Music

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 18)

Today, I am NaPo-challenged to compose an abecedarian poem – a poem in which the word choice follows the order of the alphabet. It may be a 26-word piece in alphabetical order (a boy can dance… etc.), or a poem of 26 lines with the first letter of the first word of each line following the order of the alphabet. I chose the latter.

I decided to free-style a poem using alphabetized band and singer names with comment.

Music by the Letters

ABBA set the stage for glam-bands
Blondie, Boston, or Brooks & Dunn: you choose
CCR Cream(s) Chicago, but love ‘em all
Dire Straits did the Walk of Life into self-destruction
Elephant Revival caught the White Rabbit best
Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” inspired my marathons
Grateful Dead’s name was Garcia’s dictionary find
Haddaway had his heyday in the nineties
Isaac Hays might have gotten off the Shaft, but
Journey, like some greats, never won a Grammy (dumb)
Kiss, likewise, but was named for “Psycho Circus”
Lynyrd Skynyrd, another no-Gram, not for Free Bird or ‘bama
Melanie still roller skates without a brand new key
Neil Young barely dances these days under a Harvest Moon
Otis Redding still longs for his songs from The Dock of the Bay
Patsy Cline still makes me Crazy and I Fall To Pieces
Queen rocks this boho as champions of rhapsody (no Grammy?)
Roy Orbison was a Traveler, but got me with Pretty Woman
Stealers Wheel stuck me in the middle with you looking in
T. Rex bangs a gong when I Get It On with Hot Love
Uriah Heep’s Lady in Black had some Easy Livin’
Village People remind me the Y.M.C.A. is In the Navy.
Willie Nelson will live forever On the Road Again
XTC sang Dear God and now is no more
Yes still thinks Love Will Find a Way, but hey ho,
ZZ Top bottoms the list like a Tush in La Grange.

Look both ways with music finding better days.
Mind the gaps and carful not to scratch them records.
Just what is a Grammy, anyway?

 

*Click on the NaPo 2023 button to see the challenge and to read more poems (not all are on prompt).

Friday Fictioneers for March 31st, 2023

To close out March and its fictionally lionized madness, our mysterious and mischievous Mistress Rochelle of the Wisoff Mermaids had synchronized and choreographed with Amanda Forestwood for us to play with a wonderfully musical picture using our own creative bow.

I sat and fiddled with this gem of a photograph before contriving a roguishly prankish story set in the summertime southern US of A.

Click on Amanda’s picture of a violin in a lawn chair to hear how to tune up your own strings and to play your own personal ballad, <101 word story, tale, or fib at Rochelle’s Purple Place of Passion (her blog).

PHOTO PROMPT © Amanda Forestwood

Genre: Christian Fantasy
Title: Summer Confessions
Word Count: A sinful 100

***

Ain’t no hooch at Preacher Hardingfele and his sexy wife, Lorena’s, Annual Southern Baptist July Fourth backyard barbeque, so I toted me a flask of Brother Jack flavored with lots of Old Pot’s THC lemon extract. I spiked Lorena’s punch, and she knew it.

To spank me, we drug a sunchair behind the garage. I was still fiddlin’ with Lor’s bra strap when her Preacher-man seen us. He got his gun, so I took to run and yelled about biblical forgiveness. I knew of his fornicatin’ Sister Betty Berliew, so I got away.

Every year, Hardingfele’s barbeque is more fun.

***

Look both ways if you’re going to play around with Preacher’s peeps.
But mind the gaps and them convoluted hooks on lovely Lorena’s bra straps.
Name your instrument according to how you play with it.

Click on the famous (or infamous) Lorena Bobbitt,
who keeps her knives sharp,
to link up with the squares and read more
masterful Friday Fictioneer stories.
(If you’re not familiar with this story, read all about it here.)

***

I wanted to give you the American Civil War song, Lorena, by Johnny Cash (or any number of singers and groups), but one is my limit. So, this couple playing their fiddles (violins are the same, but different) is too good to pass up.

 

Monday’s Rune: dVerse Music Quadrille

Lynda Lee Lyberg caught me at the dVerse bar today thinking of a poem about the mavens of music from the days of my time. While I must bow to the discipline of a mere 44 words, I will eventually make a much longer tribute to the quad of this week’s Quadrille. For today—this:

To Carly, Carole, Joni, and Linda

Music, Ladies! Making music was your life.
It’s been seventy years more
since you made your way writing, singing,
and playing for your sake and ours.

With Anticipation I’ll let Tapestry tell me
When Will I Be Loved since I see
Both Sides Now.

Look both ways and try, try, try to see all sides.
Mind the gaps when the beautiful ladies sing.
It’s where the love is.

