Back at Day 18 we were challenged to write a ruba’i which is a Persian form (multiple stanzas in the ruba’i form are a rubaiyat, like The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.) Basically, a ruba’i is a four-line stanza, with a rhyme scheme of AABA and has been often used in English such as Robert Frost’s famous poem Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening . I’ve been working on this for a few days. It began as a half-conceived idea from 2008!

 

Bubbles of reality

 

So here I am, a front-row seat

in Amsterdam, a cool-jazz beat

Modern Jazz Quartet they’re called

It’s ’57. Urbane. Sweet.

 

Chamber music’s Modern Age,

John Lewis piano-playing sage.

Lost in music’s interplay

my seat jerks roughly towards the stage

 

My earplugs and my iPod fall

I realise I’m not there at all

but on a bus with windows fogged

and in Japan, I now recall.

 

It’s hot in here but not outside

Commuters sleep all through the ride

We pass Himeji Castle, snow,

My reverie’s abruptly died.

 

I wonder if I’m really here

an Alien Resident for a year

or back at Home still sound asleep,

alarm about to ring out clear…

 

And so it goes, banality,

the bubbles of reality

like Russian dolls each bubble pops

I doubt my person-ality.

 

And when I die will I be less

than all a bubble can compress?

And will the final burst reveal

a mere sphere of nothingness?