The Dog and the Rooster

The Dog and the Rooster came to town
 In a ghastly red pick-up truck
They’d forgotten their jam, and (due to a scam)
 Their pennies had vanished (oh fuck!)
The Dog looked down at the streets below
 And whined to a giant drum,
‘O awful Cock! You think like a sock!
 What a hideous Cock you’ve become,
  Become,
  Become!
 What a hideous Cock you’ve become!’

Cock replied to Dog’s whine, ‘You horrid canine!
 How shockingly bitter and crass! 
I want a divorce as a matter of course
 and I know a judge we can ask.
They stumbled around a few seconds and found
 A garden of Fizz-feather down
and there in a clearing, a Loosey-goose bearing
 a wig on the square of his crown,
  his crown, 
  his crown.
A wig on the square of his crown.

‘Sir Goose, would you kindly just write for us, blindly,
 A contract?’ Huffed Goosey, ‘I won’t.’
So they shrugged and departed, a bit broken-hearted,
 with a homeless hamster (for a pint)
They drank some ale, and shavings of kale
 out of colourful cups, just for fun 
And foot over feet, in a rank drunken heap
They slept in the shade of the sun.
 The sun,
 The sun.
They slept in the shade of the sun.

———
http://www.napowrimo.net/2013/04/day-30/
And now our final (and still optional) prompt! I know I’ve used this one in prior years, but it’s one of my favorites, so bear with me. Find a shortish poem that you like, and rewrite each line, replacing each word (or as many words as you can) with words that mean the opposite. For example, you might turn “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” to “I won’t contrast you with a winter’s night.” Your first draft of this kind of opposite poem will likely need a little polishing, but this is a fun way to respond to a poem you like, while also learning how that poem’s rhetorical strategies really work. (It’s sort of like taking a radio apart and putting it back together, but for poetry). Happy writing!

I just couldn’t resist doing Edward Lear’s ‘Owl and the Pussycat‘
It turns out, the opposite of nonsense is nonsense. Beautiful really.

Lover, press thy hand

Lover, press thy hand
that I may like liquid curl
in sharp sweet tendrils
oil under water’s caress
languishing in arabesque

———
My first version of this was kind of an extended Tanka:

Lover, press thy hand
that I may like liquid curl
in sharp sweet bubbles
and separated tendrils
of self meeting self,
oil under water’s caress
languishing in arabesque

I felt I needed to add a couple of lines to say what I wanted to, but I then I decided the extra was unnecessary. Which version do you like better?
I must say, I quite like ending with a rhyming couplet.

In other news, It’s the 1st of May, so goodbye Napowrimo 2013, and so long prompts I do not follow. I now find myself burdened with this blog, but I rather like it. I’ve been thinking of continuing, so I will do so with a promise: I will come here with a new poem, at least twice a week. Let’s say (tentatively) Wednesdays and Sundays, since they are the only days I never missed in the month of April.

That said, I have another to give to you before today ends.

meet me at the beach

we 
tiptoed through the corridor
connecting our two worlds
for some sex in the shade
tomorrow back to reality
stars close their eyes
like sleeping innocents
———
http://www.napowrimo.net/2013/04/596/

No foreign words here. ha! NaPoWriMo, you can’t control me with your silly tricks!

Google Poem

I queried google (higher wisdom seeking)
expecting deep insight and pretty prose
to appear and start my mind’s fancy a-leaking
but all I got were songs and videos

The lyrics from the same tune times a thousand
a movie and its actors’ petty scandals
all this rubbish at a simple click of mouse and
an ad promoting gowns and sparkly sandals

Maybe others had more luck, but somehow when one’s
disappointed by repeated failed attacks
battling with hills of data from search engines
it’s better to spew rage, and then relax

———
http://www.napowrimo.net/2013/04/day-27/

I think the above rant speaks for itself. I love iambic pentameter by the way, it automatically makes a poem look good.

(drinking) Song

Oh Wine,

pleasing witchery, priz’d disease
that in tyranny can bestow passion

we wake sluggish and he kindles
a bold appetite for new Spirits

in the gross sense, it aids Nature
and makes roving Desire

Youth’s Heaven !  

