NaPoWriMo Day 13: Stairway between two flats

 
Day 13 of the NaPoWriMo challenge at www.napowrimo.net.
 
Prompt:
Finally, here’s our prompt for the day (optional, as always). Donald Justice’s poem, There is a gold light in certain old paintings, plays with both art and music, and uses an interesting and (as far as I know) self-invented form. His six-line stanzas use lines of 12 syllables, and while they don’t use rhyme, they repeat end words. Specifically, the second and fourth line of each stanza repeat an end word or syllable; the fifth and sixth lines also repeat their end-word or syllable. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that uses Justice’s invented form.

 
Stairway between two flats
 
The staircase twists steep out on the diagonal,
a casing for limbs, aghast lines, they cannot yield.
Carved triangular forms, shadows play in them all,
never done, never final. Motion cannot yield.
        The devil has no care here, chases lions ever still.
        In the end it’s just two silhouettes standing still.
 
A man breathes mist on a windowpane, blows a kiss
into the morning sun’s glare, wishing for a dove,
peacemaker in this time of marital non-bliss.
His wife has left, three hours ahead of this dove.
        He examines the emptiness of her footprints,
        asks whether this argument will outlast these prints.
 
Silence slides into glimpses of skin turned to stone,
muscles yielding, bones shielding, patterns in echo.
We slide like waters, parting, only to return
to our bedmate, fellow artiste in night’s echo.
        We mould each other, face the undeniable glitch
        in ourselves that tells us we’ve truly arrived, full-glitch.

 
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 13, 2025