Poetry Bus 28th February

Linda Darnell as Amber St. Clare in the Otto Preminger film "Forever Amber" (1947)

based on Kathleen Winsor's (1944) bodice-ripper.

"FOREVER AMBER" FOREVER!

Ms. Winsor, having read "Gone With the Wind"
churned out a saucy manuscript.  She sinned!
You'd think she'd need a handcart, nothing less
to haul four thousand pages to the press.
I guess she felt she needed sprawls of space
to pop the eyes of tightlipped readers faced
with sixty carnal acts of intercourse,
thirty-nine misplaced conceptions, forced
abortions seven and – horrors! – the stench
of scenes where Restoration wenches wrench
their kit clean off for chaps with cash to spare.
One such was Amber. Miss Amber St.Clare,
an orphan lass intent on "getting there."

Can we trust these figures? Sure we can!
One State Attorney General – pious man -
counted and broadcast them! Thus told,
three million copies in quick time were sold.
Ms. Winsor's tome was banned in fourteen States
(Doubtless the Mild Midwest, which procreates
by kindly looks and handshakes, whereas most,
wasting themselves from coast to shining coast
can't bear arms when they wake up shagged-out wrecks
from UnAmerican Activities like sex.)

But Amber's in London! In sixteen-sixty-six
all Englishmen's minds rose above their pr**ks.
The plague was rife! The City went on fire!
Mayday! Mayday!  Could this be Amber's pyre?
Does Winsor's red-hot tale burn down St.Paul's
while Good King Charlie holds his courtly Balls
and many an unmaidened maiden sadly weeps
after an evening visit from Samuel Pepys
who through her chamber window tries to clamber
hoping to find a sport like Mistress Amber?
Alas, alas, the World's Forever Thus
(Excepting those with tickets for the Bus.)

Preminger filmed "Forever Amber" latterly -
Which no doubt paved the way for "Lady Chatterley"
(If reviled by Auntie Beeb and Uncle Sam,
Frankly, my dears, I do not give a damn.)

Readers note.   I hope this poem will buy me a ticket for the Poetry Bus, driven this week by 120 Socks, who admits to being a learner driver.  Keep away from Amber then, m'dear, even though "Amber" featured in your prompt.


(Kathleen Winsor's ms. was reduced by her publisher to a paltry 972 pages.)

Magpie Tales#52

Willow leaves us Magpie's Anniversary prompt this week -

Waiting

Do you remember our stone house
at the road's end, at the moor's edge
where gales raved in the sedges
where the clouds' low architraves
lay in leaden sheets, and the land
waited the primroses' return?

Do you recall the promises
we made, making the windows fast,
locking the door, locking in our words,
safe with the cobwebs and dust,
a promise to return to these
old stones, to rub the windows clean,
restock the shelves, lay warming fires?

The day we named has passed.
Rain drifts down from the distant hills.
I make my hands do their small tasks,
try not to wonder where you are.

Friday Flash Fiction. 3rd. February 2011

G-Man's prompt suggests a technology theme today

“About your Patent Application, Mr. Humdinger.”

“Yes?”
“I follow the general idea. Battery. Motor. Gears driving a cam that works two connected cranks.”

“Right so far.”

“I can figure how it oscillates.  But the size 12 hiking boot? What’s that for? What IS this machine?”

“It’s a Self-Drive Ass-Kicker. Runs all weekend on one charge.”

(55 words)
-----------------------------------
These prompts with very tight word limits (sometimes character limits) seem to me to give writers very useful practice in condensing and editing.  Thanks, G-Man.  Have a K-A W yourself!

Microfiction Monday #68

Excellent practise in editing by trying Stony River's (Susan) Microfiction Monday where we have only 140 characters including spaces to tell the story in this picture.

Ben:  Write Mayday message on t’box! Put t’lifebelt on t’soap! Throw them in t’sea!”

Jake: You been castaway too long. You’re losin’ it!”

(140 characters)

Fall-Out from the ‘Arrow in the Sky’ in Willow’s wintry prompt for Magpie#50

Theoretical physicists believe that it should be possible to make subatomic particles travel ‘backwards’ (but not forwards) through space-time. Time-jumps of fractions of a millisecond should be possible. The energy input required would be immense.

Faster Than A Speeding Bullet

There is an easier way for particles

as overweight and slow as you or I

to turn the trick. Go West, young man! How fast?

Bit faster than the Earth rotates around

its axis. The clocks will say you’ve reached your goal

before you started out. But you’ll be jetlagged,

sandbagged’s how you’ll feel. Is there an upside?

Sure!  Begin your trip just after sunrise.

Then, every time you stop, face East and wait!

You’ll see Old Sol jump-start your day again.

And if you’re smart and fast enough you might

squeeze umpteen sun-ups into twenty four

short hours. But the folk just waking up

will scarce have time to see you whizzing by.

Hard work on the Equator. Further North –

Or South, from Oslo, say, or Santiago

you’d only need to saunter round the globe.

P.S. This works for sunsets too. Head East!

Magpie#48

This fragment of a musical score is Willow's prompt for Magpie Tales this week.

Affliction

"Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf."

They heard the windswept tremolos in awe,

their ebb and flo, as waves crash on the strand,

an undertow to anger, loss, to pain, 

his jagged figures challenging despair.

"Speak louder, shout, for I am. Deaf."

They asked “What does your new sonata mean?”

Can you imagine the withering look this brought?

How he might snort and shake his untidy locks?

“Go to your Shakespeare! Read ‘Tempest’” he scoffed.

"Speak louder, shout, for I. Am. Deaf."

‘Tempest’ The nickname stuck!  At least it’s more

appropriate than “Moonlight”  No moonbeams

light the rage of that finale, never mind

triplets that lap the shore of Lake Lucerne.

Go to “The Tempest”, then. So. Does he mean

his new work is 'rough magic'? Or perhaps

the lilting rondo is Miranda’s dance

at her wedding to noble Ferdinand?

For sure in the wintry gales we hear

a ship grind on the reef, splinter in shards

and sink to the deeps on bass arpeggios

I prefer “Our revels now are ended.”

Here he admits the best of life is over.

From now on all that seems sublime, heroic,

wild, will play out only in his unkempt head,

where still he hears what his ear no longer can,

with courage that proves the artist and the man.

"Speak louder. Shout, for I am DEAF."

Beethoven composed the D minor piano sonata, Op.31 No.2 (sometimes referred to as “The Tempest Sonata”) in 1801/02 at the age of 32, the same year that he wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament in which he admits his almost total deafness.  

Microfiction Monday. January 10th.

Stony River allows 140 characters to base a story, etc., on this picture prompt of the "Mothman" statue in West Virginia, commemorating the strange "Mothman" urban myth/legend.  I have tried to squeeze a poem into (or do I mean out of?) the alloted characters.

Heart armoured, hidden your face,

defence to love’s embrace?

I’m your old flame drawn to her Moth.

Dear One, I beg you. Let’s renew our troth.

(140 chars. inc spaces)