Form Poem Contest

Congratulations AutoShecky

This is a take on Karen Carpenter's Song, "Solitaire". I confess, I'm not so good with humour; satire is more my thing. Here's my attempt.


Nonpareil

There was a man
A homely man
Who lost his faith
Through self-indulgence
With a face that cared
That went unspared
Until it cried of
Extra-divulgence

And nonpareil's the only name in town
And every string that ties him ties him down
While deep within he's desperate to transcend
Or generate amends
And steeped within himself he craves the day
A blip of static all the wage in pay
While style fares well without him every way
He's simply nonpareil

A single crow
Can steal the show
Steal presently
The strength of right
There was a man
A homely man
Who fought to own
The fabled night.

And nonpareil's the only name in town
And every string that ties him ties him down
While deep within he's desperate to transcend
Or generate amends
And steeped within himself he craves the day
A blip in static all the wage in pay
While style fares well without him every way
He's simply nonpareil.

And nonpareil's the only name in town
And every string that ties him ties him down
While style fares well without him every way
He's aptly nonpareil.






Solitaire

There was a man
A lonely man
Who lost his love
Through his indifference
A heart that cared
That went unshared
Until it died
Within his silence

And solitaire's the only game in town
And every road that takes him takes him down
And by himself it's easy to pretend
He'll never love again.
And keeping to himself he plays the game
Without her love it always ends the same
While life goes on around him everywhere
He's playing solitaire.

A little hope
Goes up in smoke
Just how it goes
Goes without saying
There was a man
A lonely man
Who would command
The hand he's playing

Chorus...

And solitaire's the only game in town
And every road that takes him takes him down
While life goes on around him everywhere
He's playing solitaire.

A funny take on Harry Belafonte's Banna Boat song

Food Cart

May-o, I say, may-o
Delight come and I want some mo’
May-o, I say, may-o
Delight come and I want some mo’

I dreamed all night of the food to come,
Delight come and I want some mo’
Stacks of pancakes with butter and syrup, yum!
Delight come and I want some mo’

Come, Mr. Waiter I got an order for you,
Delight come and I want some mo’
Eggs, toast, sausages, bacon, biscuits and gravy and coffee too,
Delight come and I want some mo’

There’s tuna salad, garden salad, sub sandwiches to munch,
Delight come and I want some mo’
Hamburgers, hotdogs, coleslaw, cake and punch
Delight come and I want some mo’

Big beautiful bunch of ripe bananas,
Watermelon, strawberries, cherries, pineapples with rum
Oranges, tangerines, oh! A big tarantula!
Delight come and I want some mo’

May-o, I say, may-o,
Delight come and I want some mo’
Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow! Oh!
Delight come I can’t eat no mo’!

That "Banana Boat" parody is really cute! Of course, now I'll hear the melody in my head all night and "day-o."

Anyway, I'd better make something clear. Optimally, we'll be choosing songs that most LitNetters already know; for that reason it is NOT necessary to post the original lyrics from the original song. Just post your own lyrics and tell us the title of the song which you are parodying.

Please remember what I said about copyright in the original rules.

Nevertheless, I hope we get some more parodies t before Jan. 2!

Thanks for judging, Pen! Congratulations to AuntShecky, and I shall shuffle off to parody some undeserving soul... *grin*

We need more entries! December has a way of vacuuming up time; the days are shorter. So please post your parodies before Jan. 2 sneaks up on us.

The original version of this song sung Judy Garland, was filled with sarcasm. In keeping with the true tradition of the song, I present the following.


Have yourself a wary little Christmas,
look both left and right,
what gets you may very well be out of sight.

Have yourself a wary little Christmas,
farewell, four oh one k,
red's the color of the season, anyway.

(refrain)
Now, unlike much more pleasant days,
mired in the ways of war,
let us pray that the Middle-East finds love and peace once more.

In the years to come let's live more simply,
pasture the cash cow,
until then we'll have to bail the b.astards out,
so have yourself a wary little Christmas now.

(refrain)
Two-Thousand-Nine is upon us soon,
the national lampoon retires.
All the pigs gathered at the trough, will be living off spare tires.

Santa Claus will have some new restrictions,
clearing customs now.
Rudolph's nose will surely beg the question, how,
but have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

Oh, thank you so much, Firefangled!
Your parody is witty and singable!

Let's have some more LitNetters join the fun.

Okay, so I'm ***BUMPING**** this to remind all the witty wunderkinds on the LitNet to take a break from their Yuletide
revels and try to write a parody. Music is in the air -- catch some
of it and write some alternative lyrics.

Deadline is January 2.

I'm wishing for a nice New Year's gift-- a package of parodies by LitNetters!

Six more days to post.

Friday is the last day to post a parody here.
Isn't there a song crying out for some alternative lyrics--
"Auld Lang Syne" for instance?

The original of this terrible parody can be found here.

Thought of my father's loan of old,
Paid off by working on the line;
Whatever made and later sold,
Was cash for this small palm of mine...

Lord Gold-man-sachs, be with us yet
Lest we forget, lest we forget!

The tumult and the shootings rise,
The capital gains just fall apart;
Still stands that ugly edifice
The venerable bastion of Wal-mart.

Lord Gold-man-sachs, be with us yet
Lest we forget, lest we forget!

Frak! All our navvies melt away!
Now Ford joins both GM and Chrysler.
Lo, all the oil pumped yesterday
Is like the air within their tires.

O House and Senate, spare us cash!
We're in a hole and all is ash!

