The wisdom of not mixing tin and fluorine.
n.e.s. #73 of 480
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Monthly Archives: April 2020
NaPoWriMo, day 16: “glory bee”
For Day 16 of National Poetry Writing Month we are supposed to write a poem full of overblown superlatives in praise of somebody or something..
glory bee
beatrice the hearts are thumping
all for you around the earth
sheep are bleating joints are jumping
all proclaiming all you’re worth
listen to the canyons howling
fox hyena wolf and dog
even bathrooms start unscowling
toilets here and yon unclog
we’ve been well and truly goddessed
basking in thy benediction
glory bee though thou art modest
thou’rt the stuff of science fiction
thou’rt the stuff of epic poems
thou’rt the stuff of stovetop stuffing
thou’rt the awe of sherlock hoems
and thy pornstars need no fluffing
giggling thou art windchime musicks
casting spells with merlin’s magicks
half-and-halfing tea and mueslix
kissing off cyanophagics
bliss away our deepest sorrows
tiptoe through our thirsty psyches
aphrodite our tomorrows
fleet our steps with golden nikes
n.e.s. #72 of 480
Some oddly-cut slices from the loaf of life.
NaPoWriMo, Day Fifteen: “Uneasy Listening”
Today’s prompt: “Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem inspired by your favorite kind of music. Try to recreate the sounds and timing of a pop ballad, a jazz improvisation, or a Bach fugue. That could mean incorporating refrains, neologisms and flights of whimsy, or repeating/inverting lines or ideas – whatever your chosen musical form would seem to require! Perhaps a good way to start is to listen to your favorite piece of music and “free-write” for the duration of the piece, and then use what you’ve written as the building blocks for your poem.”
freewrite prep:
sometimes jackson browne is easy listening
sometimes less so despite his oiled voice
“lives in the balance” is masterfully unsettling
“sky blue and black” makes me cryabit for the loss
of my so great friend
but it is good to be uneasy
it is even good to wallow
as karen said she did
while playing beethoven’s “moonlight sonata”
which she said left her sopping
and jackson browne now sings
“if you ever need holding
you’re the hidden cost and the things that’s lost
in everything I do
YEAHHHH, and i’ll never stop looking for you…
that’s the way love is”
and the way love also is
is quicklikeabunny goneinaminute
when it’s at its best….
****
Geez Louise, did that open up a vein. All right, then, let us begin.
Uneasy Listening
In the course of one day
The mix tape may lull
and then excite
and then inspire
NEED A SKETCHPAD A PENCIL crankcrankcrank
and then the music fades without loss of volume
Because focus Because otherrealm Because it does not fit
AND Then there is a bit of discontinuity
And THEN the music returns to the ear
and the sequence is off
and the mood Doesn’t match
Through no fault of the performer
nor the receiver/it’s just a jump cut/that’s life
find McCartney/Lennon/Billy Preston/georingo
GET BACK
GET BACK
GET BACK twear youonce blongd
twiddle that dial
no–Why So Sirius?
Seek The Specific
Heal The Unease
find Jackson Browne
and let him sing for both of you:
I’M
ALIVE
And then get centered with Mitchell, Joni
with the roundabout
cyclic delight
“The Circle Game”
Gooooood…
And then Prine
Lost-But-Not John
“When I Get To Heaven”
smoke em if ya got em John
we love you
have a Vodka Ginger Ale for me
Ease
Restored….
n.e.s. #71 of 480
Mirror, Mirror, in the Cosmos,
Where is True Love we may osmose?
Kip Poe Syl II: the Acrostic
In a previous post I did a poem intertwining Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe and Sylvia Plath. “Kip Poe Syl” lent itself to an acrostic, but I did not do one. Now I do.
Kip Poe Syl
Khartoum beckons. Reaper reckons. Lass
Keeps fiendish company as love takes pass
Into Manhood-proving fateful fray
IF NEVERMORE & Daddy go away
Pip Pip hooray Bedeviled eggs go well
Parboiled plenteously here in HELL
n.e.s. #70 of 480
Nowadays, Friends, there seems to be a switcheroo in progress: Invention is the mother of Necessity. Invent a way to make lots of cars for cheap and a mere hundred years later the population explodes sevenfold, there are conflicts on a global scale, and some guy eats a bat and lays millions of people low. (That last is perhaps merely a rumor, but the disease is real.)
People in the arts MUST make things up as they go along, to slake the thirst for Newness. So here we are. Where are we going? We chase Tomorrow to find out.
Kip Poe Syl (NaPoWriMo 2020)
Day Fourteen, and here is a paste of the prompt:
“Today’s optional prompt asks you, like Alice Notley, to think about your own inspirations and forebears (whether literary or otherwise). Specifically, I challenge you today to write a poem that deals with the poems, poets, and other people who inspired you to write poems. These could be poems/poets/people that you strive to be like, or even poems, poets, and people that you strive not to be like. There are as many ways to go with this prompt as there are ways to be inspired.”
So I thought of the poets, and there are too many. Then my inner acrosticist took three cards out of the Rolodex: Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, and Sylvia Plath. All left their mark. All were driven and bedeviled and haunted. And they haunt me. I know the opening lines of “The Raven” and “Daddy” and I know all of “IF-” And Kip, Poe and Syl uniquely identify them with three letters. So there may be an Acrostic in the future…but I’m not feeling Acrosticky right now. But let’s see what happens.
Kip Poe Syl
Rudyard and Edgar and Sylvia Plath
Let us be shaped by this odd Threefold Path.
Let us get Kip for the blood and the bone,
Firmly embed in Testosterone Zone.
Poe is for Passion so darkly uncomic,
Endlessly rhymed with a beat metronomic.
Syl’s so unsilly, such willies she gives,
Pouring her hope into such porous sieves.
Put them together, you get KipPoeSyl,
Mournful and frantic as Hank’s Whippoorwill.
“Hear the lonesome Whippoorwill.
He sounds too blue to fly.
The midnight train is whining low,
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”
Hiram “Hank” Williams, Sr.
n.e.s. #69 of 480
Once upon a time, 1935 or thereabouts, Ogden Nash wrote a ditty about Sigmund Freud, thus:
Who’s afreud of the big bad dream?
Things are never what they seem,
Daddy’s derbies, Mama’s thimbles,
Actually are shocking symbols.
Still, I think, a pig’s a pig–
Ah, there, symbol-minded Sig!
I miss Ogden Nash.
n.e.s. #68 of 480
Memorializing A Sacred Kerchief.
One with Clay, Image and Text 