not sure how many words

[Tathagata]

What a pretty rubiyat!

is that what it is??


I mean uhhhh......thanks!

 

[DeepAsleep]

the difference between pinned up and pinned down

bettie, they stole your haircut,
paid for the worst parts of you and
stapled the sex you never sold
to the wall of their need.

did anyone know
they'd shelled out two bits
to see your innocence?
you never got me hard,
but you made me feel honest.
I wish I'd loved you.

here, your rope, here, your paddle,
your habit, your long skirt, your Christ,
you nun, how many times did you fall
into grace, in black and white?
I wish you'd been my daughter.

if God had understood you better,
he'd have whittled you into something
less selfless; a barstool, a harpoon,
a crucifix.

you were beautiful.

 

[Tathagata]

bettie, they stole your haircut,
paid for the worst parts of you and
stapled the sex you never sold
to the wall of their need.

did anyone know
they'd shelled out two bits
to see your innocence?
you never got me hard,
but you made me feel honest.
I wish I'd loved you.

here, your rope, here, your paddle,
your habit, your long skirt, your Christ,
you nun, how many times did you fall
into grace, in black and white?
I wish you'd been my daughter.

if God had understood you better,
he'd have whittled you into something
less selfless; a barstool, a harpoon,
a crucifix.

you were beautiful.

I like this
bettie never did it for me either
but I liked to look at her, she was a very pretty woman

 

[Tathagata]

.....

 

[champagne1982]

is that what it is??


I mean uhhhh......thanks!

close enough i think they may need to rhyme or something.. LOL now that i think about it, i'm likely wrong. it's a lovely way of presenting your subject though; very evocative of death and the autumn, but still i found the beauty even in the grays.

 

[Angeline]

close enough i think they may need to rhyme or something.. LOL now that i think about it, i'm likely wrong. it's a lovely way of presenting your subject though; very evocative of death and the autumn, but still i found the beauty even in the grays.

Here's what Wikipedia says:

Ruba'iyat or rubaiyat (Arabic: رباعیات) (a plural word derived from the root arba'a meaning 'four') means "quatrains" in the Persian language. Singular: ruba'i (rubai, ruba'ee, rubayi, rubayee). The rhyme scheme is AABA, i.e., lines 1, 2 and 4 rhyme.

This verse form was popularized in Edward FitzGerald's translation of the collection of Persian verses known as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In fact, Rubaiyat is a common shorthand name for this collection.

VII
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing.
Fitzgerald’s translations became so popular in the 1800’s that several American humorists wrote parodies, including The Rubaiyat of Ohow Dryyam, The Rubaiyat of A Persian Kitten, The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Jr..

In longer poems built in rubaiyat rhyme scheme, the convention is sometimes extended so that the unrhymed line of the current stanza becomes the rhyme for the following stanza. I.e., the scheme is extended to AABA BBCB CCDC, etc.. This is sometimes called, naturally, "interlocking rubaiyat". The structure can be made cyclical by linking the unrhymed line of the final stanza back to the first stanza: ZZAZ. These more stringent systems were not, however, used by FitzGerald in his Rubaiyat; it would have been particularly difficult for him to achieve this effect since the order and number of stanzas in his translation were not stable.

A prime use of the interlocking Rubaiyat in modern English poetry is "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost.

 

[Tathagata]

Here's what Wikipedia says:

Ruba'iyat or rubaiyat (Arabic: رباعیات) (a plural word derived from the root arba'a meaning 'four') means "quatrains" in the Persian language. Singular: ruba'i (rubai, ruba'ee, rubayi, rubayee). The rhyme scheme is AABA, i.e., lines 1, 2 and 4 rhyme.

This verse form was popularized in Edward FitzGerald's translation of the collection of Persian verses known as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In fact, Rubaiyat is a common shorthand name for this collection.

VII
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing.
Fitzgerald’s translations became so popular in the 1800’s that several American humorists wrote parodies, including The Rubaiyat of Ohow Dryyam, The Rubaiyat of A Persian Kitten, The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Jr..

In longer poems built in rubaiyat rhyme scheme, the convention is sometimes extended so that the unrhymed line of the current stanza becomes the rhyme for the following stanza. I.e., the scheme is extended to AABA BBCB CCDC, etc.. This is sometimes called, naturally, "interlocking rubaiyat". The structure can be made cyclical by linking the unrhymed line of the final stanza back to the first stanza: ZZAZ. These more stringent systems were not, however, used by FitzGerald in his Rubaiyat; it would have been particularly difficult for him to achieve this effect since the order and number of stanzas in his translation were not stable.

