2007

pt. two

Far below stretch miles of harried minions
Sound defining shouts of their opinions
Angered, turned to gaze on the scene repulsed
Rage without reason, mind purely convulsed
I, keeper to the evils reputed
Absent intergrity convoluted
From Inferno's bowels reached up and bitten
Cast aside all hope as it was written

BJH

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SWEET!!!
fallen angel in purgatory?

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Sort of looks that way. It didn't start out that way, but that's what developed after the first line. I got that and wanted to use "choke" as the rhyme and that's just how the cards fell.
Glad you liked it.

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yeah it was awesome!

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I'm going to add another part to it, I think. I'm having fun with this. I'll edit it into the first post.

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Had a very Indian-seeming name. For some reason the lyrics themselves to me seemed somewhat Vedic... Hmmm...

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This is a partial quote from where I learned about this style of writing.

"The masnavi is a poetic form of Ottoman/Persian origin. Its theme is usually of a spiritual nature. One of the better known is the Masnavi-i Ma’navi of Rumi, which consist of more than 25000 couplets. An abridged version translated by E.H. Whinfield, (1898) (this translation doesn’t rhyme, it is a literal translation).
The masnavi form consists of an indefinite number of couplets and follows the rhyme scheme aa/bb/cc/dd etc."

The fist stanza came from the first line and then twisted from my original idea of heavenly to more hellish. The second part I wrote couplets of words that rhymed and worked the lines into those. Purely my own ideas and I'm not even sure if that's "proper" in this type, but that's the way I did it.

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I really liked this.

I like wikipedia'ing things, and then sometimes I just say "wow, I want to write about that".

I like both parts. The only thing I don't like is rhyming smoke and choke in the first two lines. It's just one of those rhyme combinations that are too overused and obvious. Like rhyming bad and sad. I don't think the line is terrible either; it's just those two words. Could you substitute them and still keep the same meaning?

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I'm open to suggestions if you can come up with something that won't mess with the count in each line. I like those, but the second line wants me to say "on" at the end and that's a struggle.

Glad you guys liked them. I'm writing at another place and this was an exercise feature I was invited into.

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MUHAHAHA! Close I was...

Well, the Aryans came from Persia (Iran region) and conquered the Indus tribe and instigated their ways on them.

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