———
http://www.napowrimo.net/2013/04/day-26/

See below for the original, with its modifications. I cheated a little when I erased part of an ‘n’ to make an ‘r’ to make ‘for’ for my line 4 (tricky huh?)

Song  
Oh love! that stronger art than Wine,
Pleasing Delusion, Witchery divine,
Wont to be priz’d above all Wealth,
Disease that has more Joys than Health;
Though we blaspheme thee in our Pain,
And of Tyranny complain,
We are all better’d by thy Reign.
What Reason never can bestow,
We to this useful Passion owe:
Love wake s the dull from sluggish ease,
And learns a Clown t he Art to please:
Humbles the Vain, kindles the Cold,
Makes Misers free, and Cowards bold;
And teaches airy Fops to think.  
When full brute Appetite is fed,
And choakd the Glutton lies and dead;
Thou new Spirits dost dispense,
And f ine’st the gross Delights of Sense.  
Virtue’s unconquerable Aid
That against Nature can persuade;
And makes a roving Mind retire
Within the Bounds of just Desire.
Chearer of Age, Youth’s kind Unrest,
And half the Heaven of the blest!
    Aphra Behn

Day 24 again

A literate laureate of the atelier,
Eureka! An altar of airtime tear
A camel or puma and actuarial tike
Paramecia retiled in ritual like
Take aim and pee at karate cat tail
Taupe elite stand on a tatami eel
An irate Maria with acute racial aura
They say I like rape, now where’s my tiara?

———
Since the anagram server finally had enough bandwidth available for me to do my whole name, I thought I’d do me at last. Finally I recognise myself in some of these descriptions, damn my two middle names are important after all!

Moon flower

I plucked three blossoms from a tree
One whole, one broken, one bud unbloomed
The moon’s round eye looked down on me
Alone I walked though music boomed
Thick, milky sap bled on my hand
Fingers sticky, purpose unsure
The ones I love don’t understand
This scent of frangipani pure

———
http://www.napowrimo.net/2013/04/day-25/

Very handy, the poem I wrote before looking at the prompt is more or less a ballad. The rhyme scheme is right, and the 4 line verse structure, though I have 8 syllables in every line, and not 8-6-8-6 as suggested. Once again, I am a Napowrimo prophet.

Wedding vow

Radio Man, I’m livid for thee
A mini lord diva who likes cake for tea
Your mind is your lair, but valor your din
I moan for you, roam for you, hold your void in
A dramatic admiral avoiding the day
We create an aria, violins play 

———
http://www.napowrimo.net/2013/04/day-24/

The prompt was to write a poem based on the anagrams of your name. Since my name kinda sucked, I did my husband’s. His were hilariously accurate, and it could have gone on and on.

New Love

His beauty disarmed my eyes
And flew my heart in song again
My former crush was bloomed from lies,
His beauty disarmed my eyes
Melting my music in gentle sighs
‘Til a new sun eclipsed all men
His beauty disarmed my eyes
And flew my heart in song again

———
http://www.napowrimo.net/2013/04/day-23/

Inspired by teenage love, not that I’m a teenager. I just heard something on the radio about Taylor Swift ‘behaving like a 13 year old’ with her ex-boyfriends, and it got me reminiscing. I can see why the Victorians liked triolets, they’re lots of fun.

Finite World

I put the flour in a jar to protect it
from the flies.
Little did I know it was infected
with life.

One day I went to bake and found an extinguished
colony
Had taken hold, grown, perished
from lack of humidity

Had the creatures known their fate would it
have stopped them living?
Do we think our finite world will be
any more forgiving?

Earth at my back I see the sky
that ancient illusion,
The lid of our own jar in which near nought
of our choosing

One brief moment here we live, we love
make little babies
And now and then just pause to think on such
excessive maybes

———
http://www.napowrimo.net/2013/04/day-22/

Somehow I knew it was going to be about Earth day today (a few days ago that is) …  I’m late again, whatever.