Thirteen Short Syllabic Poems

and a reader challenge

1. 
Mary Jones
had a lamb
that followed
her to school.

2. 
Mary Jones
had a little lamb
that was rather dumb.

Where Mary
went, that little lamb
was sure to follow.

3.
How
Now
Brown
Cow?

4.
Do you believe in magic?
Do you think life is tragic?
Is your approach strategic?
I might ask you seven times
if syllables lead to rhymes.
I might ask you seven more
Whether you are keeping score.

5.
The way
the sky
plainly
spreads out
above
the plains
reminds
me of
the way
the thought
of you
my love
always
lingers
over
the plain
mundane
this and
that of
my days.

6.
I hesitate to say
what motivates these lines.
But if you insist, then
I'll tell you it's from when
I kissed your ruby lips.

7.
Dylan Thomas was a fellow
who liked to write syllabically.
(Sometimes it can be difficult
to determine the number of
syllables spoken in certain 
words, especially if sleeping.
But let's agree "syllabically"
does in this case consist of four.)

8.
I can't easily
believe we did this.
We elected a
criminal to be
the president of
these United States.

9.
What is this for?
I asked the man
who handed me
a golden knob.
He just pointed
across the room:
a knobless door.

10.
I'm looking out the window at the gray sky.
It's been this way ever since I know not when.
The leaves on the limbs of the trees in the yard
Sway in the breeze and wait calmly for the sun.

11.
Shakespeare, too, counted syllables, but he
also imposed a pattern of stresses—
most often iambic pentameter.
(That's not what these lines are illustrating.)

12.
What is this thing for?
I asked the man
who had just handed me
a mysterious golden knob.
He just pointed
across the darkened room
at an ancient knobless door.

13.
What is this for? I asked the strange man
who had handed me a golden knob.
He just pointed with his magic wand
across the suddenly darkened room
at a knobless door that glowed like coal.

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Reader challenge: pair the above original examples of syllabic prosody with the labels below, as gleaned from The Book of Forms (5th Edition) by Lewis Turco.

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A. monosyllabic
B. disyllabic
C. trisyllabic
D. tetrasyllabic
E. pentasyllabic
F. hexasyllabic
G. heptasyllabic
H. octasyllabic
I. nonasyllabic
J. decasyllabic
K. hendecasyllabic
L. quantitative syllabic prosody
M. not normative syllabic prosody

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