A while back, I found myself looking through Sunday paper's ads obsessively. I realized I was looking for an answer. Since then I pay attention to the way things are advertised. "Your life is incomplete," advertisers say. "There are better cars, medicines, cleaning products, etc., than the poor things YOU own."
No, they don't make fun of people who don't own the things they're selling. But they make their products appear iconic, liberating, empowering.
I wrote this. Now, I need a melody and a guitarist.
Every thing’s for sale
Every thing’s for sale and I scan the gaudy pages
For the key, the map, the clue that will unlock my goal.
I will save each cent and dime and then when I have found it,
I will hold it in my palm and it will make me whole.
I will know it when I see it. It will stand out from the others.
I will ring it up and bag it and clutch it to my chest.
I will know it when I see it, that one thing to ease my sadness,
that one shiny little trinket that will give my soul a rest.
Chorus:
Every week my hope rises as the ads come to my door.
Is the answer at the Walmart or at the Dollar Store?
I have bought so many gadgets in hope of some relief.
I have heard so many promises I’m losing my belief.
The ancients scanned the skies for the answers to the future.
The sailors ranged the seas in search of treasure and of home.
I wander down these aisles looking for the purchase
That will finally make me smile and not feel so all alone.
Chorus:
Every week my hope rises as the ads come to the door.
Is the answer at the Target or at the Superstore?
Can I fill this hole with objects made in far off distant lands?
Can I find peace in just being who I am and where I am?
Today I think that I will lie upon the hillside
and watch the clouds until the very first star’s light.
I’ll walk through growing gloom to the home we shared together
I will unchain my bike, pedal off into the night.
Chorus:
Every week my hope rises as the ads come to the door.
Is the answer at Best Buy or at the Discount store?
Can I fill this hole with objects made in far off distant lands?
Why can’t I just find peace in who I am and where I am?
Showing posts with label lyrics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lyrics. Show all posts
Friday, August 2, 2019
Thursday, July 11, 2019
Phoebe and Her Unicorn - POETRY!!
I discovered Phoebe and her Unicorn books by Dana Simpson a few weeks ago and I am in huge like with them. (Sister Ann insisted that people can only love other people, not things.) So I really, really, really like these clever books very much - and a lot.
D LOVES them. She never met Sister Ann so she's allowed.
I need to share poetry/lyrics written to the tune of Gibert and Sullivan's "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" from Pirates of Penzance. You can find these lyrics in Volume 2 of Phoebe and her Unicorn or Unicorn on a Roll. Everything written and drawn in these books is done by Dana Simpson!
"I am the very model of a modern magic unicorn
I've information, magic and I never wear a uniform.
My entrances are heralded by trumpets and a flugelhorn.
I've eaten many bagels and my horn can write in cuneiform.
I make up for my lack of hands with magic ingenuity,
manipulating objects with a startling acuity.*
I'm also rather stunning in a way that's undeniable.
To stare at me in wonder is completely justifiable."
If you are not familiar with Gilbert and Sullivan's song, Veggie Tales does a clever and easy to understand version in this video. Enjoy and admire.
*This rhyme - alone - places Dana Simpson forever in the pantheon of poets I most admire.
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Clouds - Science on a Sphere
I am embarrassed that I have not posted here for such a long time. SO, just to let you know that I am alive, I will share something that I did at the beginning of the month.
First, have you ever visited a Science on a Sphere? For people in the Lehigh Valley, the Nurture Nature Center hosts one of these orbs. The experience of watching information projected on these large room-sized white globes is wonderful.
The Nurture Nature Center invited artists of all kinds to use one of the datasets designed for their sphere as inspiration for poetry, sculpture, stories, essays, visual art of all kinds. This is the fifth year of this collaborative effort, titled Perspectives: Art on Environment. I chose Clouds.
Wow! I'm sure I chose the most beautiful dataset. I wish I could show the dataset to you. However, if you visit Science on a Sphere, you can learn more about Clouds in Real Time here.
I wrote an essay, included below. But the big challenge was writing a song. I have not recorded the song but I have added the lyrics here as well.
On November 9th, artists presented their work. At the Nurture Nature Center, there are several rooms dedicated to art inspired by the environment. Seven poets and other writers presented in front of the sphere as the information that inspired us displayed on the sphere. It was ... I am at a loss for words...it was inspiring, enthralling, emotional, AWESOME!!!!
I read my essay and then - deep breath - without accompaniment - I sang my song. And I hit each note so it was GOOD!
