Auntie, this is really witty and I love the choice of form. It's so well executed I'm breathless with admirationPersonally I think your light shines brightly.
Best, H
Auntie, this is really witty and I love the choice of form. It's so well executed I'm breathless with admiration
Best, H
This little light of yours is incandescent. Really, Auntie, you go from strength to strength.
Aunty,
You "only lack the way to make it shine" on the eighth day of the week.
Flexibility you write with raises my approval to its peak!
Lightness of your humour vastly haloes your wisdom depth, ever meek...
Let me express my gratitude for your art by a kiss on your cheek!
Smiling - Bar
Thank you, Hawkman, Prince and Bar for these and your other flattering comments as well!
It's impersonating a villanelle.Originally Posted by Hawkman
Were you a methodist in a previous life, Aunty? In any event, it is brilliant with emotion and wit!
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its' own reason for existing." ~ Albert Einstein
"Remember, no matter where you go, there you are." Buckaroo Bonzai "Some people say I done alright for a girl." Melanie Safka
Two Steps to a Healthier, Happier Poem
STEP ONE:
Take a word –
any word – then:
pound it like a fielder’s mitt,
pet it like a neighbor’s mutt,
stretch it like a braggart’s truth,
snap it like a hipster’s thumb,
slap it like a jazzman’s bass,
flatten it like a Minnesotan’s “a,”
sharpen it like a harridan’s tongue,
twist it like a trysting couple’s sheets,
tweak it like a toddler’s nose.
STEP TWO:
Repeat.
The site ought to charge people for having as much fun as you obviously do! I loved this. Thanks.
Brilliant - but I think you missed one - soothe it like a loved one's lips
On the tenth day the Almighty formed Aunty in the fulness of her being.
Your poem about one word poem:
... witty!
I repeat:
witty!
(ah, and - you'll never fall into categories whose desuetization E. Pound wished for!)
Marvellous Auntie, Your muse must have been Terpsichŏrē, for they read like dance calls
Best, H
I just loved the pace, the rhythm, the flow. Thanks so much.
Dafydd Manton, A Legend In His Own Lunchtime!!www.dafydd-manton.co.uk
My Work Has Been Spread Over Many Fields!
Very good, and works well as a companion piece, or counter perhaps, to Hawk's recent poem.
I particularly enjoyed the 'twist - tryst' echo, even though the latter word isn't the most contemporary! Enjoyable stuff.
Thank you, all, incl. daffyd and Hillwalker, and dear Hawkman.
Bar, I'm making a mental note to send you a PM about your latest poem. Blank__Verse, I had started working on the next anti-poem, but after yesterday when Iread yours about the noise in the flat, I see that this next one will echo yours. Prince, please don't even mention charging fees for this site. I love it and would gladly pay for the privilege, but who's got any dough?
Now I've got to look up"desuetization." "Terpsichore" I already know, but all my life yours fooly has been known as having two left feet.
Thanks again.
Last edited by AuntShecky; 09-11-2010 at 05:48 PM.
Here we go with another lengthy intro, but it's my thread, so what the hell. Initially the idea for this next piece came from blank_verse's poem, "Four Floors Up" about intrusive, outside noise.
Without invitation, chaos seems to follow me wherever I go. A couple of decades ago we lived in a city whose time had already come and gone, and our particular neighborhood was well on its way to becoming run-down. Around the corner was a dive, of course, and its patrons had the habit of parking their vehicles directly beneath the upstairs flat of our rented two-family house. Late one night noise woke me up, and when I went to investigate I saw a guy and a gal engaged in loud conversation on the sidewalk right beneath our front window. I said nothing, but the couple saw me and immediately reacted as if I had intruded upon them!
In that same squalid city every Fourth of July we had to spirit our older daughter out of town because she would get extremely frightened by firecrackers --though to be truthful, kids would set off those explosions (illegal in our state) from Memorial Day in May right on through Labor Day in September. Same with those colorful girandoles that use the night sky as their canvas. Formerly confined to Independence Day, fireworks now are featured in every kind of sporting event, craft festival, supermarket opening, you name it. Fireworks are pretty, but they make an ungodly, booming noise. I read this year that a community event in our erstwhile hometown featured a professional fireworks show, but the planners apparently forgot -- or totally disregarded -- the fact that the veteran's hospital was a mere two blocks away. Some of the patients were suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, or what used to be called "shell shock."
Speaking of hospitals, early last month I went to one to visit my stricken sister. On that horrible, tear-filled day, I managed to find something to make me laugh. Apparently this hospital supplements its medical insurance income through parking fees. But instead of hiring
human attendants, the hospital handles the transactions with a vending machine that uses audio instructions. The computerized voice that tells the visitors to "insert your ticket" and to "press one if you need a receipt" is exactly the same as that of a famous astrophysicist's voice synthesizer. "Gee, the economy must be worse than I thought," I told my younger daughter. "Even Steven Hawking has to supplement his income."
But seriously, doesn't life seem greedier, ruder, and especially louder now? Maybe those things are mere symptoms of our rapidly deteriorating society, the cultural equivalent of Gresham's Law. That notion hounding me for weeks put me into full "Shine, Perishing Republic" mode and resulted in the following ditty, which we like to call
Miss Communication
There’s little matter in the universe.
What’s there can't squeak its presence in the dark
where silence penetrates through gas and rocks.
Our lens sees stars but hears no harmony.
Yet down here, blessed with an atmosphere, sound thrives:
the sweep of air through trees, the gurgles and swirls
of gentle waters, the triumph of a child’s
first garbled words: such melodies must yield
to alien strains of invading noise–-
attacking, digging in, aligned to squelch
the quiet space of unsuspecting homes.
A raging army occupies our world.
The useful wheels which merely used to turn
all squeal as if some animal’s been trapped.
Cars once contented with an internal hum
now throb with anger through the neighborhood.
When harsh, unruly shouts usurp the streets,
how can a tender whisper co-exist?
A cry for quiet will escape each ear
taken over by the overlords of din.
Seek sanctuary in some other world
hiding behind an aloof and neutral star?
Defying count, they're far and far apart,
and life (for now) is here, and here alone.
“We're not alone,” the physicist has said,
his faith more tuned to beings less supreme
than God. (Easier to explain black holes.)
Loud vacuums suck up reason and real art.
The empty mind in the existing room,
the Cyclops whose blaring bellows crack the walls,
bites off the heads of men of former sense
and belches back their undigested truth.
The gloomy gyre of Yeats grows wider still.
Such discord! I cannot grasp a single word,
and words I make will not be understood.
Where’s Emily’s new letter to the world?
What solace rests in measured syllables,
the honest bounce of bygone peppy songs,
the glimpse of silent sparkles in the sky,
with people talking loudly late at night?
Last edited by AuntShecky; 10-12-2010 at 04:05 PM.
Oh, Aunty! Your poems make me want to be a better man! (Or if not, at least a better poet.) "the overlords of din"! - oh yes, but on the other hand, the pleasure of using language as if it - and almost it alone - were God's gift to us; or ours to Him!
(P.S. Case I overlooked saying so in my effort to be fancy, I loved this poem!)
And P.p.s. Not that this applies to you but I love this saying:
"Say it simple, forget your Dixie grammar." Jack Teagarden
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