Day 27 & dVerse: The Devil rubaiyat

Today’s poem answers to two poetry challenges again. I think I might as well get it out: Hello, my name is Manja and I’m an overachiever.  

But first a very special token of gratefulness to Charlotte at Zouxzoux for a wonderful surprising mention in her yesterday’s poem. ❤ Blown away by the better written.

And now to today.

Challenge 27: “We challenge you to pick a card (from the tarot deck), and then to write a poem inspired either by the card or by the images or ideas that are associated with it.”

I knew immediately that I have heaps of photo material since I live 15 minutes from Niki de Saint Phalle’s Tarot Garden (Il giardino dei tarocchi), a sculpture park with one sculpture dedicated to every major tarot card. There was also no doubt which one I would pick.

Then I realised that dVerse ~ Poets Pub posts challenges every day, not every week one as I had thought, and again it was Lilian the Home Poet who spurred me into action. She wrote under her poem that it was

written for dVerse, where today Frank hosts, asking us to write a rubaiyat: a poem consisting of quatrains (stanzas of four lines) and, if using more than one stanza, employs a “nesting” rhyme pattern: AABA, BBCB — and each line is written in iambic pentameter. It’s a poetry sudoku!

I have admired a Frank’s rubaiyat before and upon reading this lovely invitation by Lilian knew immediately that I wanted to do a poetry sudoku too, with the nesting rhyme and all. Here is my first rubaiyat then. And if somebody told me two weeks ago that I’d be doing one, I’d laugh in their faces.

The Devil

The first time that I pulled the devil card
was when the actors’ troupe had made it hard
to miss it since one hanged it round my neck
and I was forced to act in this regard.

Then Niki’s Tarot Garden and her deck
were waiting for me to arrive and check
each statue to decide which one was best
at capturing my heart without a crack.

At first glance I stood still as if possessed.
Her calm stance made me think this was a test.
At once a thought formed in my weakened state:
“Out-Deviling the Devil is my quest!”

And here is the action in images, with various family members, friends, random kids and your photographer outdeviling Niki’s she-devil.

Photo: MeMa

Photo: Zedd