What else have I been doing? Telling, kid-sitting, mom driving, reading, cleaning, attempting to control the chaos that is my life.
If you want to read the lyrics and/or essay, here they are - lyrics first. While I read the essay, a docent changed the projections to match what I wrote about. I need some more short words that indicate wonderfulness.
Cloud dreaming lyrics by Karen Maurer
V.1
I have dreams I release in the moonlight
I have hopes I share with the sun
Like a mist, they form clouds of wishing
And around the world they run
Chorus:
All those dreams will fall with the raindrops
All those hopes will sparkle like snow
With each breath, I fill clouds with promise
Never knowing just where they will go
V.2
I breathe in the dreaming of others
I breathe in their hopes and their cares
Like the clouds, my sister’s and brother’s
secret wishes fly through the air.
Chorus:
All those dreams will fall with the raindrops
All those hopes will sparkle like snow
With each breath, they fill clouds with promise
Never knowing just where they will go
Interlude:
Deserts bloom when clouds burst upon them.
Mountains sleep in blankets of white.
Children dream of castles above them,
Watch them drift out of sight.
V.3
Share your dreams with the stars and the planets.
Share your hopes with the wind rushing by.
Make a wish for peace all around us.
Send good thoughts to the sky.
Chorus:
All those dreams will fall with the raindrops
All those hopes will sparkle like snow
With each breath, we fill clouds with promise
Never knowing just where they will go
Cloud Wish: or 6 Ways to Look at a Cloud by Karen Maurer
My friend watched as storm clouds raged high above the mesa. Lightning flashed. Even from that height, she heard the growl of thunder. The cloud opened and rain fell. It disappeared in the searing heat, reabsorbed into the thunderhead. It never touched the ground.
“It felt as if I could see the grace of God,” she told us later. “But my despair kept the rain from reaching me.”
Humans imbue nature with hidden mysteries. Clouds are among the most mysterious natural phenomena. They are at the mercy of wind, thermals, the contour of the land and the waves in the sea. Generations upon generations of farmers have used clouds to plan their harvests and plantings. The clouds don’t always deliver. The promised rain is whisked out of range. A blue sky darkens without any warning. Like the storm above the mesa, promises are broken.
We waited more than two years to gather, children and grandchildren, on the family plot to lay our father to rest. The kind Deacon said a few words about his friend. He called my father “Francis”. We muttered, almost in unison, “Franklin”.
The sky was blue, dotted with white clouds. Had I paid attention to the clouds that day, I would have sent my hopes and love to my far-flung brother and the sisters who were not able to attend.
We have viewed clouds as messengers, used by gods and demigods for centuries. A pillar of cloud preceded the Israelites into the desert. An Indian demigod used a cloud to reassure his wife that he would return to her. Zeus hid in a cloud when he visited his lovers. Clouds obscure the face of Yahweh, in the Hebrew Canon.
Walking home with a small can of muddy water, the boy looks across the parched plain. A shadow crosses over the ground. A cloud! He sighs. His heart has leapt at clouds before, just to be disappointed. The water hole is deeper now than it has ever been. Only a few handfuls of dank water can be scooped up each day. He turns back to the path, not noticing that another cloud rises from the horizon.
We fear clouds, wonder at them, read visions into them, deplore their existence. Clouds carry life, portend disaster, bring us joy. The single cumulus cloud our Ethiopian boy saw might carry water in tiny droplets to equal the weight of 100 elephants, approximately 600 tons. The swirling clouds in a hurricane can carry water that weighs as much as every elephant on earth.
I pretended to see the puppy, the shark, the giant, the scissors, that my older brother and younger sister claimed was in the clouds. But to me, in my pre-spectacled days, those clouds were just a mass of white against the blue of the sky. My favorite days to watch clouds were windy days when the clouds raced like white horses out of sight.
Spend one full minute contemplating white clouds on a fair day. In that minute, depending on the speed of the wind and the height of the clouds, you can watch small cloudlets gather to form a larger mass. A cloud will change shape, break apart, blow away, right before your eyes. No wonder the ancients thought clouds were magic!
Around Antarctica, clouds twist in intricate patterns, like a middle eastern dance.
In the North, clouds follow the wind, obstructed by land masses. They scatter, depending on the warmth or direction of the air.
My best friend’s mother always knew when a new batch of paint brewed in the mill not far from her house. Even when there was no wind, a cloud of red dust fell onto her freshly washed laundry.
