Boom Baby!
Best buds,
Constant whispers,
Turn the world on its ear.
A two headed hydra thunders.
Goes BOOM!
For this weeks Cinquain Poetry Prompt of BOOM.
© 2025- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
Wanted to let everyone know the Cinquain prompt from Mondays will be moving to Wednesdays starting next week with #3. I thought I would try Mondays again, like I did for 10 years with the Haiku challenge, but I don’t think it quite works.
For this weeks Cinquain Poetry Prompt of Magic.
© 2025- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
Abracadabra
Image
Disaster, revenge
Words of bluster and spin
Making failures to look like wins.
Mirrors!
For this weeks Cinquain Poetry Prompt of Magic.
© 2025- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
Gemini
Two sides,
One brain, two hearts
Confusion multiplied
Twice the amount of joy and pain.
Again?
© 2025- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
I’ve written a couple or more posts recently on how to write an American style cinquain developed by Adelaide Crapsey. But… sometimes I can get a bit wordy. So, let’s get unwordy.
If you like Haiku, which this blog has a history of, you’ll like the cinquain. It’s 5 lines with a syllable structure of 2/4/6/8/2. This isn’t by accident. Adelaide was a fan of haiku.
Here is an example of an American cinquain I wrote:
Remember
Away
To foreign lands
And dreams of saving hopes,
Reality of breaking hearts.
Look back.
I wrote about Memorial Day and the soldiers who went to war. Some had hopes and dreams of changing the world, saving lives, and bringing freedom where there was none. Many never came back, or have since passed away, bringing sadness to their loved ones. We remember those who we’ve lost on Memorial Day.
To write an American cinquain, I took the idea I just shared and made it as concise as I could, using the most descriptive words I could think of at the time. The first four lines are one feeling and are moving forward, with the final line flipping to look back and is related to the first line.
And that’s how an American cinquain often is. Here with ‘Remember’, you can see the relationship of ‘Away’ and ‘Look back’. It can be seen in two ways. One way is those who have left, gone away, can look back after they’ve left, or secondly, it can be the loved ones looking back on the memories.
Now that you know how to write one, join the prompt each week. Leave your link in the comments of that week’s prompt and people might visit your blog to check it out.
© 2025- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
Keep Moving
Hopeless.
The days, long, and taxing,
With unending smallness,
Fall over my old sanity,
Be strong!
For this weeks Cinquain Poetry Prompt of The Light.
© 2025- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
Remember
Away
To foreign lands
And dreams of saving hopes,
Reality of breaking hearts.
Look back.
© 2025- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
It’s time for a new poetry style and prompt that begins next week.
The Cinquain or more precisely the American Cinquain.
My Example:
Old Days
See how
The sun rises,
Breaking over beauty,
Filling the senses with heaven
Then fades.
You can see the pattern above is as follows…
5 Lines with each a given number of syllables as
2
4
6
8
2
An iambic foot with the stresses by line being
1
2
3
4
1
For the first line of the poem there will be two syllables with one stressed syllable and that one being the second one, which establishes the pattern.
The Cinquain most commonly used is the American Cinquain created by Adelaide Crapsey. Although she did not write down specific rules for composing one of her Cinquains, we have a form from people who have studied her poetry and have found commonalities in her works, those being the syllable and iambic foot, stresses pattern, although the iambic foot is not a requirement. The other characteristic is storytelling, compacting a feeling or scene into a few short lines and syllables.
Two Adelaide Crapsey Cinquain poems:
November Night
Listen . . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.
Trapped
Well and
If day on day
Follows and weary year
On year . . . and ever days and years . . .
Well?
© 2025- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
When you took your history, you thought it a boring lot.
You didn’t know; it was telling us our plot.
If you don’t know what happened you won’t know what’s to come.
I don’t regret saying this, the country’s made a lot so dumb.
Maybe that was the plan, to not let them know.
While they’re consumed by the screen, we’re controlling the show.
And when things are quiet, best be on your guard.
Because in the silence, they’re breaking in your yard.
© 2025- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
Strength is found in sympathy,
giving rise to dignity,
while each finds it differently,
people stand alone.
©2024- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
Once upon a time, you believed you mattered.
That time and space and even seas were shattered.
The space lying between the atoms, a place to dream of better.
All the world weariness and pain soothed letter by letter.
Perils abound around a personal Eden.
The clock slips and the barrier beaten.
A question of doubt, a global event?
Some say a detriment heaven sent.
The atoms collide, the spaces closed.
