Take This Tune

Posted: Tuesday, February 08, 2011 by Travis Cody in
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My pal Jamie from Duward Discussion has reintroduced her wonderful weekly feature.  Take This Tune provides a musical prompt each week, usually a video with the song lyrics.  The task is to write something inspired by the song or something in the lyrics.


This week's prompt is the song Ain't Talking by Bob Dylan, from the album Modern Times.


Now I don't consider myself a Dylan fan, although I have tremendous respect for him as a poet and songwriter.  I thought that this was a great opportunity to sit down and work out a poem.


Funny thing though...I hadn't intended a sonnet, nor did I intend something quite so dark.  But such is the way of the words.


Kitties, puppies, bunnies is my mantra
When the big bad scaries infuse my dreams
With lavender and orange dahlias,
Twisting sweetness to malign travesty.
Morose is the hand that guides freakish tour,
Pointing the way toward spectral vastness,
And beings heard but unseen behind doors...
The ghoulish threat of mayhem and madness.
Engulf'd now in this panick'd mind's prison,
To become this corner'd lonely buffoon.
How came I to bend thought to these visions?
Just that one glance did I take at gray moon.
How came I to this persistent prowling?
Can no one cure me of this mad howling?




Yes Lana, I'm off to Google images of puppies...or perhaps Youtube for giggling babies.

7 comments:

  1. I'll need to live with this one for awhile. It's a good poem with a hard subject. Those types of dreams haven't been part of my existence for a few decades now, but they used to be all too real. May need to visit lol cats.

  1. This very nicely evokes some of my childhood fears and drears.

  1. After reading, I now know why you missed sitting on The Couch and basketball...Excellent job Sir

  1. j says:

    Dark isn't the word that I would use to describe this poem but I just can't put my finger on the right word. I've read and re-read your poem, trying to find the right descriptive word but it escapes me. There is something... ack!... emotionally threatening (?) about it? Definitely intense. Or maybe dark IS the right word. Anyway, the poem is really good.

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  1. Anonymous says:

    I didn't have bad dreams as a kid. My fav was hovering over the goal posts at the Smalltownville high school. Dylan was from MN. and I home no one twists "sweetness to malign Trav." ;-)

  1. I liked your poem, especially the last two lines.