Can you help with the form of the poem "Black Monday Lovesong" by A.S.J. Tessimond?

There are numerous forms available to
the poet, and many versions of these forms. Form may refer to the poem's rhyme, meter,
or the actual structure that the poet uses to construct his or her
poem.

In A.S.J. Terrimond's poem, "Black Monday Lovesong,"
for instance, the author uses stanzas, but not the traditional four-line stanza. The
first stanza consists of twenty-two lines and the second stanza is made up of six lines.
We don't see a four-line stanza until the poem's final four lines. My impression of the
author's purpose, as he describes the dance of love—literally and
figuratively—is to mimic the physical movements a dancer follows, as well as the
emotional ups and downs that lovers experience as they try to follow each other
throughout the "fancy footwork" involved in a
relationship.

The first line uses repetition to convey the
sense that the poem's major theme concentrates on "love's
dance."

The rest of this poem concentrates on creating a
to-and-fro movement such as dancers follow, one leading the other, much the way the
emotional aspect of a relationship moves back and
forth.

The second stanza lists images all preceded with the
word "And," which make the lines appear to pass quickly, as if the dancers are spinning
madly out of control in their dance, and we can infer also, in their
relationship.

The final stanza makes use of a
deadly word on the dance floor: "falter." The dancers have
stumbled, the swaying motion and swift movement has ended, and both dancers seem to trip
along in separate directions, hoping to find their perfect "dance partner" somewhere
else.

In terms of the poem's form, it is important to note
the rhyme. Throughout the entire poem—except for the last two lines—the poem is made up
of rhyming couplets, which are lines that are paired together with the same rhyming
sound…found with the last word of each line. For example, the first two lines
rhyme—having the same sound found in the last word of each
line:

In
love's dances, in love's dances

One retreats and one
advances.

"Dances" and
"advances" rhyme. As mentioned, this pattern continues until the last two lines of the
poem that provide repetition, rather than rhyme, by using the same word at the end of
two successive lines: "time."

However, it is the meter
(rhythmic structure) in the poem that is essential in creating that two-and-fro motion
in the poem—but where we often find ten syllables per line, this is not the case with
this poem: there are eight. Where a line might consist of ten syllables (as with
Shakespearean sonnets)—with an emphasis on the second syllable…emphasizing five stressed
syllables in each line—this poet does not use such a form. Here the
stress starts on the first syllable, stressing every other
syllable.

In the following line, the syllable or word that
is bolded is stressed:

readability="6">

In love's
dan-ces, in love's
dan-ces...

The
hyphen in "dances" shows that the word has two syllables. This pattern of stressed and
unstressed syllables gives the poem a sense of swaying, as in a
dance.

The meter of the poem is
trochaic:

…a "foot" consisting of an
accented and unaccented syllable.

[A
"foot" is:
readability="5">

A metrical unit composed of
stressed and unstressed
syllables…]

Because the poem
has four stressed and four unstressed syllables ("feet"), it is written in trochaic
tetrameter.

Additional
sources:

http://server.riverdale.k12.or.us/~bblack/meter.html

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/lit_term.html