The Melody Exchange (a Modest Proposal)

November 28, 2013
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Often I will tell people who do not consider themselves poets of a poetry event coming up. Sometimes the response is “Ah, thanks, but I just don’t like poetry.” The technical term for most of these folks is Liars, especially if they have an iPod full of songs. Songs are poetry. That they are set to music is incidental.

Musical lyrics usually rely on stressed and unstressed syllable patterns that fit in poetic form (for instance, look up IAMBIC or TROCHAIC or ANAPESTIC if you are unfamiliar with those terms). A sophisticated songwriter like Paul Simon is not as yoked to stress pattern as most if he doesn’t want to be. (His word-economical “Overs” starts “Why don’t we stop fooling ourselves?” and ends “But each time I try on the thought of leaving you, I STOP/Stop and think it over…”) But–and here is my Modest Proposal for you with a chunk of computer programming under your belts–a melody exchange is possible for songs whose lyrics have identical, or even near-identical, stress patterns.

Example: Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” may be sung to the tune of “Seven Spanish Angels.” Example, with a bit of a stretch: that weird song of the 60’s “Quick Joey Small” can borrow the Dave Clark Five’s “Catch Me If You Can,” thus:

Sheriff’s got a shotgun (ooh, oo-ooh)
Fill ya full of lead, son (true, oo-ooh.)
Sheriff’s got a blackjack (ooh, oo-ooh)
We about went out of our minds.
Catch us if you CA-AN, catch us if you CA-AA-AA-aan…

Another stretcher: Lennon/McCartney’s “You Won’t See Me” sung to the tune of the Everly Brothers “Love Hurts:”

I call
You up
You’re line’s
Engaged;
I’ve had
Enough
So act
Your age…

But the weirdest I’ve ever realized is Simon Zealotes’ song from JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR. The punchline will reveal the melody exchange:

Christ what more do you need to conVINCE you
That you’ve MADE IT and you’re EASILY as strong
As the FILTH from ROME who rape our COUNtry
And who’ve TERRorized our PEOple for so long?
The BRAdy Bunch
The BRAdy Bunch
That’s the day we all became the Brady Bunch!

 

oaf or the rainbone

November 25, 2013
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this road is quail run
its nearness and parallelitude to mighty mingus mountain is here evinced

the ridge of mingus has been powder-sugared by flurried snow
and is hugged by the fleece of post-precipitative cloud

the cloud once turgid is now a mere bone of its erstwhile self
and i an oaf with a megapixel-challenged phone camera do not do it justice

but it the rainbone insouciantly hugs and floats on
and given a choice i’d take a moment to be it
rather than a practicing oaf

Jared Duran on the Flying Trapeze

November 24, 2013
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Here is the latest page that will end up somewhere in the multi-volume LIVES of the Eminent Poets of Greater Phoenix, Arizona. It is of a talented and assured young man whose poetry skewers contemporary pretension. He also does a killer Christopher Walken imitation.

Here are the words to the double acrostic:

Jejune young ladies get him in the mood
And he reveals what makes them tickle you
Recounting, as becomes a raconteur
Encounters with the Selfie-ish. Bravura
Delivers him to starpow’r now & soon

The Pencil is Mightier than the Pen

November 24, 2013
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From Omar Khayyam to Edward FitzGerald to us: “The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,/Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit/Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,/Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.” But the Finger is indelible, and so is the Pen. The Pencil?

The Moving Pencil, lured by misdirection,
Need not move on through doom or predilection:
The aft end offers quick and easy means
To quickly turn back time and make correction.

My favorite pencil to use is the Dixon Ticonderoga Black #2.

Suicide Note, Draft #817

November 23, 2013
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First let me hasten to say I am not suicidal. The title derives partly from Ben Franklin’s POOR RICHARD’S ALMANACK aphorism that “Nine of ten men are suicides.” And Ben is one of those proverbial People At The Dinner Table that I would have if I could have six of anyone who ever lived over for dinner and conversation. (Other possible candidates are Dorothy Parker, Li Po, Texas Guinan, Rex Stout, Maya Angelou, Sally Rand, Groucho Marx, Nick Drake, Isaac Asimov, Jean Toomer…it’s going to be hard to narrow it down!)

Though I’m not suicidal, I’m not taking reasonable steps to extend my life. Currently I’m about 70 pounds overweight. I don’t smoke or drink or drug or gamble, but I’m a man with a past. So by Ben Franklin’s yardstick, unless I drop a few dozen pounds and some of my less life-enhancing proclivities (recreational sleep deprivation, for instance), I will be one of the nine out of ten.

But I so long to live! But it must be a life whose quality includes full mental faculties and not too much pain!

