The Pistil of Dates is a dramatic poetic form intended to teach a moral lesson, originating in The Turquoise of Revolutions. The form guides poets during improvised performances. The poem is divided into three distinct parts: a quintain, a septet and a line. Use of elision is characteristic of the form. Forms of parallelism are common throughout the poem, in that certain lines often contrast underlying meaning, they use the same placement of allusions and they reverse grammatical structures. Each line has five feet with a tone pattern of uneven-even.