Are You A Poet? Then Show It! 2-Electric Boogaloo

[NinthAcolyte]

We’re a good bit past a month, @Czarcasm ! Are there plans to organize a vote?

[Gyrate]

I’ll just add another one of mine I just posted in the thread on dementia while we wait:

@Gyrate

Landslips

Words fall away
In slow erosion

Inch by inch
My garden is lost to the sea

The face of a husband
The name of a child

I wait at the window

[Fear_Itself]

Inspired by a first line from the Loopy Limericks thread, I wrote one that is a male homage to the best dirty limerick ever.

There once was a lad from near Cork
Whose mistress applied too much torque
The tip of his penis
Flew half way to Venus
And his balls were found west of New York

[Dr_Paprika]

The GENIUS Act

They tell me: “Sir! It’s not too late”:
Make Canada a northern state
Conquer Caracas, needle Nuuk
Give Panama a second look
Then take the prize that others spurn
Five extra armies every turn!
Play chess moves no one else can see
To make my foreign policy.

A tighter purse, but looser lips
My name! On sides of battleships!
And each so huuge and ixodid
They take four squares of ocean grid!
(The next step? I’m not unawares
That carriers take five full squares!)
You’ve got to keep opponents jumpy
Cantankerous and grumpy
To fulfill plans this smart. This trumpy.

[Dr_Paprika]

Capture Kamchatka? For what ends?
There’s politics. But then, there’s friends.

[Czarcasm]

For this delay I must apologize
And this gentle reminder made me realize
That every soul contains clarity
That when, viewed by others, becomes poetry

The winner is our “spicy medic”-@Dr_Paprika:

@Dr_Paprika

When nightfall cools the desert sands
And shadows fill the summer sky
Lethargic lilts of lullabies
Stream softly through the holy lands
And calm the caravan to rest.

A secret moon, half-seen, half-guessed
Gives feeble light at end of day
Its heart a million miles away.
Like you. How can its languid stare
Look down on Montréal, and find you there?

Sepulchral dunes, dry, dark and deep
Frame figures full of fitful sleep
Who half-remember jungle streams
Those lush lagoons adorning dreams
To freshen sun-scorched skin anew.

But I can only dream of you.
I loved you when demure and deft
I love you now there’s little left
I loved you through the grace and grime
Will love you through the end of time.

Drunk on l’amour, et les eaux fraîches
Eschewing food, but tasting flesh
Sweet spellcraft shrouding summer swoons.
Still echoes there in ancient tunes.
There’s magic in the midnight moon.

[Dr_Paprika]

Many, many thanks.

[GuanoLad]

Now that the competition is over, I can admit that I’ve never really liked poetry. So naturally I have decided to write an angry little poem about it.

Poetry for me is stupid
Something showy from the nerds
Trying hard to show how clever
You can be with fancy words

I struggled with it when at school
I saw it as a waste of time
Pretentious melancholic prose
Such pompous crap that doesn’t rhyme

Decades later, still annoyed
I roll my eyes at every verse
I know I’ll never understand it
Anger only makes it worse

So carry on and make your art
Don’t worry, I won’t spoil your fun
I’ll just sit here feeling grumpy
Let me know when you are done

[Dr_Paprika]

Perhaps. And yet:

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” (Isaac Asimov)

[Spoons]

I guess I’m a little late to the party, but I want to contribute anyway. I wrote this for the “If A Christmas Carol Had Been Written by Someone Else” thread, back in 2010 or so. For reference, that thread:

If A Christmas Carol had been written by someone else

The title an homage to what I think is the record holder LOTR thread, though I doubt (and I hope) this will have 1% of that one’s hits and posts, but— you all know the story. How would other writers have told it? A CHRISTMAS CAROL, or, Nails Done While You Wait! by Kurt Vonnegut Ebenezer Scrooge has become unstuck in time through the aid of three ghosts. Not that the ghosts are exactly ghosts. Scrooge was partners with Jacob Marley in an investment firm. When I first began earning ‘go to …

