Wednesday, 15 April 2020

NaPoWriMo Day 15: Earth Song


Hi, I’m doing NaPoWriMo on napowrimo.net. The challenge is to write a poem a day in April. 


For Day 15, I wrote about stoner blues rock, while listening to one of my favourite bands, Morass of Molasses. I did three drafts in the end.


This is the prompt for the April 15 poem:
I’d like to challenge you to write a poem inspired by your favourite kind of music. Try to recreate the sounds and timing of a pop ballad, a jazz improvisation or a Bach fugue. That could mean incorporating refrains, neologisms and flights of whimsy, or repeating/inverting lines or ideas – whatever your chosen musical form would seem to require! Perhaps a good way to start is to listen to your favourite piece of music and “free-write” for the duration of the piece, and then use what you’ve written as the building blocks for your poem.

Earth song

Music of the                              desert                                       (so they say),
Gritty, earthy,                           bass                                          dripping.
Follow the line                          into the wall                              of sound;
An opening cave                       lets you stride                           right in.
Cymbals race                            to carry the drums                     down deep,
It’s a rhythmic incantation         jumping back                            and forth.
The richer it goes,                     the better it                               rides.
From a lack of love                   it revolves into                          blues.
Baseline humming,                   drums unfolding,                       riff rising.
Follow the guitar                       rippling on top of                      waves.
Dance in a blues-rock                summer guise                            spinning around,
Flaming across this desert          of stoner-fuelled                         ground.
Deep honey vocals                    soar across                                it all,               
Bringing the story                     of a woman’s                            scorn,
Wandering barefoot                   in days                                      bereft of music.
Slick, spilling,                           tingling, feeling,                       notes bouncing,                        
Sticks tapping,                          guitar roaming,                         drums smashing.
Carry me on waves                    of rock                                      until the end
When all                                   I’ll want                                    is more.
If this song was colour               it would be                                midnight purple,
Rising on waves of                    watery incandescence                rippling out.
Pied Piper on an acid                 trip leads you                            into the curve,
The bend in the song                 an ocean                                   of notes tingling,
I leave my thinking                   way behind me                          in the cloakroom.
It’s an escapist trip                    up into the spaces                      in between;
Just me                                      and music                                  and nothing else,
Floating in a dream                   capsule looking down                on this reality,
So far below                             it seems not to                            exist anymore,
And it doesn’t                           matter; it has no place               in the sun;
Nothing is but the hum,             the beat                                     and the dance.
Swaying          
                                                 Tripping                      
                                                                                                    Sinking           
                                                 Mingling                                 
Breathing
Something different                  in these                                     same days.
I’m lifted                                  out                                           above it all.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 15, 2020

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