Note: Maybe some young ‘uns don’t know that Carly Simon, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Linda Ronstadt were literal folk and rock stars for more than sixty years.

Click here to read more 44-word poems with music.

 

Monday’s Rune: Into every life…

Privileged Judging

Some cite unfairness, injustices of inequality
when others are born into better but another into less.

Yet both pride and shame rise from elite or proletariat hearts,
be it random common birth, natural placement, or bad seed.

No artist must suffer a lowly soul, in pain from cursed reality or chemical dependence, haunted, as snotty critics bestow their judgement of ironic reverse snobbishness and scorn upon the cleanly washed.

Let demure honestly determine the good in all forms of art and beauty
as critical opine speaks well of all mankind. Let art stand as art.

May wonderous life arise from ashes just as bleak and evil fall from the heavens, the source of rain or shine is not the matter.

Look both ways. Is the artist the art?
Vice-versa?
Do we choose birth circumstances?
Mind the gaps but judge wisely and care deeply.

 

Antique illustration: Cangue, Tcha

Friday Fictioneers for February 3rd, 2023

We’re iced-in over (down) here in Texas, which means it is our bi-annual week of winter.

While Rochelle is recovering from strokin’ too hard, she has rattled our senses with an Alicia Jamtaas photo taken on a lovely romantic day. Our gig now is to write fewer than 101 words telling the stories that our muses whisper to us as we look at Alicia’s pic.

If your muse is tugging at your mind and makin’ you wanna play, click Ms. Jamtaas pic to dance on over to Rochelle’s blog page where you’ll get to read all about it.

PHOTO PROMPT © Alicia Jamtaas

Genre: Dream-dancing Fiction
Title: There She Was
Word Count: 100

***

It was a hot one. I was minding my business, walkin’ down the street, snappin’ my fingers, shufflin’ my feet, feelin’ the beat.

I saw her sitting there. My heart stopped. We waved. It was love. Music played. We danced. We started callin’ out round the world. Everybody was dancing in the street.

If this is a dream, may I never awaken. I called to her, “Baby, let’s make it real.”

We did with all the music playing, we were all singin’ and dancin’ and hot , hot, hot. She yelled, “Carlos, I love you. “I said, “my name’s Bill.”

***

Look both ways but love may be sitting up above on yonder windowsill.
Mind the gaps but (flash mob) dance when you can.

Click on the salsa dancers to flash on over to the inlinkz page for more hot stories.

AND, A little Smooth guitar from the great Carlos Santana to better tell the whole story.

Sammi’s Weekender #295 (loquacious)

Click on this graphic to link over to Sammi’s blog and more loquacious 88 word wonders.

 

 

Sing It!

With a repertoire
hundreds of songs long, mostly bogarted
from other featherbeds,
(mock, yeah, -ing, yeah)—
as you plagiarize music from lesser songsters,
some people think you’re twenty other birds,
you, my constant yardbird companion,
the most loquacious of creatures
(mock-yeah-ing-yeah-bird-yeah)
mockingbird,
king of harassing selfish bullies,
the loneliest of bellowing bachelors,
master of many colored personalities
tempting ladies who want
to buy me a mockingbird,
“and if that mocking bird don’t sing”
(for a proper mocker, no such thing)
“she gonna buy me a diamond ring.”
“whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa…”

Look both ways in music and life.
Mind the gaps in the birds’ nests in the backyard bushes.

***

Certainly, one of the (if not THE) most famous of married couple duets, Mockingbird sung by Carly Simon and James Taylor. Mockingbird Lyrics & Music were originally by Inez & Charlie Foxx (Added lyrics by James Taylor).

Friday Fictioneers for January 13th, 2023

Our mysterious and mischievous Mistress, Rochelle, passionate for the pool (she could swim circles around most of us), has bestowed upon us a Friday the 13th photo by Fleur Lind. We are to be magically inspired and motivated to write a story of fewer than 101 words (unlike Dalmatians or Arabian Nights).

To help enlighten you as you steer your story to the inlinkz squares, click on Fleur’s photo to be driven to Rochelle’s blog where it’s all mapped out for us. It’s fun. Try it. Then join the pack as we read and hopefully comment on as many stories as we like.

PHOTO PROMPT © Fleur Lind

Genre: Narrative Poetry
Title: A Verse of Light
Word Count: 100

***

Driving, my twisted mind a malaise of anger
lost in sorrow that love controls,
I think of her and of him.

That Sting song played,
“I’m so happy that I can’t stop crying
… I’m laughing through my tears”
The blood red sky, like love. The clouds cheering,
“Something about the universe and how it’s all connected”

I saw light coming. I heard,
“Everybody’s got to leave the darkness sometime”

As I drove into the light, I felt the pain leaving me.
“I’m so happy that I can’t stop crying
I’m laughing through my tears” And the pain is gone.

