Auntie's Anti-Poems

[BookBeauty]

Your latest -- What a fun, humourous and spunky poem, AuntShecky!

And prior to your latest-- I'm going to take time to read these.

[Delta40]

lol. Can you be the wrong kind of jerk? That line really had me laughing Aunty.

Nice and witty
with a pinch of self pity

[Haunted]

Auntie there's so much delight in reading this. I confess I can't read long poems, but the short ones I find in your trove is nothing short of amazing. Add me to your list of "jerks", I can't do any of those either

[smerdyakov]

Neat poem Auntie.

(Delta - love the group-hug graphic. It kicks @ss! )

[Hawkman]

I sincerely hope that the title "'Bye Lines" is not prophetic. You aren't thinking of departing the boards are you Auntie? That would be a crime against humanity! As a characteristically self-deprecating statement of bewilderment at the tastes of the masses, it is delivered with your trademark irony and a cheek fully occupied by tongue, at least, I hope so. If I'd been writing this poem I think I'd have gone for a more regular rhythm, but there's nothing wrong with the way you have presented it.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. I sincerely hope it won't be the last time I enjoy one of your offerings.

Live and be well - H

[Bar22do]

Dear Auntie, are you fed up with us all here and want to take a vacation? Please do not..
Your poem is more than tongue in cheek, it reads beautifully but feels threatening a bit and makes one feel a very concerned a jerk...
Anyhow, applause for this, plus for your honesty!
And my usual best to you!!! But no, not "Bye Lines"!


Bar

[AuntShecky]

Thanks for the nice responses to the last little "ditty" #360. The subject was a kind of invective against the types of writers whose scripts become Hollywood blockbusters and whose products populate the Best Seller List. Thanks, Delta, for getting the joke about the "wrong kind of jerk" as I had misgivings that noone would "get it."

Unless somebody persuades me to the contrary, I have no plans to leave my fellow LitNutters (for now.) Meanwhile, please don't ever take anything I say too literally. And don't judge a crook by her cover. Oh, I kid.

Re: the fractured meter in the triads or "triplets." Unless I miscounted, each of the lines has 4 stresses; the first stanza is roughly iambic but many other lines start with a "headless iamb" (such as you might find in the opening lines of many pop songs.)

It never occurred to write my triplets in trimeter and had to go with a lengthier line. Even with an extra foot (in mouth), it was difficult to cram everything in. You should have seen earlier drafts that had mouthfuls like "Nibelungenian" and "bacchanalian" in them. The lines varied so much in length that I was very nearly trespassing on Ogden Nash's territory. The difference being, of course, that his stuff was great and this thing is doggerel.

Woof!

[AuntShecky]

The increase in the number of commercials promoting fish sandwiches at fast food joints reminds me that once again Lent is almost here. (Great! Just what we need--more deprivation!) As a matter of fact, Bigggus's verses today are on "Pancake Day." So tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. Hence, the following irreverent reverence:


“Heaven for the climate and Hell for the company.”
–Mark Twain


The Defined Comedy


Inferno

The searing red and orange of fires
most starkly stake this doom as fact,
but stoke with doubt the truth of hell.
Reality’s always in black-
and-white, and fantasy, pastel.



Purgatorio

Where sin belatedly atones,
where souls can scrub and scour and groom,
will not be found on maps divine,
but earthly sites: a waiting room,
a call on hold, an unemployment line.



Paradiso

Even here nothing’s perfect.
The meals are bland; there’s peeling paint.
Admission comes with a heavy price.
Yet no one hears a sole complaint.
That’s why they call it paradise.

[Delta40]

lol Aunty. What sharp wit you have. I tried to pick a favourite but I like them all. Great finishing lines but also nice descriptors. They're very atmospheric too. One can imagine reeling these off in a bar after one too many to an appreciative audience!

[Buh4Bee]

Very funny, and as usual, much enjoyed.

[YesNo]

Nice view of purgatory as an unemployment line.

I agree: With all that colorful fire, hell must be more pastel-fantasy than reality.

[DieterM]

Hey Auntie, Purgatorio really did it for me – I was giggling all alone here in the office! And what to say about Paradise being a place where no one complains? I should've known it - France is definitely NOT Paradise, then! Truly brilliant!

