Week+Five+and...

Now in Week Five Write a poem that calls itself a type of music. You don't need to sing it; in fact, in most slams you'd be disqualified if you sang. Here's an example: This Poem is a Country Song or This Poem is a Heavy Metal Song. Get it? Good.

Now Slam!

I am a Bach symphony I move and blend like the nile river That grew the Egyptians wheat, Carrying the life of a civilization Riding on my rippling intertwined melodies

My ripples of starlight and highlights of highpoint ripple at first alone Then move over each other Over and over and over and over Moving in a seemingly chaotic yet perfectly harmonious dance of audible iceskating Designs of carved ice chips imprinting the insides of eyelids and eardrums Never ending patterns that continue on long past the time that the strings have ceased to speak

They Move through and around and in between the ice forest that Springs from the patterns of the sounds immediately passed Losing the listeners in a never ending maze of chrystaline E strings And five ledger lined stalks of tall frost that brush noses and eyelids And make them tickle

But still I flow And though I am complex Their ears always guide them through because I am lucid And all the map that’s needed to find the way is to listen Because ice forms it’s own path

Like the flowing parted waters of the red sea Because it was already mapped out With Bach as it’s moses And the staff as his staff And liquid sound as his medium That he moved and parted and shaped to the voices in his head

They said at first it was impossible To intentionally shape chaos And not end up with the cacaphony Feared for ages by the Greeks With their unarmed statues And black-spotted Ceasar salad dressing

But then they started to listen And realized the infinitudal world of sound Which they could only glimpse from their flowing, frosted, mapped out window Captured with a pen from the German past From the sounds in some German guys head I am a Bach Symphony

-Clara “longmusicpoemwriter” Stickney

This Poem is a Country Song

This isn’t just any country song, no, this poem is a Merle Haggard country song. This poem stayed up until three a.m. last night doing things that country songs do—leaning over the table in an ill-lit barroom telling jokes your mother would cringe at—and this poem laughed so hard at these jokes that it nearly split its liver right there on the floor.

This poem is Johnny Cash when he was singing like he was standing in front of God, and maybe he was for all we know. This poem is accompanied by a steel string guitar and an upright bass guitar, and…do hear that, that’s a fiddle—not one of those new Nashville fiddles that drones on like a bumblebee— it’s the kind of fiddle that one minute sounds like Beethoven and the next sounds like a beautiful car accident skidding across your soul.

This poem lives life to the fullest. It shoots guns, runs with rough women, wakes up past noon, cusses when it’s time to cuss, but tips its hat to a beautiful lady when she crosses its path.

This country song grew up on a plantation in Arkansas, but swore it would never pick cotton, and it never did, but it sings about picking cotton, because that’s all it knows. This country song doesn’t have long to live, because to sing country you have to //be// country, and you can’t be country very long before your lungs fill with cancer, your liver shrivels with sclerosis, your third wife leaves you, your first wife wants more alimony.

This poem used to live in a mansion near Graceland, but now it lives in one of those motels where you pay by the night and when this poem goes to bed it lays its cowboy hat over its eyes, falling asleep just as the rising sun is slipping through the crack between the smoke-stained curtains.

This poem is so country that it made a comeback and tried to clean up, but it was too late, because that pebble of a liver and those black lungs were winning. and just when this poem is taken by a heart attack, it has its first number one hit on the country billboards and people are buying its records for the first time in years, and just at this moment, it’s leaving this earth…

now if that ain’t country, I don’t know what is.

I am a pop song Molded into a ready-made hit Marketed to the masses With no thought to call my own

I’m sung by an “artist” with no talent who is picked only for looks

I’m a bastard A brain child of someone who doesn’t love me Someone who doesn’t care for me

My creator will disown me the second i’m “out” So he can make another billboard topper, for a week or so at least

I have no deeper meaning I’m one sided I have no depth

But I have a good beat And I have a catchy melody Easy words and a easy rhythm That let anybody sing along

I’m sellable I’m easy to make And I’m a ready made hit, That’s why I am a pop song

//Nicole "long stockings" Gile//

I hope you can pardón the fact that todas las palabras sound like a freshly opened can of alphabet soup whipped con un tenedor until the broth is swirling like your cha-cha-cha hips and las letras are baila! baila! baila! out of the the freshly pumped lips de una señorita muy sexy who is either wagging or beckoning her tanned digits in your direction whispering ven conmigo and let me smash you en la cara with my rancorous and bumptious beats and fiery trumpet solos and congo drums like a thousand ping-pong balls knocking on the door of your language barrier which you are unsure if you should open because creo que she might actually be bubbling in your tongue but it is probably only because that senorita with la boca roja y huge really wants to make absolutely certain that you know that it is solamente tu  responsible for breaking her corazon over and over and over and over again when all she wanted to do was BAILA! BAILA! BAILA!
 * This Is A Latin Pop Song**

-Megan DondeEstaLaBiblioteca Mitchell

The Rock that Rolls

It all started with the King. Come sleep in the Heartbreak Hotel if you wanna hear, or wait, is that Hotel in California? Nah. Screw the Eagles, the British are Coming the British are Coming in Submarines of Yellow through Eight Legged gardens and their High with Help from their Friends, boys Sticky Fingered with Brown Sugar and licking the states back to patriotism and avid reading. Rolling rolling stones. Rolling rolling rock. Old Time a Rockin‘ Roll, kinda music just soothes the soul of the lady who knows the stores are all closed. This snowballs rolling faster and faster, on this Highway to Hell, on this Leftoverture Journey that started with a million hey hey Monkees pounding on the fret boards. Where will it stop? Or will it? As far as I can see these Barenaked Ladies are all about Californication, and if we can shake our heads with Neverminds and cover Alices in Chains we can certainly endure the Slipknot. Its a Chemical Romance thats too good to give up, a Bullet for Your Valentine that looks like it is Saving Able, and even if it was Breaking Ben-jams and Yeah Yeah Yeahs through her Radio Head I don’t think we could even stop. London is Calling. The people need their music. And to those about to rock, I still salute you.

Ian 'Dewey Finn' Hawkes

This poem is a death metal song. Maggots. Death. Murder. Blood. Satan. Hatred. Scythe. Shadow. Skeleton. Maggot. Death. Beautiful music? -Adam "Naughty Baggage" Bourgault

This is an Indie Song

It does not conform to your rules of music industries and labels. Look at it’s uneven surface, like a rag, worn and used, looked over and under appreciated, hiding within the gray overalls, of a pocket of a janitor who is also under appreciated, becoming a paradox within a paradox, An assemble of holes, twists and turns, that leaves you, the listener, wondering what the hell they just experienced.

Look deeper into its voice, into the very words that are spoken from deep deep inside, and you will find emotion and symbolism.

Do not travel farther if what you seek is too dance. Do not try to travel through vines and thorns seeking a specific and definite reason for it being alive, for it living and thriving, for it’s meaning.

This song lives to contemplate and stare at gray ceilings from atop a bed. Wondering the mysteries of the world, and rejecting the normality of it.

-Sarah "Bowie Slam" Kennedy