A prime use of the interlocking Rubaiyat in modern English poetry is "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost.

Well I'm glad thats settled
rest assured I am only clever by mistake

 

[Tathagata]

close enough i think they may need to rhyme or something.. LOL now that i think about it, i'm likely wrong. it's a lovely way of presenting your subject though; very evocative of death and the autumn, but still i found the beauty even in the grays.

what matters is that you liked it enough to read it and comment
Thank you

 

[Angeline]

Well I'm glad thats settled
rest assured I am only clever by mistake

I need about three cups of coffee before I can even begin to understand that definition.

 

[Tathagata]

I need about three cups of coffee before I can even begin to understand that definition.

when you do explain it to me
and use small words

 

[DeepAsleep]

I like this
bettie never did it for me either
but I liked to look at her, she was a very pretty woman

I could never get over the feeling that she didn't belong. When I found out she ended her life as a nun, it overwhelmed me for half a minute. They did a movie about her that was so-so, though they found an actress that nailed her feel perfectly.

Glad you liked it.

 

[Angeline]

when you do explain it to me
and use small words

O.K.

 

[Tathagata]

I could never get over the feeling that she didn't belong. When I found out she ended her life as a nun, it overwhelmed me for half a minute. They did a movie about her that was so-so, though they found an actress that nailed her feel perfectly.

Glad you liked it.

I saw that movie, I watched it because of an interview I had seen with Bettie...shes a rather bitter old woman in some ways...may have been her religion talking too.

she claimed for a while that she had no idea what all the fetish stuff was about, she just put on the clothes and posed the way they told her.

In some pictures that really seems to be the case

and man
if i had a nickle for every fetish model thats stolen her look...

 

[Tathagata]

O.K.

arigato gozaimasu

 

[DeepAsleep]

I saw that movie, I watched it because of an interview I had seen with Bettie...shes a rather bitter old woman in some ways...may have been her religion talking too.

she claimed for a while that she had no idea what all the fetish stuff was about, she just put on the clothes and posed the way they told her.

In some pictures that really seems to be the case

and man
if i had a nickle for every fetish model thats stolen her look...

After she got brought back into the public eye and people started freaking out over her pictures - which had become public domain - she found out she was famous again nearly ten years after books and merchandise and etc. were being sold, and she wasn't receiving any of the royalties - which, while living in a group home, sort of made her a trifle angry. Some work with lawyers later, she's at least got a handle on her estate. Etc., etc.,

Your nickels, plus mine for every girl in the art-rock-indy-music-poetry-underground scene, and we could buy us a mountain of bananas.

~R

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Path to the Sea

Sunday morning seamless sky
welded steel to silky sea
rain pitted sand dunes
no memory of summer footprints

Shore birds rule the tidal line
one eye on the weather
waiting for a cool tail wind
to take them south

Fox-eared boardwalk wind-lifted
and angled under drifts
like broken teeth clenched
in readiness for winter

Wandering aimless and idle
where we bathed in sun and sea
and will again when storms
have rearranged the beach
to a new design

 

[Angeline]

Path to the Sea

Sunday morning seamless sky
welded steel to silky sea
rain pitted sand dunes
no memory of summer footprints

Shore birds rule the tidal line
one eye on the weather
waiting for a cool tail wind
to take them south

Fox-eared boardwalk wind-lifted
and angled under drifts
like broken teeth clenched
in readiness for winter

Wandering aimless and idle
where we bathed in sun and sea
and will again when storms
have rearranged the beach
to a new design

Lovely! I especially like the third strophe--such a clear visual.

 

[wildsweetone]

Path to the Sea

Sunday morning seamless sky
welded steel to silky sea
rain pitted sand dunes
no memory of summer footprints

Shore birds rule the tidal line
one eye on the weather
waiting for a cool tail wind
to take them south

Fox-eared boardwalk wind-lifted
and angled under drifts
like broken teeth clenched
in readiness for winter

Wandering aimless and idle
where we bathed in sun and sea
and will again when storms
have rearranged the beach
to a new design

so much yummy stuff in here Tess.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Lovely! I especially like the third strophe--such a clear visual.

so much yummy stuff in here Tess.

Thank you both, I was feeling a bit summersick - you know, like homesick
but it needs quite a bit of tweaking.

