Our challenge this penultimate April Sunday, is to write a poem informed by musical phrasing or melody, that employs some form of sound play (rhyme, meter, assonance, alliteration). One way to approach this is to think of a song we know and then basically write new lyrics that fit the original song’s rhythm/phrasing.
I watched a concert on TV last night and I answered Paul’s call.
We were friends once, our embraces bound by beautiful silks,
Our dreams too colourful to carry, too large to lay down,
Shoeless, we walked the beach in hope,
The evening tide tickling our toes as we laughed at the thought of a final sunset.
Optimism put a call in to the future,
But no one was prepared to pick up the phone.
There was no one there.
JFK lay bleeding over the steering wheel of a burning Lincoln Continental.
Should I walk shoeless on the shore?
Look at us now,
With no time for caring consideration,
Mired in the quicksand of savage selfishness and spite.
We burn harmony’s bridges in hopeless hate of anyone not us.
How did we deviate so far from our dreams and desires?
Aspiration’s flowers flung on a funeral pyre.
Senses are switched to shut by power; no one believes anything anymore.
Butterflies still dine on sunshine,
As a child cries for its dismembered mother.
And still, no one answers the phone.
They’re all too busy growing followings on TikTok.
They all went to look for the beach
We all went to look for the beach
Please let there be footprints on the beach.
Missives & Musings 