Rictameter

[Jason Wilkins]

My cousin Rich and I created Rictameter in the early 1990's when we frequently engaged in regular poetic contest during the weekly meetings of our self-invented order, The Brotherhood of the Amarantos Mystery, which was inspired by the movie Dead Poet's Society. It's a cyclical form that represents life expanding from birth and returning to the beginning again at death. I enjoy centering the justification so that it makes a diamond or circular shape indicative of this continuity, however, it is not required of the form.

The first examples of the rictameter form to be made public were submissions made by myself to the website www.shadowpoetry.com in 2000. These are the first two poems created by Rich and I, so many years ago.

Satin

As your lips are

Pressed to mine as velvet

Soft and full with rounded sweetness

Two gentle petals alive with the night

Misted in the summer beauty

Of rains that shower love

'Pon your lips of

Satin

submitted by Jason D. Wilkins

Treasure

Placed in your view

So close but out of reach

Torturous to all your senses

For they each cry aloud to possess it

Their desires forever unquenched

For the things some want most

They cannot have

Treasure

submitted by Richard W. Lunsford, Jr.

I'd like to see what everyone else can do with the form. I have truly enjoyed reading so many gifted poets push this form towards perfection over the years. Its acceptance worldwide has been incredibly humbling and awe-inspiring as well.