Playtime

awynart-2013

 

Hanging Out in the Playground with Words

The sung word, the hung word, the shouted word, the touted word,

the whispered word, all silenced in a hush.

The seen word, the mean  word, the heard word, the blurred word

the written word, in pencil, pen, or brush.

The saved word, depraved word, deleted word, completed word,

the word on every otherbody’s lips.

Remembered words, dismembered words, forgotten words, begotten words,

and those thrown out in little, static blips.

The vowed word, too-plowed word,  misperceived, or ill conceived;

one’s first and final word a thing of note.

Words so succinct, or indistinct, or flashy, brashy, gone-in-a-blink

you’d think one wrote from necessary rote.

Fly off the page, in seething rage, or hide inside a voice-blocked cage -

no way to sing a sorrow, joy or bliss.

Our words escape, in search of shape, or form or norm to lurch and scrape

the edges of one’s always-there abyss.

Words delay us, and betray us, might refine us, oft define us;

we can twist and turn them into rhymes.

They elude us, they intrude, plus make us think, drive us to drink,

and yes, go platitudinous at times.

Words enflame us, or defame us, sometimes shame us (if not blame us),

shock and mock us as we ply our trade.

Word-enraptured, we’re script-captured, 'ere afflicted, word-addicted –

in love with love of words both sought and made.

One tries in vain to ride the plain, resize the brain; abide, refrain,

then airs the stiffened fabric just to breathe.

Only then can kept-words flow; as new ones come that you don't know.

(Does it matter how they judge the weave?)

So this was just an exercise where I have come to realize

this rhyming’s fun.  But poetry it’s not.

It’s just a bunch of lines in synch,to pass the time and make me think

‘bout words and sound abounding in the lot.

That songs we sing and words we write, so often ring as Truly Trite

(we cringe at just how bad it sometimes gets)

does not mean that we’ve lost our way or gotten stuck in too-much play.

or given up, deep-sunk in past regrets.

The snow is falling, I am stalling (should be working, 'stead of lurking).

Time to leave the wordpen; say goodbye.

Singsong's fine and yes, it rhymed, but really, now, this babblejow

is no excuse for not reaching more high.

Enough.

Back to work, you.

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Postscript:  

The above is, as noted, 'playing' with words and sound. Initially undertaken merely as an exercise, in retrospect it seems to have gotten away with itself, unable to stop, unaware of its own impending monotony, where to the reader it becomes almost trance-like, just sounds, in rapid succession, echoing one another, the meaning elusive or forced.   I say that after just landing on William Michelian's blog and seeing his little rhymed poem on a wished-for spring bud.  Now that's poetry!  In the end, it's not, I think  about not reaching for something higher. It's about not getting stuck in the sandbox of play, where play becomes a substitute for doing more than just "reaching".  

Apropos this, I have, recently, become really interested in 'word sound' - looking at the phenomenon of sung (as opposed to recited) poetry vis-a-vis transmission and recognition of meaning .  I wonder if anyone's ever done an anthology of sung poetry (complete with audio).  I can think of three or four examples that should absolutely be included.  Is anyone collecting such examples?  It would be interesting to find them.

Fun with soundy words

In the English language there are certain words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings. My word challenge for the day was to write a poem incorporating certain paired words in this category and see if I can morph them into a "sound" poem (no pun intended), rhythm dancing with text.  There is sometimes rhythm, even in life's tortured rumblings.  Life is not a game. But we play anyway.

Let's make this hard.  Write something about those who want to speak, but can't; about how some spend their lives dreaming of what will never be--pounding along, anchored to their time and place, taking life's bites, one sharp nick at a time, but who still manage to hear the music of all that is. And just to make it interesting, include a subtle reference to the mixed blessings of free trade, showing that the best marketing campaigns in the world can sometimes backfire and come back to haunt you.  (Stop laughing. It's doable.)

Here are the words:

alas/a lass          sees/seize          mourn/morn        wear/ware/where
err/'ere/air         bear/bare           piece/peace         naught/knot/not
hear/here           while/wile           brake/break         sight/site/cite   
shore/sure          road/rode          how'll/howl           soared/sword     
sum/some          heel/heal           we'll/wheel            see/sea   
mane/main        feet/fete            flour/flower          do/dew                  
week/weak        isle/aisle             by/buy                 eye/I             
fleas/flees          no/know          
   
I've decided to title the poem "Even".  (i.e., the opposite of Odd.  Why burden a new word creation with negative connotations, before it even has a chance to stand on its own?)

Here is what I came up with, after a bit of shuffling:

Even

what you hear, here waits to be confirmed

by what you see, but in the sea of time,

no word of how’ll you know in any given week
what's a howl and what's a plea
from those too weak to say.

How oft we err, and 'ere you think the air grows dense ...

well, some have soared--in sum, escaped the sword, the plow--
to wile their days while on the road
to their dreamt isle beyond the aisle of now.

They rode a piece, to get their due,
to find some peace in fields of morn's fresh dew, away.

T’is naught to mourn, just brake to break the knot that binds,
and will you ever get there?  Some say not.

Alas, a lass can wear her ware, where unaware

of worn out heel and tousled mane, she in the main

still seeks to heal..

She sees a flower in eye of sight--an "I" on site--
to seize a poem from which to cite

what comes by her small cell.

(One must not always buy and sell
on every shore, with jingling feet (no fete is sure
and one must bear the sting of fleas before one flees, all shorn and bare.)

We'll discount all this raucous shill and
grab the wheel and listen--list, then,all the ways
in which a choking jangle mends,
with balm of sound, no longer bound,

untangled, free, the sounds all whirred and morphing

    morphing

              morphing

                          into

                                 word.

--Annie Wyndham

First (and, thankfully last) publication.

What to some is music, to others is noise.
Behind every sound there is a story.
Behind every word there is a sound.
Some poems can be oiled to work better.
This one may be what one here might call, "in the moon".


But birthing  it pulled me outta my slump.  :)
_________________

Doodle by awyn, on a piece of cardboard box, sprinkled with the word "word" in English, French, Spanish, Bulgarian, Polish, Swedish, Dutch, Serbian, German, and Greek.