The rain fell red during mixing season. No amount of scrubbing or painting took the stain off the house.
“It’s a nice color,” I reassured my friend, “sort of a brick red.”
“You don’t have to live with it,” she snorted.
Clouds are made of water vapor. Every raindrop has a particle of dirt, or sand, or dust inside it. Clouds carry the grit from sandstorms, ashes from volcanoes and fires, toxins from smokestacks, dust from deforested plains. Humans determine the make up of clouds in more ways than we want to acknowledge.
I breathe in the wood smoke. I love this smell. I poke a stick into the fire until the end of the stick glows. I pull it out and write my name in the early evening air. My breath rises in a small white cloud. I breathe out again and this time I make a wish.
Our exhaled breath contains nitrogen, carbon dioxide and oxygen as well as water vapor and a small amount of argon. Other chemicals are inhaled and exhaled depending on the air around us. Just like clouds, we carry poisons from second hand smoke, automotive exhaust and other gases. We can breathe those chemicals out into the air to rise with the water vapor -perhaps to join a cloud.
Imagine if your every wish or worry was translated into breath and carried across the world. It might fall on a village in drought stricken Ethiopia. Could your anger flavor the water? Could your hope clear a muddy puddle?
Now, when I look at clouds, I wonder what they carry. Hope? Worry? Promises? Threats? I wonder who might be riding on those winds. Like the ancients, I search for messages from far away, or clues to my future, or advice for living.
I breathe out a wish for peace. May a cloud carry it across the world!
Bibliography:
Johnson, Doug. “The Chemical Composition of Exhaled Air from Human Lungs”, April 26, 2018, https://sciencing.com/chemical-composition-exhaled-air-human-lungs-11795.html
Krulwich, Robert. “How Much Does a Hurricane Weigh?”, September 3, 2003, https://abcnews.go.com
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Clouds with Precipitation - Real Time”,
https://sos.noaa.gov/datasets/clouds-with-precipitation-real-time/ (no date given).
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Clouds - Real Time”,
https://sos.noaa.gov/datasets/clouds-real-time/ (no date given)
Pretor-Pinney, Gavin. The Cloudspotter’s Guide : The Science, History and Culture of Clouds. illustrated by Bill Sanderson. New York. Perigree Trade, 2006.
Revkin, Andrew. Weather; an Illustrated History. with Lisa Mechaley. New York, Sterling, 2018.
Wilcox, Eric M. Clouds. London, Duncan Baird Publishers, 2008.
First, have you ever visited a Science on a Sphere? For people in the Lehigh Valley, the Nurture Nature Center hosts one of these orbs. The experience of watching information projected on these large room-sized white globes is wonderful.
The Nurture Nature Center invited artists of all kinds to use one of the datasets designed for their sphere as inspiration for poetry, sculpture, stories, essays, visual art of all kinds. This is the fifth year of this collaborative effort, titled Perspectives: Art on Environment. I chose Clouds.
Wow! I'm sure I chose the most beautiful dataset. I wish I could show the dataset to you. However, if you visit Science on a Sphere, you can learn more about Clouds in Real Time here.
I wrote an essay, included below. But the big challenge was writing a song. I have not recorded the song but I have added the lyrics here as well.
On November 9th, artists presented their work. At the Nurture Nature Center, there are several rooms dedicated to art inspired by the environment. Seven poets and other writers presented in front of the sphere as the information that inspired us displayed on the sphere. It was ... I am at a loss for words...it was inspiring, enthralling, emotional, AWESOME!!!!
I read my essay and then - deep breath - without accompaniment - I sang my song. And I hit each note so it was GOOD!
What else have I been doing? Telling, kid-sitting, mom driving, reading, cleaning, attempting to control the chaos that is my life.
If you want to read the lyrics and/or essay, here they are - lyrics first. While I read the essay, a docent changed the projections to match what I wrote about. I need some more short words that indicate wonderfulness.
Cloud dreaming lyrics by Karen Maurer
V.1
I have dreams I release in the moonlight
I have hopes I share with the sun
Like a mist, they form clouds of wishing
And around the world they run
Chorus:
All those dreams will fall with the raindrops
All those hopes will sparkle like snow
With each breath, I fill clouds with promise
Never knowing just where they will go
V.2
I breathe in the dreaming of others
I breathe in their hopes and their cares
Like the clouds, my sister’s and brother’s
secret wishes fly through the air.
