National Poetry Month

Mack the Knife – NaPo 2025 Day Thirty

For the final day of April and to close out the 2025 version of how I do National Poetry Month, I was to pen a poem that describes various times in my life when I have heard the same band or music.

Congrats to all participants. This may have been my best NaPoWriMo year because the prompts seemed to be in my poetry writing lane. One a day for 30 days, on prompt.

Thanks to Maureen for another fantastic April.

Composed

Melody and lyrics done separately
twenty years before my birth
in a language I did not speak
never intended for my ears
for the Threepenny I’ve never been

Thirteen-ish me,
a maligned Catholic school kid
discovering hormones;
Friday night dances (nun-chaperoned),
and un-churchly music we loved;
songs like The Battle of New Orleans,
Mack the Knife, Personality, Venus,
Lonely Boy, and a hundred more.

The year another paper boy
and fellow music lover, Don M. said
was when the music died.
But it had not. Not yet. Not ever.
My music may die with me. But not today.

Not until Bobby Darin — did Mack the Knife
find me with five up-key modulations
bring marvelous darkness to musical light
to make us feel a special song
in a special time. Then and since.

Wonderful covers, pre and post, but
back then I didn’t know about
someone and something I liked so much,
music that would change with me,
year after year, never the same old song.

Look both ways
“Now on the sidewalk…lies a body just oozing life, eek!”
Mind the gaps cuz,
“someone’s sneakin’ ‘round the corner—could that someone be Mack the Knife?”

Interested in more? Check THIS out—especially the video of Bobby Darin’s version, if you’re not familiar with the song.

EXTRA – EXTRA – EXTRA —- A friend and classmate of mine just let me know about this new, hot, Broadway production honoring Bobbie Daren.

 

 

 

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 5, When Rain

The NaPoWriMo.net page prompted us to write a poem about how two or three different things might perceive a blessing. Or how they could think about something else.

Since I seldom use the words blessing or blessed, I pondered things to poetically opine such as luck, grief, happiness, politics, God, love, power, rain, poetry, sleep, or sex. Since the prompt has this option, that’s for me. I pulled rain from the sky.

When Rain

When the old man heard rain,
he smiled, looked out of
the window and said to his Chihuahua,
“You know, Thunder, Updike wrote:
Rain is grace—without rain,
there’d be no life. I am still life.”
And out into the warm summer rain he went.

In the trees the birds huddled together
as the rain caused seeds to fall,
worms to surface, and the raindrops
puddled before it paused. Soon
they could dine and bathe.

In the earth the soil spread out
and teemed with life as all bits of
Nature was graced with
musical raindrops descending
washing off the old man’s
smiling face.

The fish were amused.

Look both ways with gratitude for rain and shine.
Mind the gaps as they fill with water and air fills with the petrichor of life.