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Poetry

C C Offline
(Apr 21, 2021 08:02 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Believe it or not ...it is snowing here. Lots of it. Got bored, started thinking about Elon Musk and his Space Odyssey then jotted this ditty down. Maybe I'll add a few lines later. Had a hard time with this one so if it's a little bumpy then too F**king bad. Killed an hour.

Going for Launch

Heading down to Boca Chica Texas
Trying to find exactly where SpaceX is
Travelling down State Highway Number Four
To watch liftoff from the Kopernik Shore 

Elon has the BFR set to go
The launch is sure to be a dazzling show
Rocket off the pad, into outer space
Later Boca Chica, becomes Starbase

Mr. Musk hates launches that get delayed
Costing him money, he wants to get paid
However his Grimes has eyes for the stars
She's more than willing to expire on Mars

You might say he's a little eccentric
Rockets and thousands of cars electric
But happy knowing that all his ladies
Won't be caught dead inside a Mercedes

He's going to send passengers to the sky
For millions of dollars, I hope they don't die
When the flight is over, and there's no slip
Land on a pad on a floating drone ship.

"Tesla" a nice touch, Zin. For a retired senior who may have been a teen during the progressive rock or later disco era, you border on the ad-lib speed of a rapper.

Although there's no refrain, you could have been setting it to a tune in your mind (you've mentioned that before in the past). But still, I'm probably diverging from this point on... 

They need to formally invent a quick, generic term for "lyrics without melody". There's no reason for song-like verses to be inherently enslaved to a potential melody -- or totally indentured to a tune, as demonstrated by Guy Clark's classic "Let him roll" in the video at bottom (or Charlie Daniels' Uneasy Rider).

Though it definitely helps to have some instrumental accompaniment in the background, that the quasi-monotonic voice doesn't necessarily have to harmonize with any more than drum percussion does with chords.

"Talking in rhythm" (especially a very lax rhythm) was around long before hip-hop, so population groups in general don't need to engage in cultural appropriation by adopting the mannerisms, vernacular, and ethos of hip-hop society, either. That's just imitative, dumb white kids who haven't been around long enough to be aware of any other kind of it. 

At any rate, I can almost imagine a performer with a fitting Texas drawl (or even a Woody Guthrie, Okie one) plucking around on a guitar while "speaking in some kind of loose rhythm" with your verses above...


https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8KbS5t0NuOU
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Zinjanthropos Online
Quote:Although there's no refrain, you could have been setting it to a tune in your mind (you've mentioned that before in the past).


No tune in mind for this one. The Tesla insert idea came to me as I was typing. I had read about his Canadian girlfriend and that they had a kid. Heard the kid had a name that contained only symbols and some judge made them give the little gaffer a real name but I could be wrong.
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Zinjanthropos Online
Wrote this 8 years ago on TheScienceForum. Was my attempt at Country Music lyrics. A song with a tune I can’t remember but it has a story and a chorus.

This morning I found my furniture
Outside on the lawn
I guess it means my baby
More than likely wants me gone
Should have stayed home last night
Instead of getting stewed
Seems no one wants a cowboy
Who walks home in the nude

I wish I could remember
The day was such a blur
Beers and whiskies did the trick
Plus seven hours with her
I ask myself if it was worth
My pants, my shirt , my shoes
My money and the rent cheque
It's enough to sing the blues

Chorus:
So I really must know
Do I get another chance?
I really get the feeling
That we have a true romance
Not that I deserve it
Yet you know one thing is true
There ain't no better lovin
Than what I can give to you

So now I come a knockin' on
Your bedroom's pane of glass
Despite the fact I'm holding a
Pizza box against my ass
I see your night light all aglow
You're watching your TV
You see my sheepish grin and laugh
Because you threw away my key

Please forgive me darling since
You are my one and only
So take me back before you get
All sad, depressed and lonely
The truth is that you want me still
I am your lover boy
No woman ever throws away
Her very favorite toy

Repeat:
So I really must know
Do I get another chance?
I really get the feeling
That we have a true romance
Not that I deserve it
Yet you know one thing is true
There ain't no better lovin
Than what I can give to you
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C C Offline
(Apr 26, 2021 06:27 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Wrote this 8 years ago on TheScienceForum. Was my attempt at Country Music lyrics. A song with a tune I can’t remember but it has a story and a chorus.


Contrafactum was a common practice in the earlier days of folk and popular music, where new lyrics were attached to an existing traditional or anonymous melody. (The Irish especially did that a lot back in olden days, and arguably carried the custom to the hillbilly Appalachians.)

Even the USA's national anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner" was set to a mirthful British tune known as the "The Anacreontic Song".

A Carter Family tune was recycled for the words of Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land".

Hank Williams' Jambalaya (On the Bayou) was adapted to the melody of "Grand Texas" (or "Big Texas" as it might have been called at one time).

ABBA supposedly reworked the tunes of European folk songs for the lyrics of their hits -- but I don't know how accurate that is. Something that was passingly stated in a documentary that might be as much BS as Hank Williams writing A Mansion on the Hill in less than thirty minutes via a challenge given to him on a live, hour long radio program. (Actual story was quite different.)
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Zinjanthropos Online
In keeping with the Halloween spirit, hopefully in the style reserved for Dr Seuss, a little something that's way out there*. By the way, I've never fired a gun in my life, nor have I possessed one nor have I had the urge to use or own. Had one pointed at me once but that's it.

Hello folks, do you know me
I'm a shooter, can't you see
I have a gun
And just for fun
I shoot to kill, most anyone
I don't care, who or where
I will shoot you on a dare

I will shoot you, in a bar
I will shoot you, in a car
I will shoot you, in a store
You're a number, just one more

I'm a psycho, not your friend
And for you, could mean the end
One to the head
And you are dead
I shoot to kill, you'll taste my lead
I'm insane, I know this
Not someone, you'd want to kiss

I will shoot you, at the gate
I will shoot you, on a date
I will shoot you, on a hill
I shoot to kill, just for the thrill

When I'm out, on Halloween
Don't stop to talk, just leave the scene
At your door, the gun is real
Fill my bag, or feel my steel
I shoot to kill, that is the deal
Trench coat on, figure in black
Treat me right, or else I whack

I will shoot you, in an alley
I will shoot you, in a valley
I will shoot you, in a pool
Trick or treat, don't be the fool.

* Have kicked this one around for a long time. Years ago, post 1999, the inspiration came from a little kid who showed up at my door Halloween night dressed as a Columbine Shooter, a stereotypical little black trench coat and with what I assumed were fake weapons. This was the first or second Halloween after the massacre and if that wasn't macabre enough, he was accompanied by whom I assume was his parent or guardian, standing off to the side but dressed the same way. The Halloween after Sandy Hook I was half expecting a return visit but it never materialized.
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Leigha Offline
I went for a walk in the woods because
I wanted to live deliberately,
to front only the essential
facts of life, and see if
I could not learn what it
had to teach, and not
when I came to die, discover
that I had not lived.

- Henry David Thoreau
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Magical Realist Offline
"When I sit to take a bath
I'm always moved to wonderment,
That what chills the finger not a bit
Is so frigid upon the fundament."

Ogden Nash
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