Chorus:
All those dreams will fall with the raindrops
All those hopes will sparkle like snow
With each breath, they fill clouds with promise
Never knowing just where they will go
Interlude:
Deserts bloom when clouds burst upon them.
Mountains sleep in blankets of white.
Children dream of castles above them,
Watch them drift out of sight.
V.3
Share your dreams with the stars and the planets.
Share your hopes with the wind rushing by.
Make a wish for peace all around us.
Send good thoughts to the sky.
Chorus:
All those dreams will fall with the raindrops
All those hopes will sparkle like snow
With each breath, we fill clouds with promise
Never knowing just where they will go
Cloud Wish: or 6 Ways to Look at a Cloud by Karen Maurer
My friend watched as storm clouds raged high above the mesa. Lightning flashed. Even from that height, she heard the growl of thunder. The cloud opened and rain fell. It disappeared in the searing heat, reabsorbed into the thunderhead. It never touched the ground.
“It felt as if I could see the grace of God,” she told us later. “But my despair kept the rain from reaching me.”
Humans imbue nature with hidden mysteries. Clouds are among the most mysterious natural phenomena. They are at the mercy of wind, thermals, the contour of the land and the waves in the sea. Generations upon generations of farmers have used clouds to plan their harvests and plantings. The clouds don’t always deliver. The promised rain is whisked out of range. A blue sky darkens without any warning. Like the storm above the mesa, promises are broken.
We waited more than two years to gather, children and grandchildren, on the family plot to lay our father to rest. The kind Deacon said a few words about his friend. He called my father “Francis”. We muttered, almost in unison, “Franklin”.
The sky was blue, dotted with white clouds. Had I paid attention to the clouds that day, I would have sent my hopes and love to my far-flung brother and the sisters who were not able to attend.
We have viewed clouds as messengers, used by gods and demigods for centuries. A pillar of cloud preceded the Israelites into the desert. An Indian demigod used a cloud to reassure his wife that he would return to her. Zeus hid in a cloud when he visited his lovers. Clouds obscure the face of Yahweh, in the Hebrew Canon.
Walking home with a small can of muddy water, the boy looks across the parched plain. A shadow crosses over the ground. A cloud! He sighs. His heart has leapt at clouds before, just to be disappointed. The water hole is deeper now than it has ever been. Only a few handfuls of dank water can be scooped up each day. He turns back to the path, not noticing that another cloud rises from the horizon.
We fear clouds, wonder at them, read visions into them, deplore their existence. Clouds carry life, portend disaster, bring us joy. The single cumulus cloud our Ethiopian boy saw might carry water in tiny droplets to equal the weight of 100 elephants, approximately 600 tons. The swirling clouds in a hurricane can carry water that weighs as much as every elephant on earth.
I pretended to see the puppy, the shark, the giant, the scissors, that my older brother and younger sister claimed was in the clouds. But to me, in my pre-spectacled days, those clouds were just a mass of white against the blue of the sky. My favorite days to watch clouds were windy days when the clouds raced like white horses out of sight.
Spend one full minute contemplating white clouds on a fair day. In that minute, depending on the speed of the wind and the height of the clouds, you can watch small cloudlets gather to form a larger mass. A cloud will change shape, break apart, blow away, right before your eyes. No wonder the ancients thought clouds were magic!
Around Antarctica, clouds twist in intricate patterns, like a middle eastern dance.
In the North, clouds follow the wind, obstructed by land masses. They scatter, depending on the warmth or direction of the air.
My best friend’s mother always knew when a new batch of paint brewed in the mill not far from her house. Even when there was no wind, a cloud of red dust fell onto her freshly washed laundry.
The rain fell red during mixing season. No amount of scrubbing or painting took the stain off the house.
“It’s a nice color,” I reassured my friend, “sort of a brick red.”
“You don’t have to live with it,” she snorted.
Clouds are made of water vapor. Every raindrop has a particle of dirt, or sand, or dust inside it. Clouds carry the grit from sandstorms, ashes from volcanoes and fires, toxins from smokestacks, dust from deforested plains. Humans determine the make up of clouds in more ways than we want to acknowledge.
I breathe in the wood smoke. I love this smell. I poke a stick into the fire until the end of the stick glows. I pull it out and write my name in the early evening air. My breath rises in a small white cloud. I breathe out again and this time I make a wish.
