The dripping spigot

On the eve of a new day (“At last!” some say), a new form—new to this venue, this shadow of the universal Below Dunster, that is—a new form that we hope will usher in, drop by drop, the cool contents of a new era of Dunsterian fecundity.

The dripping spigot lends itself to pith, mirth, and myth alike. It is based on a descending number of syllables in alternating lines (see the boldface) and an ascending syllable count in the other lines (italics):

3 . . absentee
0 . .
2 . . ballots
1 . . are
1 . . in
2 . . demand
0 . .
3 . . great demand

The only other requirement is that the last word of line 6 (which may be the only word of line 6) be repeated as the last word of line 8. It is through this repetition, spilling from line 7’s subtle or screaming silence, that the lightness or the depth of the poem will typically be enforced, and through which the reader, aware or unaware, will absorb the tightness of the artistic piece. [If that last phrase launched in your spleen a fairy backflip (layout, not tuck) of Proustian remembrance, it may be that you have encountered it already on page 52 of Yours Truly’s thesis “Intrusion, Fusion, and Illusion: Vladimir Nabokov and the Artistic Rearrangement of Reality” (a terrible titular denouement following a sonic and semantic tour de force of introductory ascension and the standard colon-peak), where I disagreed with Page Stegner—the same—as to the significance of the number 36 in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.]

A caveat: newlings may be tempted to disregard lines 2 and 7 of the dripping spigot, as they contain zero syllables, but the essence of the form is captured in the poet’s consideration of these lines. Do not think of them as spaces, but as crucial lines that happen to contain no syllables (for a related, though distinct, phenomenon see “On certain names,” January 23, 2005).
Some examples:

. . . . . .

On, Vixen!

Santa
needs
you
big time

so big time

. . . . . .

Alexis

nectar
of
God’s
meadow

my meadow

. . . . . .

Edelweiss

Trophy
Of
Alp-
En quests

Rugged quests

. . . . . .