If, drunk with lighter purse, we loose
Wild thoughts of economic law—
Such boasting as the pundits use
And Adam Smith's unseemly paw—

O Treasury, O mighty Fed
Still give us gold and cloth and bread!

For greedy hearts that think it just
To spread the pain and make it hard,
And pay the CEOs (we must!)
And see no 'For Sale' in the yard—

For Fanny Maes and Freddie Macs,
Thy mercy on us, Gold-man-Sachs!

Thank you Autolycus for posting your parody and for the link to the original lyrics. (As the only Kipling song whose tune I know is "The Road to Mandalay," I'll see if I can find the tune that accompanies "Recessional" somewhere on the Net.)

Additional entries will be accepted for the remainder of today, and
the "lucky" winner will be announced sometime this weekend.

Happy New Year and thanks to all who contributed it to
this leg of the Form Poetry Contest.

As Fred Allen once said, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and that's true, but a good parody can be an occasion for some original wit, which I found in these entries.

Alakungfu, your parody of the Carpenters' song gave an ironic twist to the self-image of your subject, who saw himself in a class by himself--"Nonpareil."

Firefangled and Autolycus, you both know me so well -- in that I'm a sucker for topical humor, namely the current economic woes.

Autolycus played with the title, "Recessional" to apply it to "the " Recession -- great pun.

Firefangled also picked a seasonal song, and her lyrics seem to match up with the original tune by Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin in Meet Me in St. Louis. For the most part, Firefangled's new lyrics could be "sung" to the original tune.

All of the contestants have joined the ranks of Allen Sherman, Mark Russell, and Weird Al Yankovich, parodists of the past and present. Pendragon's parody of Harry Belafonte's "Banana Boat Song" is not only singable but positively infectious. How about the clever substitutions: "May-o" for "Day-oh," and "Delight come" for "Daylight come."? And I love that he mentioned specifics, actual foods that the reader can smell or even taste. "His parody matches the original song, syllable by syllable. The new lyrics are true to life -- and downright funny!

So the winner of this round of the Form Poetry Contest is the founder of the feast, so to speak -- Pendragon.

Pen, will you choose the next form please!

Thank you, Auntie. I got to think about this, what springs to mind might not draw too many contestants, and I want to reach a lot, hopefully... :)

I'm going to assign a sestina, which may be a harder form, but I want you to think about it. I won;t make it due until Feb. 14th to give plenty of time: Here are your instructions and one of my own for a sample. Play with the form to your hearts desire and read a few famous ones before you write. Good writing to all!

The sestina is a complex form that achieves its often spectacular effects through intricate repetition. The thirty-nine-line form is attributed to Arnaut Daniel, the Provencal troubadour of the twelfth century. The name "troubadour" likely comes from trobar, which means "to invent or compose verse." The troubadours sang their verses accompanied by music and were quite competitive, each trying to top the next in wit, as well as complexity and difficulty of style.

Courtly love often was the theme of the troubadours, and this emphasis continued as the sestina migrated to Italy, where Dante and Petrarch practiced the form with great reverence for Daniel, who, as Petrarch said, was "the first among all others, great master of love."

The sestina follows a strict pattern of the repetition of the initial six end-words of the first stanza through the remaining five six-line stanzas, culminating in a three-line envoi. The lines may be of any length, though in its initial incarnation, the sestina followed a syllabic restriction. The form is as follows, where each numeral indicates the stanza position and the letters represent end-words:

1. ABCDEF
2. FAEBDC
3. CFDABE
4. ECBFAD
5. DEACFB
6. BDFECA
7. (envoi) ECA or ACE

The envoi, sometimes known as the tornada, must also include the remaining three end-words, BDF, in the course of the three lines so that all six recurring words appear in the final three lines. The words usually occur at the middle and end of the lines. In place of a rhyme scheme, the sestina relies on end-word repetition to effect a sort of rhyme.

COLORS

Red is the color of the bubbling blood
that flows in scarlet streams from the slashed skin
of my right forearm. Watching it, I laugh.
It gives me a wonderful sense of release
from the pressures of a weary, tormented mind.
Sylvia Plath would recognized the feeling…

Blue is the color of my mood; the color of my feelings—
feelings too often painted in letters of blood;
the scattered ravings of an oppressed mind
encapsulated in a thin veneer of skin;
a caged animal seeking blessed release.
The imagery alone is enough to make one laugh.

Raven-black is the color of the hopeless laugh;
humor that never reaches the eyes, nor expresses the feelings
of the soul; just a pressure-valve, a release
to prevent total madness. The thin trickle of blood
is never a life-threat; the blade barely breaks the skin.
Any therapeutic aid exists solely in the mind.

Grey, it is said, is the color of the mind;
a twisted mess that resembles worms! What a laugh!
We lavish so much time and attention on our skin
and bones to feed worms! Isn’t THAT a creepy feeling!
One red worm crawls down my arm, a worm of blood,
while the worms that will devour my flesh seek release!

Yellow is the color of Light, of release;
the point of enlightenment that takes place in the mind.
The light engulfs my body, my bones, my blood.
Now, there is genuine mirth in the laugh,
an uplifting of the spirit and the feelings.
Energy pulsates all through this prison of skin.

Pale-white is the color of the skin
in which I live. The spirit struggles for release;
an emotional storm explodes in my feelings,
and a tiny voice (my own) whispers in my mind
things that I find so ridiculous that I laugh.
With a small cloth, I easily stop the flow of blood.

Having stopped the blood, I know a new scar will form on my skin.
But I don’t mind. I never have. I laugh.
If you have never experienced the feelings, you wouldn’t understand the release.

Dale Harris