Our exhaled breath contains nitrogen, carbon dioxide and oxygen as well as water vapor and a small amount of argon. Other chemicals are inhaled and exhaled depending on the air around us. Just like clouds, we carry poisons from second hand smoke, automotive exhaust and other gases. We can breathe those chemicals out into the air to rise with the water vapor -perhaps to join a cloud.
Imagine if your every wish or worry was translated into breath and carried across the world. It might fall on a village in drought stricken Ethiopia. Could your anger flavor the water? Could your hope clear a muddy puddle?
Now, when I look at clouds, I wonder what they carry. Hope? Worry? Promises? Threats? I wonder who might be riding on those winds. Like the ancients, I search for messages from far away, or clues to my future, or advice for living.
I breathe out a wish for peace. May a cloud carry it across the world!
Bibliography:
Johnson, Doug. “The Chemical Composition of Exhaled Air from Human Lungs”, April 26, 2018, https://sciencing.com/chemical-composition-exhaled-air-human-lungs-11795.html
Krulwich, Robert. “How Much Does a Hurricane Weigh?”, September 3, 2003, https://abcnews.go.com
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Clouds with Precipitation - Real Time”,
https://sos.noaa.gov/datasets/clouds-with-precipitation-real-time/ (no date given).
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Clouds - Real Time”,
https://sos.noaa.gov/datasets/clouds-real-time/ (no date given)
Pretor-Pinney, Gavin. The Cloudspotter’s Guide : The Science, History and Culture of Clouds. illustrated by Bill Sanderson. New York. Perigree Trade, 2006.
Revkin, Andrew. Weather; an Illustrated History. with Lisa Mechaley. New York, Sterling, 2018.
Wilcox, Eric M. Clouds. London, Duncan Baird Publishers, 2008.
Monday, September 15, 2014
Lyrics
I have a problem. I long for days with no to-dos in them - just puttering. I like puttering. BUT - but, I have so many things I want to do.
One of the things I want to do is write more song lyric-y poetry. I even want to write more songs.
So I signed on to a FB group that challenges the members to write one song a month using a prompt suggested by members of the group. And by write, the group doesn't expect a handwritten score that can be played by a quartet. No, all the group wants is a YouTube, or an mp3, or an iTunes of the song. Your phone can record the song, even.
Except my phone can't. And after the first three or four months, I stopped trying.
Here are the prompts I missed:
one perfect day
an antique photo in a shop
tattoo
something to love about everyone
glimmer
I decided to cheat! I decided to roll all those themes into one song. Here are the lyrics I wrote:
On a perfect day, one spent with you,
I chanced upon a scene
Of an old farm house in a dusty frame
So gray it was almost green.
And you smiled as if you had a thought
You had to keep from me
You bought me that dusty frame
Since that old house spoke to me.
There is something to love about everyone
You whispered that night in our bed.
That old farm looked like a promised land
to that farmer when he wed.
There is something to love about everyone
Was your mantra from then on.
That farmer’s work, or my strange love
for a place that was long gone.
That frame is safely packed away
with the other things you left
When you knew that your time on earth was done
and I found myself bereft.
And your mantra I’ve etched into my skin
A glimmering tattoo
There is something to love about everyone
Because I once loved you.
One of the things I want to do is write more song lyric-y poetry. I even want to write more songs.
So I signed on to a FB group that challenges the members to write one song a month using a prompt suggested by members of the group. And by write, the group doesn't expect a handwritten score that can be played by a quartet. No, all the group wants is a YouTube, or an mp3, or an iTunes of the song. Your phone can record the song, even.
Except my phone can't. And after the first three or four months, I stopped trying.
Here are the prompts I missed:
one perfect day
an antique photo in a shop
tattoo
something to love about everyone
glimmer
I decided to cheat! I decided to roll all those themes into one song. Here are the lyrics I wrote:
On a perfect day, one spent with you,
I chanced upon a scene
Of an old farm house in a dusty frame
So gray it was almost green.
And you smiled as if you had a thought
You had to keep from me
You bought me that dusty frame
Since that old house spoke to me.
There is something to love about everyone
You whispered that night in our bed.
That old farm looked like a promised land
to that farmer when he wed.
There is something to love about everyone
Was your mantra from then on.
That farmer’s work, or my strange love
for a place that was long gone.
That frame is safely packed away
with the other things you left
When you knew that your time on earth was done
and I found myself bereft.
And your mantra I’ve etched into my skin
A glimmering tattoo
There is something to love about everyone
Because I once loved you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)