Septolets

The septolet is a modern 7-line, word-based form with two stanzas depicting two related subjects. The stanzas can be any size as long as their combined lines add up to 7 and their combined words add up to 14.

Notes

Septolets are good for messing with linebreaks and larger breaks, since they're required in such a small format. However, I sometimes find the requirements a bit stifling—there are poems here that'd probably be better with a looser form.

For a while I mistakenly applied another rule, which is that the two parts need to each have 7 words (they don't; the 14 words can be divided any way between them).

Poems

1. 2026-01-20

   The hinterland skulls
   spent all their words
   on winning
   and losing.
   
   …silence
   	rules
   		the plains…

2. 2026-01-06

   Birds wheel
   and panic!
   
   Trees
   stalk the fields,
   ridden
   by shadows,
   heading for sunset.

3. 2026-01-04

   Above white-washed cliffs,
   we offer up
   just
   words.
   
   Below,
   our ferment
   rots the firmament.

   ---

   This started off as a two-stanza Crapsey cinquain contrasting on the one hand a people willingly numb to war, Leviathan above white English cliffs, and Hobbes' war of all against all, and on the other hand the world below (seen as churning slime by those above), in reality the firmament above reflected in dark waters where the celestial mechanisms spell everyone for everyone. I couldn't get it down in a way I liked, so I stripped it down to something more straightforward. I might go back and see what I can do with the original idea—maybe something in prose?

4. 2025-12-19

   Angels and devils
   rage throughout heaven,
   but…
   
   The
   cosmos
   drowns
   in streetlights and sirens.

5. 2025-12-17

   At
   world's
   end,
   they harpooned the sun.
   
   Dead red light
   gave birth
   to darkness.

6. 2025-12-13

   Salamanders heave-ho
   beneath the cauldron
   in God's
   bonestrewn kitchen.
   
   Apocalypse
   ferments
   above the hearth.

7. 2025-12-08

                      to their weeping creators—
                     up
                    fall
   Ghost leaves               longest night.
                                         in
           All lovers reunited

   ---

   If you use text-to-speech software, the poem above is silent, because there was no easy way to structure it in HTML (unlike a previous septolet with unusual structure). The poem's text reads as follows: “Ghost leaves fall up to their weeping creators— / All lovers reunited in longest night.”

8. 2025-12-07

   The oak
   in repose.
   
   Rugged
   fingers of moss
   nestle
   into calloused crags
   and breathe.

9. 2025-11-26

   Soapy skeletons chatter,
   chip, and
   shatter,
   leaving
   migratory skulls.
   
   Nervous wreckage
   comes to life.

10. 2025-11-16

    Riding cosmic highs,
    we chase
    false suns
    into
    blinding
    oubliettes.
    
    Bathroom light's dim today?

11. 2025-11-15

    The communal brain
    maps the city.
    
    Hostile
    geometries
    shred the brain
    to supermarket
    mincemeat.

12. 2025-11-05

    A fossil parasite
    lays living stones in bones.
    
    The
    long-
    dead
    king
    gives birth.

13. 2025-11-03

    The river
    	flows
    like smoke
    from
    untended flames.
    
    Embers hit the banks,
    becoming words.

    ---

    Took a little HTML to get the third line to read right while having the right underlying text for TTS. Anyway this started vaguely inspired by an early part of Sleep Has Her House.

14. 2025-10-30

    It's easy,
    	looking
    	back.
    
    Glaciers
    parade down mountains
    and last breaths are newborn
    sighs.

15. 2025-10-25

    Great patriotic
    hams
    and servile, trussed-up
    saints
    conscript pig legions.
    
    Butchers mop
    with flags.

16. 2025-10-23

    Through smoke,
    the one-eyed man
    sees three eyes
    in the mirror.
    
    Past,
    present,
    future.

17. 2025-10-02

    The scrimshaw skyline fades.
    
    The bones of the
    clouds
    fell
    aeons ago
    this
    morning.

    ---

    This is a rework of a free-verse poem from the same day. I prefer that version; I only came back to write this septolet because I tried using the septolet form for the original before deciding to use free verse. I do like that the line lengths in this version are more uneven, like a skyline, but I think all the linebreaks of the form serve the phrasing poorly.

18. 2025-09-29
    The Garden on the Rock

    The
    	tongue
    -tied Serpent sighs.
    
    God's experimental
    garden
    grows
    more alien and perverse each day.

19. 2025-09-22

    When Noah built his Ark,
    the heavens
    opened their mouths,
    
    And
    Time
    Fell
    Out.

20. 2025-09-06
    Labour and Birth in the Land of the Sunset

    You satisfy
    our nationwide
    necropolytic septic tank
    till
    it
    bursts.
    
    Blood and night soil!

21. 2025-07-12

    They didn't have
    rain before the Flood.
    
    Just
    pitter-patter
    and tep-tep-tep-tep
    and ssssssssss
    unremembered.

22. 2025-06-17
    The Miracle

    The roadkill,
    more lively after death.
    
    Fat maggots
    and foolish
    hands
    perform
    the miracle.

23. 2025-06-09

    Cranes
    retreat
    behind the horizon,
    dragging the stubborn skyline.
    
    Crows
    fly backwards
    into monasteries.

24. 2025-06-08

    The willow,
    Samson,
    weeps.
    
    Greenflies rage against the gardener Delilah
    in great
    sympathetic
    swarms.

25. 2025-06-08

    A blind
    streetlight
    plays solar idol
    to an auditorium
    of whispering leaves.
    
    Dawn
    falls.

26. 2025-05-30

    The fernal chorus
    sings
    to green old gods—
    hymns
    without words.
    
    Mother Moss
    answers.

27. 2025-05-28

    Tree stumps,
    weather-worn,
    so
    full
    of cold forgiveness.
    
    The chainsaw's
    at the dentist.

28. 2025-05-26

    Clean circles
    where too-heavy flower pots stood.
    
    A
    silvered
    soft
    cat
    cleans his coat.

    ---

    Reworked the same day as a two-stanza free verse poem. Not sure which one I did better with.

29. 2025-05-25

    We lead children
    between repetition
    and eternity.
    
    Children
    try
    to make sense
    of us.

30. 2025-05-13

    Infinite
    oily hues
    cascade from the gigatanker.
    
    Banal suits
    profess
    the evil
    of rainbows.

    ---

    Took a recent fragment forwards.

31. 2025-05-12

    The broken
    night watchman
    drinks
    liquid mathematics.
    
    His autopsy of learning
    continues
    past bedtime.

32. 2025-05-12

    Crocodiles
    lurk in puddles
    where children play.
    
    Adults
    wipe their boots,
    cleaning off
    blood.

33. 2025-05-10

    Lilies-of-the-valley,
    tolling for trees.
    
    Grimacing,
    a dryad
    revs
    a stolen
    chainsaw.

    ---

    Treating all four parts of “lilies-of-the-valley” as separate words since they're not just affixes.

34. 2025-05-10

    Anti-archaeologists
    find false
    futures
    in the past.
    
    The Futurist
    zoetrope man
    spins himself apart.

35. 2025-05-10

    Algae
    chains the shipwreck
    in the chasm.
    
    Ghosts
    of passengers
    contemplate
    reincarnating as fish.

36. 2025-05-04

    You glare
    so
    hard
    at
    me.
    
    Tar drips down the wall
    behind the mirror.