Elevenies

I ran across a description of one of those novelty verse forms someone invented, usually during the week before someone writes about them. Most novelty verse forms don't get much use. The Elevenie is a word-counting form: five lines consisting of one, two, three, four, and one word in that order. Basically it leaves room for one sentence. The first word/line names a subject; the two-word line is the predicate, the three-word line further describes the predicate, the four-word line describes the effect of the action in the predicate, and the final word/line names the outcome.

Thus:

Elevenies
compress thought
in arcane form,
leave thoughts scant room:
unused.

Some newly invented forms, like the Fib, or newly transplanted forms, like the haiku, catch on and become popular because they instantly suggest potential. Word-counting forms are less popular than forms that rely on rhyme, rhythm, or alliteration. Some word-counting forms do appeal to more than one poet; the dverse.com web site features a weekly collection of 44-word quadrilles, and elementary school teachers have kept cinquains and diamantes alive. Somehow the Elevenie does not seem to be inspiring a lot of people.

Well, it inspired me...but my Muse is sarcasm.

The rules of poetry allow anyone to invent a new verse form. Word-counting forms are easy to invent. I confected one for a science fiction poem; maybe, when today's phone addicts are geriatric patients, verse forms based on "Write a sentence, break it into phrases, then repeat the same number of words in the same number of lines in each stanza" will have become popular--who knows? Anyway I thought the effect sounded futuristic because it didn't sound "poetic" to me.

Still, fair and square, if you make a word-counting form recognizable through repetition people can tell that it's a poem not prose. What do you think? How well do elevenies work in batches?

Leaves
are rippling
in the wind,
showing their pale undersides,
pre-storm.

Wind
blows low
through humid air,
a moment of relief,
pre-storm.

Petrichor
is a
name for the
scent on the wind,
pre-storm.

Is that a poem? You tell me. If any elevenies occur to you, please share them in the comments.

Note that "elevenies" are not necessarily connected with "elevenses," which is an aging British name for an early lunch eaten before tea at three and dinner at seven.