Pirates vs. Ninjas

Some subjects are the topic of epics. Like ripping off a monster's arm and then beating up his mum when she comes to complain, like Beowulf. Or going to find some horn or something and getting beaten up by a Sea Witch, like the Finnish Kalevala. These days, the vernacular mythology, at least in the West, seems to revolve around Internet memes. Somebody set us up the bomb. Over 9000?! Basement Cat. All of those.

And then there's Pirates vs. Ninjas. I'm sure the subject has been done to death, but I always like to give a dead horse a good kicking, so here is my epic poem about.......drumroll please................Pirates. Vs. Ninjas.

Scratch what I said before--and new poem.

You know, I have talked so much about the tornado, because people keep asking me questions, that I just don't want to talk about it anymore. So. That said. Today I wrote a poem. It's not in any traditional form, which was a departure for me. Here it is.

Weapons

You will need three knives. (At least. Bring more.)
One of silver, to ward against wolves.
One of iron, to fend off fairies.
And one of bronze, to open doors (to other realms, and other lives).

A musical instrument. Like a lyre, or a lute
Or a harp (or harmonica). Maybe a flute.
An iPod would do. They don't like technology.
They have issues with order, with zeroes and ones.

Take a candle. (Or a torch. Or a flamethrower. Take several.)
You wondered why you were afraid of the dark as a child.
You'll soon remember.
The darkness is where the wilder things go wild.

A skeleton key. A ball of twine.
A gorgon's head if you've got it.
(You've not? More's the pity.)
A few more odds and ends and you should be fine.

Remember no bowstring should match the nimbleness of your wits.
That no shield should be as steadfast as your heart.
That no blade should equal the sharpness of your mind.
Remember that, and you should be fine.

An old poem.

My finals end May 6th. Hopefully, I'll be done before that, but it all depends on scheduling. And then I'll have a little over 3 months of idle time, in which I can actually focus on my writing and music and other art. In other words, there should be some more posts to this blog. Regular posts, even.

Anyway, here's an old poem I wrote several years ago for a creative writing class. It's one of my favorites, and it uses the villanelle structure.

Brittle bits.

Though I am a pretty happy person overall, I, of course, have my down periods.  What I have always found interesting is the so-called "artist's temperament."  Of course, I tend to believe that temperament is exaggerated in portrayals of artists, though I have known some serious nutbars who nevertheless produced excellent work.  However, there does seem to be a touch of truth to the 'moodiness' of those in the creative fields.  Or let me put it this way: the vast majority of my friends can be broken down either into hearts-on-their-sleeves or robot-folk, and their choices of careers and hobbies seem extremely stereotypically aligned with their emotional makeup.  That's all.  Anecdote is not data.

I said all that to say that I wrote some sad things because I was sad.  One was written a few weeks ago, and another was written tonight, because I can't sleep.  And both of them are fairly short.

Before I forget.

I do keep forgetting to post this, and I've had it written for weeks.  Poetry school continues!  Tonight, I bring to you the sestina, possibly the most irritating form ever.  It is a thirty-nine line poem.  The first 36 lines are grouped in six stanzas of six lines each, then a three-line "tercet," also called the "envoy."  Envoys are usually addressed directly to the person or thing that the rest of the poem is about--but not always.

The sestina becomes more difficult in that you choose six words as "ending" words for each line.  You have to use them in a set sequence, like so:

123456--first stanza
615243--second stanza
364125
532614
451362
246531
And for the last three-line stanza, it's 2/5, 4/3, 6/1.  Though you can do other forms, that's the one I used.  And to make it harder on myself, I chose to make rhyming pairs of words.  Most sestinas don't rhyme.  It's just far too difficult, because you want to try to choose words that have more than one meaning, so you don't sound like you're repeating yourself.  The best sestinas don't sound like they are using the same words over and over.

And yet more writing.

I've been writing a lot more recently than usual.  I always write a bit, but these past couple of weeks have been a deluge.  Most of my work will probably never make it here, just my favorites.  But I wrote something that managed to touch my own heart deeply.  It's yet another villanelle, but I may love it best of all the ones I've written.


I await your favors, still dreaming of your face
If darkness overwhelms me, still that memory is mine
Maybe love is best where it is not commonplace.

I walk my past uncertainly, all my steps retraced
Through triumph and tragedy, every rise and each decline
While I await your favors, still dreaming of your face.

What came before was easy and at frenetic pace
But this is slower and not looked-for, and for all that much more fine
Maybe love is best where it is not commonplace.

What I have is little, laden with dishonor and disgrace
But in your dedicated fire inferior tempers to refined
So I'll await your favors, still dreaming of your face.

Now the scribing's almost done, vows that cannot be erased
I anticipate the seamlessness, the joy of being aligned
Maybe love is best where it is not commonplace.

No one prepared me for you, but now I've joined in the chase
To hunt and moon for something that's approaching the divine
I await your favors, still dreaming of your face
Maybe love is best where it is not commonplace.

The Octogenarian Project

So I have a friend that I will call Disclaimer Man, because he is the King of Disclaimers.  I have no doubt that when he gets married, he will be asked "Do you take this woman," etc. etc. and he will say "I do...but."

Seriously.  It will happen.

Anyway, this wonderful friend of mine issued me a mock challenge that I took seriously: to use the word octogenarian in my work.  He's getting his wish, and I enjoyed writing this beyond my ability to explain.  I mean, I didn't follow most of my normal creative process, I just wrote and laughed.

