Beautiful Nonsense: July 28-August 4, 2022
The Mission:
This one is inspired by singer/songwriter Jeff Tweedy. Jeff is fond of writing the occasional lyric that doesn’t necessarily make sense, but just sounds good, which is how you get lyrics like “I am an American aquarium drinker / I assassin down the avenue.” He will also pair words that aren’t normally paired, because they sound more imaginative or evocative (“a smattering of heartbeats” or “the sunlight writes on the cushions”).
For this assignment, write a poem or a song verse including either phrases that don’t make sense but sound good or words that aren’t normally paired together (or both).
The Submissions:
“Elementary, My Dear” - by Journal Kurtz
Dear Reader,
I think I blew past the call for intermittent nonsensical and landed on wholly incomprehensible. Do not adjust your set if you can’t decipher this poem. I can’t either, and I wrote it. But, like a lot of things I don’t understand, I like it just same.
———
I don’t care how;
nothing happens to me.
happy, love, work, mystery, shock
See what I mean?
Nothing happens to me.
Ignore that.
People are all as safe as we want to be and,
of course, we’ll be needing the mess you made.
You’re an army, any lot of violent trouble
with a left-handed revenge,
making up this state of marriage.
One lover in a gumdrop rain,
sweet and distant,
an angry note dying
in this spare urban night. She’s gone,
solving happier announcements to ease
uncomfortable reasons which come loyal quickly.
Trust issues: I warn your left hand away.
Show me remarkable
intermittent haunted fire, stress,
haunted by home. Dangerous.
Breathing is boring.
I never said how; I said dangerous,
and here you are.
by Captain Quillard
(I needed a melody to write to, and since I was headed to see Andrew Bird in concert, his music was on the brain. These lyrics are written to the tune of his song “Armchairs,” which you can hear here.)
———
Your voice prones through the petrichor
And I stare at transit stones
Immobilizing sets the store
And your Narragansett bones
And what does my reluctance mean?
It’s a sign
That I’m afraid to swerve
So where’s my nascent nerve?
Panicked price of the between
A complacence I deserve
Your patience is crepuscular
A forest of restraint
But this is neuromuscular
A chorus dove I ain’t
Hobo trials
And scopophiles
Find
Dark chronologies
We’re archeology
With hands we excavate the sands
For ruins we can’t see
Toss all of your slipstreams
With volcanic style
‘til essayists burn sideways in you
And you feel the shove
Up to the panoply of
Canopies above
Erase death from the last time you
Let yourself
Fall in love
Loss
Loss
Is inertia’s ghost
It’s inertia’s
ghost
It’s inertia’s
ghost
At the base of your mind’s caldera
Where you fabricated your own Chimera
A ploughshare comes for you
It knows how scared, glum, and blue
You’ve convinced yourself
you are
But you’re so full of shit
and unhealthy hack hypocrisy
You can’t trust the lies your mind transmits
Your brain’s a kakistocracy
We didn’t try, we didn’t fall
We didn’t cross that bridge at all
Yeah, and now time creeps
Creeps with a Southern drawl
It won’t pick up now when we call
It's what we get for all our stall
We’re wrapped up in inertia’s shawl
Ghost
“Frank’s account of the hullabaloo at Ft. McHenry” - by Anonymous Frau Redux
(An alternate version of the national anthem, as if someone rewrote history with the help of their trusty thesaurus? Shakespeare mashed with karaoke night? Thank you, I’m sorry and you’re welcome. XO Anonymous Frau Redux)
———
Alas declare dost thou detect
Via emerging radiance
That which was lauded
at the eve sunset?
Vast bands with silvery stars
O’er the precarious melee
Witnessed beyond the fort
Fearlessly fluttering?
Flaming missiles blasting
Projectiles popping above
confirming in the wee hours
That indeed, the standard soars!
Alas declare dost the constellation bedazzled pennant hitherto sail
Aloft the expanse of independent
and the residence of the gutsy?
For reference:
O say, can you see
By the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hail'd
At the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars
Through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watch'd
Were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare
The bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free
And the home of the brave?
Next Week’s Assignment:
This is from a test I was given in elementary school. I didn’t know it at the time (or even before today), but apparently it’s called the “Torrence Test of Creative Thinking.”
Have someone draw four random shapes for you - nothing complicated - a squiggle, a simple shape, a series of lines, etc. Take those shapes and turn them into four drawings, incorporating the original shape into each of the drawings.