The seas crashed, time and space… did implode.
Lying broken in a tangled mess, you wonder if you had given your best.
If you did, then what now?
How?
Days go by, the hours flow.
The months pass, the years grow.
Time heals? But does it now?
Or does it hide, cover, and disavow.?
Each disaster must learn how to make a deal.
Even if the contract to carry on is not real.
© 2014-2024- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
I’ve been doing the Haiku Challenge for a long time. If I were to go until #520 it would be exactly 10 years. There has never been a missed week of a challenge. That’s through hurricanes, power outages, stays in the hospital, illnesses, and just not feeling like doing it. #500 is about to come out and that will be the last one.
The challenge began during a time in my life where poetry was a big part of my healing after the accident that pretty much changed my life. Trying to come up with the prompts each week may sound easy but when you try not to repeat too much, wow, it’s just something else.
It also help lead to my not writing poetry. With the end of the challenge I’m hoping I will want to begin writing again.
To those who’ve stayed with me all these years, I thank you for that loyalty… or insanity… or OCD nature. There will be other things I’ll be sharing, so it’s not like the end of the blog and only the Ovi Challenge will be the lone post each week. It’s just I’m not a super blogger like I was back in the beginning. That’s not why I blog.
Much Respect,
Ronovan
The way to freedom is a line,
straight or a meandering vine,
circling and entwines,
never to join the beginning.
Do not think to what came before,
gone to be left evermore,
in the path you score,
what happens in a river?
As troubled water flows it pounds,
eroding till what was left drowns,
tumbling til it washes down,
the stain of its memory.
There are so many things, that I cannot see what they mean.
Never knew it was temporary, fool be me.
Reality hits but doesn’t hurt until I feel it.
Making waves is not an occupation but a final destination.
Given a blank check to the heart’s infatuations, to bad the date was an expiration.
My confusion is not an exaggeration.
No longer breathing now I’m alone, can’t scratch the surface of the undertow.
Stories go to the end, but the book never closed.
My words are senseless unless you know.
© 2014-2023- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
Not all life is about life, it’s about living as well.
Playing in the in between moments of need, want, loss, and fear.
Relenting to the everyday only leads to the everyday.
For the Sijo Challenge this past week.
© 2014-2023- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
Respect Part One
by: Ronovan from Life
Yes
We All
Are Aware
Of Your Ogles
And Your Staring
Of Your Cat Calling
And Of Your Compare
Your Blood Flowing
In One Direction
Your Brain
Caught
Up in
Yes
Crude
Immature
And Vanity
Filled Inspection
Not Anyone’s Piece
Nor Their Property
Nor A MidNight
Boy’s Fantasy
I Am Brains
Beauty
All
You’re
Weak And
Feeble Of Mind
With Ego Fractured
Y’All Don’t Understand
Why We’re To Be A Man
A Mature Being of Life
Appreciates Beauty
Intelligence And
God’s Creative
Masterpiece
Woman Is
For Life
Honor
Love
Air
© 2014-2023- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
Take solace there is hope of better times.
From the cycles of change of the past.
The soul has survived lifetimes.
The mind questions unasked.
© 2014-2023- Ronovan Hester Copyright reserved. The author asserts his moral and legal rights over this work.
Often I use a prompt word with the intent of using a synonym instead. The reason I don’t use the synonym in the PROMPT itself is because it might seem limiting. I know not everyone uses the links below to see what the possibilities are. See if you can use a synonym this week for one of the words above. But you don’t have to.
Useful Links for Synonyms at Thesaurus.com:
To know how many syllables in a particular word try HowManySyllables.com.
How to Write Haiku in English. And how to do a Pingback.
The Guidelines:
Often I use a prompt word with the intent of using a synonym instead. The reason I don’t use the synonym in the PROMPT itself is because it might seem limiting. I know not everyone uses the links below to see what the possibilities are. See if you can use a synonym this week for one of the words above. But you don’t have to.
Useful Links for Synonyms at Thesaurus.com:
To know how many syllables in a particular word try HowManySyllables.com.
How to Write Haiku in English. And how to do a Pingback.
The Guidelines:
Did you know the Green Sea Turtle gets its color from the algae and seagrasses that it eats in its herbivore diet. Also, sea turtles cannot retract their heads or flippers into their shells.
Useful Links for Synonyms at Thesaurus.com:
To know how many syllables in a particular word try HowManySyllables.com.
How to Write Haiku in English. And how to do a Pingback.
The Guidelines:
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