[AuntShecky]

Thank you--Delta,Buh4Bee, YesNo (both of you), and Dieter--for responding to this latest ditty. According to conventional wisdom it's not quite cricket to comment on one's own work. On the other hand, I'm itching to clarify a couple of matters concerning this particular piece, and it's my thread, so what the heck:

Poets aren't supposed to be afraid of "offending" anyone, a point which the notorious "Railing at Greatness" thread tries to hammer home with a sledge hammer. It would bother me personally, though, if anyone thought I harbored animosity toward religion, which I don't. Along with others whose hearts break at the thought of evil wrought in the name of "religion," I'm against that, as well as disdaining those who maintain the self-righteous posture of having all the answers. At the same time I'm completely behind the comforting aspects of religion. If that constitutes a cognitive disconnect, so be it. (Anybody who wants to challenge me on this, please feel free to do so, but in a separate thread.)

Back to commenting on my own verse. This one's not to be construed as a parody of Dante, because parodies exactly imitate the form of the original, which we all know is in terza rima, and which this ditty definitely is not. Not only that, one line of the tetrameter of "Defined Comedy" has an extra foot (in-mouth.) But a couple of the commentators liked the "unemployment line" schtick, so I'll leave it. (In a rationalizing "stretch" I suppose I could say that the lengthier line underscores the long wait in the actual queue.)

"Inferno"-- The "searing" reds and oranges of hellfire aren't really the same as soft watercolors or candy colored "pastels" by my definition. When I was a kid, I couldn't quite wrap my little mind around the idea of Hell, because I wondered how a "soul" rather than a actual body with a nervous system, could actual experience being burned (even eternally.) Decades later I somehow came to the conclusion that hell could exist, but not in earthly terms and could only be imagined in terms of metaphor. Hence, hell is neither fish nor fowl, not quite "reality" (as we know it) and not really "fantasy" because it's possible that Hell could exist on some plane presently unknown to you and me.

"Purgatorio"-- Historians (a tribe of which I'm not a member) hear the word "Purgatory" and automatically think of a certain medieval practice perpetuated by the Church to drum up revenue. For a given price, members of the Faithful would be offered an opportunity to purchase "indulgences" -- a way to knock a given number of years off his inevitable sentence in Purgatory, sort of like an insurance policy. The centuries-old scam was just one of the abuses leading to the Protestant Reformation. But it's the older, more orthodox concept of Purgatory that my little verse plays with--the escape clause by which a person can shave off his bid in Purgatory through atonement and suffering here on earth (while, as the good old Gospel song tells us," there's still time, Brother.") The time off for good behavior relates to the various degrees of suffering, from intense pain to moderate discomfort to minor inconveniences, such as being stuck on hold, and--it is to be hoped--substitute teaching.

"Paradiso" Speaking of being presumptuous, who do I think I am to speculate what Heaven is like? ( It's kind of fun though.) When I wrote "Even there, nothing's perfect," of course, I didn't mean God. In Stanley Elkin's brilliant comic novel, The Living End, God gets bent out of shape to hear His heaven compared to a "theme park." (Pastels again?) Hence, this little ditty's metaphor of a slightly rundown resort, with the perq that certainly compensates for any imperfection in the facilities.

Thanks again for reading the poem, as well as this admittedly self-indulgent comment.

[firefangled]

I liked the sarcasm in these. As a kid I went to a catholic school and I never was satisfied with the criteria for getting into these places. As kids we always wondered what could a child do to get into hell, but there was always a way it seemed.

Nice poem Auntie

[AuntShecky]

[February 29, 2012-- Please note this is a revised version of a piece originally appearing in this space a few days ago. Although it's best to wait until one can revisit a work so she can look at it with a fresher, more objective eye, I decided to go ahead and fix it right away before another reader suffers through its original dreadfulness.]


Refuse

For just a little while let’s lay
the old realities aside.
Those cramping have-tos, shoulds, and musts
are nags who never were much use,
like dusty “practical” presents
or grab-bag gifts we meant to throw
away. We thought it best to keep
the parts that make us act with sense,
befitting the role of mature
adults. All of that’s debris!

Why not pretend we’re like the kid
who sees a party as a chore
but cries when it’s time to go home?

Instead some staid, sad ritual
stepped in to crumple up and stuff
our wistful sparks in plastic bags
and roughly dumped them all outside.