THIS IS THE BEST LOVE POEM-SONG-THING IN THE WORLD.  And it's allll for you, Disclaimer Man.

I love you like the NRA loves the Second Amendment
I love you like a dentist loves teeth
Your every wish is my commandment
As long as I'm living, your sword has a sheath.


No restrictions or limits--it's love libertarian
And I will still love you when we're octogenarians.


I love you like new mothers love naps
I love you like Kermit loves pork
I'm looking forward to popping my cap
You be the corkscrew, and I'll be the cork.


We go together like Conan and barbarian
And I will still love you when we're octogenarians.


I love you like magicians love prestidigitation
Like banks love overdraft fees
What I want from you needs no explanation
It's pretty straightforward--tab A, slot B.


I love you like Robin Hood loved Maid Marian
I love you like vultures love carrion
Like submissives love a disciplinarian
Like Karl Marx loved the proletarian
And I'll still love you when we're octogenarians.


I mean, amazing.  I don't think I can ever top that.

The Process of Writing Poetry, Part the First

I have a massive headache.  This has nothing to do with writing poetry.  Writing poetry is one of those things least likely to give me a headache.  However, if nothing I say in this entry makes any sense whatsoever, we're going to blame it on my headache.  Got that?  Good.

Of course, the poetic process is different for every poet, blah blah blah de-freakin'-blah.  We're all special snowflakes working on our "craft" (if that is not the most pretentious word ever used to describe what writers do, I am Marie of Rumania.  Not even "art" is worse).

Anyway, let's get down to brass tacks.  (Have you ever even seen a tack made of brass?  Me neither.)  The poetry form I'm talking about today is the villanelle.  You can read all sorts of interesting stuff about it on Wikipedia, because I'm only giving a basic overview.

A villanelle is a 19-line poem that uses two main repeating lines in its construction.  Because villanelles repeat so much, it's imperative that the repeating lines are used in a way that doesn't make this poem completely boring or nonsensical.  The construction is thus:

A1
b
A2

a
b
A1

a
b
A2


a
b
A1

a
b
A2

a
b
A1
A2

Theoretically, this should be pretty simple to understand, but since assumptions make us all dumb, A1 and A2 are the repeating lines.  The lowercase a's are lines that rhyme with A1 and A2, and all the b's rhyme.  Now you are smarter than you were.

So, in this case, I set out to write a love poem, but decided that I couldn't, for whatever reason, write a love poem today that was anything but dreck.  But then I started to write this, and it turned into a KIND of love poem.  Sort of.

At any rate, the first thing I do when writing a villanelle is decide what lines I am going to use for repetition, and then start brainstorming other rhyming endings.  So I came up with a first stanza:


I say all the things I've said before
Some verbatim, some paraphased
This time, though, I mean them more.

Of interest only to me is the fact that "This time, though, I mean them more" didn't start out like that.  It started as "But this time I mean them more."  I changed it for a couple of reasons I'll discuss in a moment.  But it was a perfectly good first stanza, with non-difficult rhymes to work with.  Then I brainstormed everything I could think of that rhymed with "before/more," and everything that rhymed or even just sorta-rhymed with "paraphrased."  I made sure to write down the word "semaphore" because I love that word and really, it just isn't used enough.

Here is where a villanelle gets tricky (to me).  Each stanza in the middle contains one of the repeating lines.  It's pretty imperative when I write a villanelle to make sure the other lines in the stanza support that repeating line.  So I ended up with this second stanza:

It's not a game.  I don't keep score,
But still, considering earlier days
I say all the things I've said before. 

You see?  The first two lines support the overall idea of "saying things [I've] said before."

Then I came to the third stanza.  I really didn't like the overall flow of "But this time, I mean them more" with the lines I chose here.  So I changed the line up to make the stanza flow better, and this is what I got:

I can remember vows I swore
And I kept them.  I'm still amazed.
This time, though, I mean them more.

If I had kept the "but..." line instead...it just didn't sound as good to me.  Sometimes that's the only criteria you can work on.

Of course, one of the other main ideas in writing a villanelle that you keep hold of is the fact that your two repeating lines will end up side-by-side in the last stanza.  They need to flow together well, and make sense just as a couplet.  Which I think I actually accomplished (some of my early villanelles, written when I was around 19/20, are painful because I didn't follow this rule very well).

Here is the poem in its entirety.  What I was trying to say--and you can read it any way you want--is that when we fall in love, we tend to repeat the same things over and over.  Not that they don't have meaning; that's not what I'm suggesting.  Feeling something for one person, and then feeling it again later on for another, doesn't invalidate the feeling at all.  I just found it interesting that our language of love tends to be circumscribed.  It's certainly something I try to avoid.

I say all the things I said before
Some verbatim, some paraphased
This time, though, I mean them more.

It's not a game.  I don't keep score.
But still, considering earlier days
I say all the things I've said before.

I can remember vows I swore
And I kept them.  I'm still amazed.
This time, though, I mean them more.

All that seems surreal semaphore (I knew I could use it somewhere)
Word and gesture, a love-charade
I say all the things I've said before.

To those I previously adored
I gave these gifts too.  Merely a phase.
This time, though, I mean them more.


Yet it was true then, that face I wore.
But I've dispensed with that masquerade
I say all the things I've said before
This time, though--I mean them more.