 

[Tzara]

bettie, they stole your haircut,
paid for the worst parts of you and
stapled the sex you never sold
to the wall of their need.

did anyone know
they'd shelled out two bits
to see your innocence?
you never got me hard,
but you made me feel honest.
I wish I'd loved you.

here, your rope, here, your paddle,
your habit, your long skirt, your Christ,
you nun, how many times did you fall
into grace, in black and white?
I wish you'd been my daughter.

if God had understood you better,
he'd have whittled you into something
less selfless; a barstool, a harpoon,
a crucifix.

you were beautiful.

Bettie was the classic 50s and 60s(?) pinup model, so much so that she ended up as, essentially, a character in the comic book The Rocketeer, a 40s (I know, that doesn't make sense) retro comic that was made into a movie with Jennifer Connelly playing the "Bettie" part.

The bangs were all wrong. Not that I can complain about, well, the rest.

The real Bettie Page was an odd woman. Conflicted and, I suspect, disingenuous about her past. Not an uncommon condition, by the way. I am conflicted and disingenuous about my past, and I don't have any bondage pictures lurking around to plague me.

I don't think.

Thematically, I don't see her as victim. Not sure that is what you're trying to portray, but it seems to tend that way. I think it's more complicated than that. As Life often is.

Complicated.

 

[wildsweetone]

...

it is when my breath catches,
when a spark ignites a memory
sets it burning brightly in my mind
away from the shadows in the corners,
that i am filled again with the loss
of you. i never saw
the face of your smile, simply felt it
in the warmth of your words, the cup
of your kindness. i miss you more
with each passable moment,
the rock, the father, the believer.
but it was meant to be this way
and slowly i will cease to struggle
the why.

 

[DeepAsleep]

Bettie was the classic 50s and 60s(?) pinup model, so much so that she ended up as, essentially, a character in the comic book The Rocketeer, a 40s (I know, that doesn't make sense) retro comic that was made into a movie with Jennifer Connelly playing the "Bettie" part.

The bangs were all wrong. Not that I can complain about, well, the rest.

The real Bettie Page was an odd woman. Conflicted and, I suspect, disingenuous about her past. Not an uncommon condition, by the way. I am conflicted and disingenuous about my past, and I don't have any bondage pictures lurking around to plague me.

I don't think.

Thematically, I don't see her as victim. Not sure that is what you're trying to portray, but it seems to tend that way. I think it's more complicated than that. As Life often is.

Complicated.

Ehh, I was after the glorification of her as a sex-object, when it was the innocence she portrayed that I tend to find interesting - that, and the fact that she wound up in bible school, after '57, for a little added tension... meh. I post to this thread when I have half an idea I want to explore, so sometimes... It's, er, well. half an idea.

 

[DeepAsleep]

For those interested

This is the progenitor of Black Dress -

I'm looking for a Tom Waits type-girl,
maybe
hair like a sortuva-kinduva dishwater conglomerate
breaking out over her shoulders
like drunks spill beer:
reckless, against the bar-top backdrop.
Yeah, I needa girl like thrift store wingtips -
ain't nothin' wrong with her, you understand
but a little spit and a quick buff never hurt nothing.
Something like, "Hell, maybe it's Maybelline
or maybe more like Wal-Greens..." But any way you dice it
she'd smell like slow roasted heaven.

Yeah, I needa girl, gotta get me one of those
doe-eyed, sloe-eyed beauties, to perch
on my arm like a hawk waiting to take flight
while we're painting the downtown skyline
on a white canvas stretched thin
and gasping
like ten o'clock bar-time fantasies
leftover at five am.

need a girl who knows the interminable
midnight masquerades,
back forth side-wise and
horizontal, you know -
knows 'em like she knows the cherry-red polish
on the toenails creeping pert past her toe-tips,
a toe-tapping girl coming to grips with how
her dollar draw daydreams of romance
in a pintglass
maybe ain't gonna come true -
'til I come thru the door and
sweep her off her seat.

She'd be done up in full,
high tops to rooftops,
heels to wheels,
and we'd hit the town with all the Bonnie
and Clyde we could muster, say,
"Reach for the sky, buster brown, your money or your wife
lay 'em both down, you won't need 'em, tonight."

We'd be walking signatures waiting
for autograph paper, bedecked, and bedazzling
with the slow-night concrete glittering
under the naked streetlights
like all the ants were playing paparazzi.

And there'd be a sorta rose colored tinge
to my sunglasses, making me smile at the buses
breezing past. they'd be speaking-easy to me
Yeah, they'd be traffic-talking back at me
with a little honk, a little beep-beep-bop,
they'd be singing winos to sleep in the alleys we pass
and man, we'd look like class;
sharp as Soho razors on Saturday night.

