Thursday February 18th, 2010

The exercise:

Your prompt for today: losing keys. Which also happens to be a great Jack Johnson song.

I kind of did a half-assed job with mine, since I did it after writing this, which kinda broke my brain.

And yes, I did consider making you guys do a sestina as well. But then I realized that was a fine, fine way to not get any comments and I relented.

Speaking of which: good luck to Greg and Archi in the Winter Poetry Tournament's final.

Mine:

Have I lost my keys
Or just my mind?
It seems that old age
Is most unkind!

Now where did I place
My black notebook?
If I could just have
One little look

Inside its pages
I'm sure I'd find...
Whatever it is
That's on my mind.

3 comments:

Greg said...

Hah, you were hoping I'd write you an extra sestina? How much time do you think I have at all? :-P
I'm very impressed with yours, and I'm sure Archi will agree with me that you've just made the finals that much harder as we've got to try and do noticeably better than the rest of you! I have the sestina written, but now I have to go through and tidy it up, and see if it can be prodded into iambic pentameter.
Btw, I notice you chose an octasyllabic form. Was that deliberate, or did it come naturally out of the poem?

I like your losing keys poem, and I don't think it's as bad as you make out. It's cheerful and the last line is a great little touch.

Losing Keys

My piano don't go no more,
There's holes where some keys should be,
I can't play my favourite pieces,
I think that it's scared of me.

My piano don't go no more,
It's got Alzheimer's in a bad way,
It keeps on losing its keys,
And forgetting where it should stay.

My piano don't go no more,
Its strings have frayed and snapped,
Its music is a bit one-sided,
Its keyboard is widely gapped.

My piano don't go no more,
So I've bought an electric harp,
It's conversing with the piano,
And they're both sounding rather sharp.

Marc said...

Well I suspect you'll both blow us all away, so no worries on that front :)

And when I get around to doing another one (and putting more effort into it) I'll be sure to be more careful about the six words I chose. I think finding words with multiple meanings would be a good idea.

I really like that repeated line, it gives your poem a real voice. And there's a nice progression to it as well :)

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