***

Look both ways.
At times, let the future heal the past.
Mind the gaps, some pain remains.

Click on the crash to read other (more uplifting) stories.

 

I have no idea why I like this old Sting song so much.

 

Friday Fictioneers for December 30th, 2022

During the year twenty-twenty-two, the lovely and wonderful Rochelle has tempted and challenged all comers with photographic inspiration. Every week, she boosted me to the writing of a one-hundred-word story. This is my fifty-second story this year: 5,200 words that might have been a brief short story, but each is a micro fictional attempt to swing fanatically for the fences.

This year’s finale provides us with one of Rochelle’s personal pictures from which we are to connect the dots and write a complete story with fewer words than compose the average parrot’s vocabulary: no more than 100.

Join the fun by clicking on the photo for a quick taxi ride over to Rochelle’s blog. There you can find all you need to know to play along. Post your story with the others on the inlinkz app.

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Genre: Musical Fiction
Title: Anticipation
Word count: 100

I was enjoying the view, sitting in the Little Lemon Coffee Shop, a bistro (ish) phenom in our city library, when I heard three electronic beeps.

The doors opened. Someone said her name. I saw her floating toward me with that hypnotizing, toothy, Cheshire cat smile.

I lifted my sax and played my feelings. We were in heaven. I felt privileged in the presence of musical royalty.

Then I heard three more beeps, and she sang, “Double shot Americano and cinnamon croissant, for Mister Bill.”

I thought, Death is calling me but I’m not leaving this dream before she does.

Look both ways for the music of a lifetime.
Mind the gaps and cap the lies.
We all have our story to tell.

Carly Simon lost both sisters, Jo and Lucy, to cancer in the same week this past October. Click on them to read more 100-word marvels.

 

Four magnificent minutes of beautiful music.

Monday’s Rune: The final week

Why so Happy?

As Hanukkah ends
Kwanzaa begins, and it is boxing day in Canada.
Because yesterday over two billion enlightened
of the eight billion humans alive
decide a religious thing and dispute
coffee cups and well wishes,
which must be specifically selfish.

It’s also the climaxing week of
collegiate football bowls
so schools can decide who to fire
or to obscenely overpay with locked down
contracts having nothing to do
with anything educational (or successful)
except that we are better than you—
more near neurotic selfishness. Yay,
we’re number one (so what?).

But it is serious business
for calendars. The end of another
elliptical orbital trip around the
minor star we call Sun,
and another 365 days bite the dust.

In the meantime, libraries close,
school music programs falter
or are cancelled to reduce cost,
and art blows in the wind.
Happy holidays. Congratulations,
it’s a wonderful life, Mister Potter.

Look both ways except this week.
For twenty-twenty-two, it’s over.
Mind the gaps for “what have we done?”

Now that is art.

Friday Fictioneers for December 16th, 2022

Mid December finds the fabulous Rochelle walking the line toward us with one of Lisa Fox’s hanging out pics to plant seeds of grandiose fiction-ology in our creative minds.

If you wanna hang out with us, just click a pin on Lisa’s photo to swing over to Rochelle’s blog where all the threads and details of writing a story in very few words is explained by the Mistress of Friday Fictioneers.

Click this pic for a direct line to Rochelle’s blog. PHOTO PROMPT © Lisa Fox.

Genre: Cartoon Humor
Title: Rizzo Makes His Play
Word Count: 100

***

Gonzo the Great stormed into the kitchen where Rizzo the Rat was eating while addressing 1,274 Holiday Cards to his family. “Guess what, Rizzo? Animal called. The Electric Mayhem are coming over to practice tonight.”

Rizzo mugged Gonzo and said, “Is Janice coming? I want to rat out with her if Zoot gets stoned. I mean, hubba, hubba!”

Gonzo looks at the audience, then Rizzo, “You really are a rat. These are our peeps. We don’t do that.”

“Oh, Gonzo. Every successful band needs a love triangle. A little hanky-panky never hurt. Look at Piggy. Are you gunna eat that?”

Look both ways to remember, or to forget, those great characters who formed our humor and musical genius.
Mind the gaps and the steps between the notes.

Gloss: Gonzo and Rizzo are Muppets from the television show of the same name. Rizzo first appeared in episode 418 of The Muppet Show, as one of many rats following Christopher Reeve backstage. He can be seen mugging and reacting to dialogue. He remained a scene-stealing background figure through the final season, occasionally performing with Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem band.

Click the pic of Gonzo and Rizzo to read more stories mused up by Lisa’s hanging line photo.

And, of course, The Electric Mayhem doing Bohemian Rhapsody.