My contribution to that thread, and as it is a poem, to this one too:

The Love Song of J. Ebenezer Scrooge, by T.S. Eliot

O donna in cui la mia speranza vige,
e che soffristi per la mia salute
in inferno lasciar le tue vestige,
di tante cose quant’ i’ ho vedute,
dal tuo podere e da la tua bontate
riconosco la grazia e la virtute.
Tu m’hai di servo tratto a libertate
per tutte quelle vie, per tutt’ i modi
che di ciò fare avei la potestate.
La tua magnificenza in me custodi,
sì che l’anima mia, che fatt’ hai sana,
piacente a te dal corpo si disnodi.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like accounts coldly entered in a ledger;
Let us go, through Christmas Eve-deserted streets,
We’ll leave our balance sheets
Of debits and credits and interest owing.
Think not of what we reap, but what we’re sowing:
Streets that follow through the time of your days
Some thoughts to raise
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go,
Talking of reindeers and Ho Ho Ho.

The yellow light that pours forth from the window-panes
The joyful sounds that somehow reach through the window-panes
Joined by similar from all houses warm this evening,
A time of laughter and feasting, when happiness reigns
And covers the night, like snow that falls from heaven,
Blanketing all with beauty, would it could last!
And upon joining me this soft December night,
I’ll introduce myself. I am Christmas Past.

And indeed there was a time
When your merry laughter spilled along the street,
Echoing from walls and rooftops and window-panes;
There was a time, there was a time
You prepared a smile to greet the faces that you meet;
There was a time to work but also to play,
And time for buying gifts and making plans
That brightened friends’ and family’s Christmas Day
Time for you and time for me,
And time now for a hundred recollections,
And memories, thoughts, and hard reflections,
Before the taking of your breakfast tea.

In the room the women come and go,
Talking of reindeers and Ho Ho Ho.

But Spirit, that was a time
I wondered, “Was there more?” and “Was there more?”
A time I reflect upon, when my family was poor
And a gentleman in debt was something to abhor–
[They could say, “He’s a successful businessman!”]
My investing of funds wisely, making money as I can,
I know right to the penny when my ledger-books I scan–
[They will say, “He is greedy,” but it’s all part of my plan!]
Do I dare
Disturb this money drug?
In a minute there is time
To change a destiny, but could I? Should I? Bah humbug!

So you say you have a plan, you have a plan:–
You know the mornings, evenings, afternoons,
Of people now, whom your greediness impugns?
You know their obligations, how they scrape to pay a cent?
You must know that they are not, like you, tycoons.
I am the ghost of Christmas Present.

And you curse the beggars daily, curse them all:–
But let us observe the family Cratchit
There is Bob, and his wife, and crippled Tiny Tim
Picking at meagre rations, with his crutch against the wall.
Is it not grim
To see a working man barely able to provide?
So how dare you presume?

And know we’ll look and listen, listen and look:–
Hear their murmured blessing, see the sadness in their eye
[They are so very poor, with so little they can buy!]
Is someone smoking in here?
Ebenezer, tell me, is that a tear?
Lives are more than just numbers entered in a ledger-book.
So how dare you presume?

Spirit, I say, I have saved and husbanded my wealth,
And watched the waste when others squandered theirs
On silly things like wine and toys and garments of fine array.

I should have been a pair of lion’s paws
Stepping through the brush of silent savannah.

Cratchit’s poor quality, his goldbricking, makes me sour.
Checks sums upon his fingers;
He sleeps, he’s tired, he malingers
All while taking my money by the hour.
Should I, after seeing the Cratchit family’s vices
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
What benefit will a change of heart bring to me?
I can scratch my head [until it’s bald] and won’t puzzle this out.
I am no prophet–a fact I’ll gladly flout.
But am I now seeing moments yet to come?
Is that me lying there? Why is everything so glum?
Ah, this is Christmas Yet to Be.

