Huh. I thought I just did that. And how come I didn’t know it was national poetry writing month? Do you suppose I wasn’t informed on purpose?
No matter, another poem probably won’t kill us. Well, me, anyway. I don’t know about you. I just hope poor Emily doesn’t roll over in her grave. Or come back to haunt me. Because I am about to update one of her poems.
A Day! Help! Help! Another Day!
Emily Dickinson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Emily Dickinson
A Day! Help! Help! Another Day!
Your prayers, oh Passer by!
From such a common ball as this
Might date a Victory!
From marshallings as simple
The flags of nations swang.
Steady—my soul: What issues
Upon thine arrow hang!
A Prompt! Help! Help! Another Prompt!
by grandmalin
A prompt! OMG, another prompt!
Give me a break you guys.
Such a seemingly simple request
Might cause INSANITY!
You prompt and prompt and never stop
The stress is making me mad.
Hold on, my soul: No worries
Just write something really bad.
The only thing I like better about Emily’s poem compared to mine is the use of the word “swang”. That is a truly awesome word.
And this post, my friends, should prove once and for all that poetry writing and appreciation is really not my strong point.
In my mind, April is my brothers month, just like May is mine, and June and November belong to my sisters. He was born on the 19th, a Good Friday in 1946. It’s been half a year already since he was ‘stolen’ from us, no longer a child of course, but still a child of the earth and the universe and lost to us much too soon.
So here’s a rather melancholy tune for our last April Friday. Poetry set to music. I guess I’m still in my saudade mood. Bring on the rain.
A fairy offering wishes, illustration by John Bauer to Alfred Smedberg’s The seven wishes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Stolen Child
(Words by W.B.Yeats-Music by Loreena McKennitt)
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats
There we’ve hid our faery vats
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries
Come away, O human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light
By far off furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles
Whilst the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Dream Fairy (Photo credit: Alexandria LaNier)
Come away, O human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams
The Visit (Loreena McKennitt album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Come away, O human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.
Away with us he’s going
The solemn-eyed
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.
Trifextra challenge - We are giving you three words and asking that you add another 33 to them to make a complete 36-word response. You may use the words in any order you choose. Our three words are
The clock is ticking down on this weekends Trifecta challenge – exactly 33 words written in first person narrative. Ha – how simple should this be, since I do it here every day. It is forever and always, ad infinitum, all about me, me and me. And then a bit more about me. The hard part of course is saying something worth saying in just 33 words. That’s probably why they call it a challenge.
And her squawking, huge and urgent need, for long.
Quietly he took off, left.
So what?
Inner blankness all he wanted.
Sensation of quiescence,
Blanket of relief.
Olive Kitteridge (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Trifecta Challenge : This weekend it’s another word game – seeing what can be done with a particular word bank. From the 33rd page of
Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, scour the page, choose 33 words and reshape them into a piece of your own.
This is so much harder than it looks. And that was a great book, by the way. Happy Weekend.
A comment by gooseyanne (The everyday ramblings of Anne and her Goose) sent me on a bit of a wild goose chase to find the poem she quoted, and I’m delighted to share it back in its entirety. Is this not what friends and google are for – helping us to add to our personal massive piles of random information? Well, yeah. So here you go.
Main Street Antigonish, Nova Scotia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Antigonish, by Huges Mearns, 1899
(Inspired by reports of a ghost of a man roaming the stairs of a haunted house in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.)
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away…
When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door… (slam!)
Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away
In 1939 the poem was adapted to a song called “The Little Man Who Wasn’t There” and recorded by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. It was on the Hit Parade for 11 weeks.
This innocent little poem has appeared in variations in literature, film, comics, television and music for over a hundred years. Amazing! Imagine some small thing popping out of your head and becoming the stimulus for further creativity, awakening and motivating future generations! Well, it’s a nice thought, anyway. We all have our delusions of grandeur.
Hope you all have a happy Tuesday. Stay away from those staircases.
Imagine my December Book of Days tossed carelessly on the snow, the wind whipping the pages and ripping some of the blank ones from their bindings to fly helter skelter into oblivion.
Now imagine me sitting here with weepy eyes and an elephant on my chest, groggy from having slept the afternoon away, a little sad about the missing pages, but without the energy to do anything about replacing them. They’re just gone.
Maybe this post-a-day thing has finally beaten me down, although I think I made an awesome stab at it. There were some sad days in October where words seemed useless and empty or there was simply nothing left to say. And these few days in December when falling asleep won hands down over staying conscious for even one more minute.
And now I’ve caught this stupid bug and my head is full of sludge.
But today I will not be thwarted by sludge head! I’m here to explain that delightful button to your right which proclaims me to be one of many Bloggers for Peace. Please click on it and see where it takes you. I am committing to doing a blog for peace every month in 2013. I fell about a hundred blogs short on my Project 365, but that’s because I kept forgetting to put everything into that category. So I’ll just slog on with that until I reach the magic number. Because magic numbers are magical and we could all do with a little more magic in our lives.
I am going to try harder to accept the many Word Press Challenges. Even when I think they’re stupid. God knows I rarely come up with anything better on my own. I will finally finish Alphabet Soup. I will get Jazzy all the way to one hundred schmaltzy bits of advice with a wine glass that’s never empty. I will write more poetry. Before you run away screaming, come on, some of it might even be good. There’s always that chance.
There will also be more tales for my poor neglected “Before The Lights Go Out”. Because one of these days the lights will go out for real and there will still be so many stories left to tell.
So I guess that’s my vague master plan for the moment. Now I’m going to drink a gallon of orange juice, take some decongestants and imagine myself being all bright and perky at work tomorrow. And the next day, and the next, all the way to 2013.
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas
May your every New Year dream come true
Sweet December song
The melody that saved me
On those less than silent nights
When snow would fall upon my bed
White sugar from Jesus
And take me to the day
She could always smile
The Virgin Child would always show, you see
Just to save me
(Just to save me)
There was always Christmas time
To wipe the year away
I guess that morning they’d decided
That the war would have to wait
There was always Christmas time
Jesus came to stay
I could believe in peace on Earth
And I could watch TV all day
So I dreamed of Christmas
Maybe since you’ve gone
I went a little crazy
God knows they can see (the child)
But the snow that falls upon my bed
That loving I needed
Falls every single day
For each and every child
The Virgin smiles for all to see
But you kept her from me
There was always Christmas time
To wipe the year away
I guess that morning they’d decided
That the war would have to wait
There was always Christmas time
Jesus came to stay
I could believe in peace on Earth
And I could watch TV all day
And so I dreamed of Christmas
Yes, I dreamed like you
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas
May your every New Year dream come true
J is also for Johnny Depp, and his inspired version of Jabberwocky in the Alice in Wonderland movie.
Jabberwocky, the unedited version, by Lewis Carroll
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
I love the poem (most poems make exactly this much sense to me) and I love that movie, and what can I say about Johnny Depp that hasn’t already been said? Probably by me?
We’ve had a perfectly beamish day, picking up a mimsy new filing cabinet at uffish old Wal-Mart and then galumphing back home to put it together. My magical housekeeping fervor continues. Callooh callay, this vorpal stack of papers is finally going to get filed! I expect to feel quite brillig once it’s all done.
Follow the rainbow..they say this wordpress.com site is ENDLESS..but who knows, you may find a bag of skittles, Neil Gaiman, or that greedy little leprechauns stash o'lucky charms.