Last night at Balboa House, a monthly East Valley poetry event hosted by my friends Debra Berman and Joe Montaño, I performed the following poem, which I will submit as fulfillment of the title of this post as my Suicide Note, Draft #817:

the old and the lonesome
November 15, 2013 at 11:59pm

less than fifty years ago people cared what she thought
commented when she changed her hairstyle
speculated excitedly when she made a vague and coy remark
about a fellow thespian of the opposite sex

now she sneaks a cigarette in her room at the independent living home
and waits for a phone call from a son or a friend
as tears slide here and there and sighs abound

she hasn’t changed much on the inside
but people care so much about the outside

slowly she acquires citizenship with this community of castoffs
the old and the lonesome whose dreams were realized but never replenished

one morning she canes her way to the lobby
scans the sign with the changeable type

9:30 TRIVIA TIME
10:00 FITNESS
11:30 LET’S CROCHET
1:00 PET VISIT WITH GILDA & NAT
2:30 VAN TO DOLLAR STORE
3:00 AA MEETING – UPSTIRS GREATROOM

she feels mild contempt for the sign’s update person and his “UPSTIRS”
she feels bereft of meaning
she goes back to her room and looks for the remote

the double with feathers

November 21, 2013
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feathers are not troubled
they weather wind elegantly insensately

they render waterfowl hydrodynamic
they spread and advertise desirability

 

quills have held the written word

down has comforted the human head

primaries have adorned headdresses
and sculpted convection

 

there would be no hope in a featherless world
and if that reminds you of something
i hope you will double of joy
featheringly

My own private Salon des Refusés (Part Two)

November 21, 2013
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Here are some more self-rejected pages of mine. Ironically, there are yet more pages that I am yet again self-rejecting. The ones that don’t make the cut either are not visually engaging enough or are repetitive of themes or motifs previously presented.

Once upon a time the Phoenix Art Museum had a show of some of the stuff Claude Monet did at Giverny that was still unfinished at the time he died. Of the dozen-and-a-half canvases presented, there was only one that was worth looking at as a painting and not as a clue of Monet’s creative process; and “sketch and then fill in” about summed up his creative process on individual canvases. It was thin soup indeed, and if it hadn’t been Monet doing it the museum would never have shown it. Consequently, in the (I hope) far future when I start to get a glimmer of that Tunnel with the Bright Light, I hope I will have tagged those sketch-musings of mine that are not worthy of a viewer’s attention, that they may be consigned to the flames. (See Harlan Ellison’s ALL THE LIES THAT ARE MY LIFE for a more extensive discussion of this philosophy.)

Onward:

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Popefullness

Must’ve done this around the time the latest Francis tried on his funny hat.

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Struggle/Pinnacle/Afterwar

Comic book writer Steve Gerber, whose Howard the Duck made a great comic book but a horribly Uncanny Valley movie that misused Lea Thompson and Jeffrey Jones, once said something like “You know what there is at the top of the ladder? Another ladder.” And that’s where you Kick It Up A Notch or more aptly Take It To The Next Level. More irony: I wasn’t able to do that with this one; I realized it would take about five times the effort a ‘normal’ page requires.

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Involvements

Here’s one that would be easy to finish. I vote it Most Likely To See Completion amongst these Salon entries.

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Skeleton/Key

Gee, I just love bone configurations, especially if they hang together…

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Logarithm

Logarithm, I got music. I got Readers; who could ask for anything more? (See also Algorithm…)

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Collide O Hadrons

I’m sure this was done around the time scientists confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson, the misnamed “God Particle.” I guess “Make-the-Universe-Possible Particle” is too much of a mouthful.

There you have them, for now. There may be a Part Three, but I’ll do a few posts prior even if there is one.

My own private Salon des Refusés (Part One)

November 20, 2013
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Today I was looking for an unfinished page I’d undone-edly done on Sally Ride. The Science Channel just showed a terrific movie about Richard Feynman’s involvement in the commission investigating the Challenger disaster, and watching it I learned that Sally Ride was the one who’d indirectly pointed Feynman to the O-Rings as the probable cause.

Alas, I’ve thus far not found the Sally Ride page. What I did find was a boatload of abandoned works. Either my enthusiasm for the idea had dimmed, or it was worthy but a lot of work to finish, or I was stumped for a rhyme or an image completion, or the drawing had gone sour, or Other. But all of the ones I’m posting here make me wish I could devote more time to them.

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Addled Wit Sharpener

Some day there’ll be a pharmacological solution to addled wits. Were this the day, I’d be a customer.

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Poetry As Motion

This is well started, but the figure depicted is the last of what would be several poetically posed–and moving–figures.

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Ultimate Gargoyle

I want to sculpt some imposing gargoyles before I die. (I have other plans for after I die. [smiles]) Here is a try at gargoyle design.

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3Deified

Intended as a quasi-discussion on the trend toward 3d in movies. But ulteriorly I wanted to immortalize yet another bad pun.

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Sixto Rodriguez/Sugarman Finder

This would have been a love song to the film SEARCHING FOR SUGARMAN and its subject. I put it off because I would need a lot of time to do it right.

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Revolver Resolved

Earlier this year I was invited to participate in an art show entitled “Children and Guns.” I got this far with my would-have-been contribution before the pain of the subject compelled me to stop.

(End of Part One)

Priscilla Rubella Angster, Improbable Author

November 19, 2013
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A long time ago, in an Archie Comics feature far, far away, someone made up some book titles with author punchlines. The only one I remember from that feature was Over the Cliff by Hugo First. Slightly later (and at least one of these will be edited for television) and on the 4th grade playground, I learned of Antlers in the Treetops by Hoogoost the Moose, Under the Grandstands by Seymour Kiesters, Mad Dash to the Bathroom by Willie Maekit (illustrated by Betty Doant), and Revenge of the Tiger by Claude Nads. My own modest contributions to the genre include Worm Capture by Earl E. Byrd, Psychosis Geological by Sedda Mental, and FAIL Fail by Noah Vail. All of these helped bring to being the above character, whose full name includes two red herrings and whose book-jacket moniker is P. R. Angster. The book might be called You Talking to Me, Punk’d?