I see this and ask, was it worth it after all?
Because Spirit, I see what you are showing me
'Tis a casket in a church, just a candle’s company,
No mourners, no priest, to attend to the dead?
Tell me Spirit, where they are. Is the funeral over? Have they fled?
Or were there ever any mourners at all?
Spirit, you are silent, but I’ve so many questions
I want to know who lies there, friendless and unmourned
That’s not my wish for my dying day, not at all
With not even a priest for comfort, lonely and forlorn.
No, again I say that’s not what I want at all,
That’s not what I want, at all.

Once more, I wonder–was it worth it after all?
Spirit, I fail to understand what you are showing me.
A darkened country churchyard, a grave, a simple stone–
Is it the dead man from the church, the one who was alone?
Let us approach, to read the name thus there engraved
Who was he, I wonder? Was he timid? Was he brave?
I’ll strike a match and read-- E-B-E … oh my God, that’s me!
I’m the one who died, who mourners left alone!
Oh Spirit now I understand the scenes to me you’ve shown.
But Spirit, again, I’ll say that’s not what I want at all,
No, that’s not what I want, at all.

No! I am not a miser, nor was meant to be.
Am perhaps parsimonious, one that will do
To cause an investor to give a thought or two
Advise on interest; no doubt an easy tool,
Warn against funding, if needed.
Should I try not to be at all monstrous
And hope that my counsel is heeded?
At times, indeed, should I be generous?
Or am I simply a Fool?

Cash is cold … I am old …
Perhaps for me the bell has tolled.

Shall I spend a dollar here? Do I dare to pay a fee?
I shall doff my banker’s visor and sit up in a tree.
I have heard the children singing, happily.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

Awake now, I see them walking in the snow upon the street
Laughing as they play their happy Christmas games
And I wonder if it’s possible that I was once the same?

“Boy! I need some help and here’s some money–
Buy the goose in the butcher’s; keep the change for your fun.”
And with luck, I’ll hear Tim say, “God bless us every one.”

[Robot_Arm]

Somehow I missed this thread the first time around. I’ve always been rather fond of a verse form called a “double dactyl”. Stricter rules than a limerick, and rather more obscure.

Flippity flappity
Anas platyrhynchos
Do things flow like water
Off of your back?

Don’t try to navigage
Echolocational
Tested by Mythbusters
“Quack, damn you, quack!”

(I don’t know if “Anas platyrhynchos” fits the proper long-short-short long-shot-short stress pattern required of a proper double dactyl, but I like it anyway.)

[Dr_Paprika]

You started a thread on this in 2003 and I followed up 17 years later.

Double Dactyls, the Higgledy Piggledy Poetry Thread

While posting in verse to another thread (don’t ask), I did a little research and ran across something called a “double dactyl”. It’s a bit like a limerick; a short, strict-form and (ideally) humorous poem. Eight lines, in two four-line stanzas. The syllables are 6-6-6-4, 6-6-6-4. The six-syllable lines should be double-dactylic (HARD-soft-soft-HARD-soft-soft). The fourth and eighth lines rhyme. The first line is nonsense. “Higgledy piggledy” is common but I’ve seen variations. The secon…

Higgeldy Piggeldy Game

This is a thread game based on a contest GAMES magazine ran, years ago. The idea is to write a short poem composed of double dactyls. A dactyl is a three syllable poetry measure with the stress on the first syllable. The following poems are written in double dactyl (DA da da DA da da), and the objective of the game is to write a similar eight line poem composed of these. They must start with the words “Higgeldy Piggeldy”. The original contest winners (IIRC) are reprinted below. Higgledy Pi…

[Robot_Arm]

Yeah, I thought I’d posted it before. I’m pleasantly surprised that anyone reads my posts here; I’m amazed that someone remembers them.