We'd have a love affair that'd put 'em all to shame
'n then, Christ, she'd leave me for the bass-player,
sayin', "Well, have you seen how he handles his sticks?"
and i'd head back to the bar, after the show and
just get crosseyed, until my barstool threw me out
on the street, spats over hat, and I'd talk,
"Well, maybe I'll pack it up and take it to Chicago,
I got friends up there," and I'd write love songs for her
in the attic, tunes about how we had that blues arithmetic;

one 'n one is two 'n
two 'n two is four
come on back home, baby
I can't take no more.

Then my buddy, he'd say,
"Hell, she did the same thing to me last week"
and then maybe I wouldn't feel so bad, but the bed
the bed'd still be cold and I'd remember how she smelled,
while I watched cigarette smoke romancing
the ceiling fan
overlaid with Venetian cell bars
and I'd miss her, anyway.

yeah, I need a girl like that.


Whee!

 

[Sara Crewe]

Self Referential Decor

I wallpapered my world
and its walls with ideas
I chose from sample books
and cross-referenced with the list
of people I needed to please
or suffer their or else.

I remember running
my fingers over the fabric
squinting my eyes to frame
the pattern and my hands
holding the little squares
far away from me
up against the rest
of my life in a way that said
if they touched
my body one of us, the idea
or the idea of me would be stained.

But paper no matter how thick
or carefully it is applied
does not stick to skin
because it is already dead.
With time it yellows and curls
up. Sometimes slowly
like a dead sea scroll and sometimes
quickly like a blind pulled too hard
but in the end the fabricated surface
falls and I am left
with the absence of anything
but my constant wondering
about what was meant to be
or if being is my meaning and wonder
the colour of my air.

 

[Tathagata]

This is the progenitor of Black Dress -

I'm looking for a Tom Waits type-girl,
maybe
hair like a sortuva-kinduva dishwater conglomerate
breaking out over her shoulders
like drunks spill beer:
reckless, against the bar-top backdrop.
Yeah, I needa girl like thrift store wingtips -
ain't nothin' wrong with her, you understand
but a little spit and a quick buff never hurt nothing.
Something like, "Hell, maybe it's Maybelline
or maybe more like Wal-Greens..." But any way you dice it
she'd smell like slow roasted heaven.

Yeah, I needa girl, gotta get me one of those
doe-eyed, sloe-eyed beauties, to perch
on my arm like a hawk waiting to take flight
while we're painting the downtown skyline
on a white canvas stretched thin
and gasping
like ten o'clock bar-time fantasies
leftover at five am.

need a girl who knows the interminable
midnight masquerades,
back forth side-wise and
horizontal, you know -
knows 'em like she knows the cherry-red polish
on the toenails creeping pert past her toe-tips,
a toe-tapping girl coming to grips with how
her dollar draw daydreams of romance
in a pintglass
maybe ain't gonna come true -
'til I come thru the door and
sweep her off her seat.

She'd be done up in full,
high tops to rooftops,
heels to wheels,
and we'd hit the town with all the Bonnie
and Clyde we could muster, say,
"Reach for the sky, buster brown, your money or your wife
lay 'em both down, you won't need 'em, tonight."

We'd be walking signatures waiting
for autograph paper, bedecked, and bedazzling
with the slow-night concrete glittering
under the naked streetlights
like all the ants were playing paparazzi.

And there'd be a sorta rose colored tinge
to my sunglasses, making me smile at the buses
breezing past. they'd be speaking-easy to me
Yeah, they'd be traffic-talking back at me
with a little honk, a little beep-beep-bop,
they'd be singing winos to sleep in the alleys we pass
and man, we'd look like class;
sharp as Soho razors on Saturday night.

We'd have a love affair that'd put 'em all to shame
'n then, Christ, she'd leave me for the bass-player,
sayin', "Well, have you seen how he handles his sticks?"
and i'd head back to the bar, after the show and
just get crosseyed, until my barstool threw me out
on the street, spats over hat, and I'd talk,
"Well, maybe I'll pack it up and take it to Chicago,
I got friends up there," and I'd write love songs for her
in the attic, tunes about how we had that blues arithmetic;

one 'n one is two 'n
two 'n two is four
come on back home, baby
I can't take no more.

Then my buddy, he'd say,
"Hell, she did the same thing to me last week"
and then maybe I wouldn't feel so bad, but the bed
the bed'd still be cold and I'd remember how she smelled,
while I watched cigarette smoke romancing
the ceiling fan
overlaid with Venetian cell bars
and I'd miss her, anyway.

yeah, I need a girl like that.


Whee!

man there are some great lines in here
this needs music behind it, like " Franks Wild Years"