Monday, February 11, 2013

Let's Play With Shapes!: or, the concrete poetry of Dylan Thomas





Who
Are you
Who is born
In the next room
So loud to my own
That I can hear the womb
Opening and the dark run
Over the ghost and the dropped son
Behind the wall thin as a wren’s bone?
In the birth bloody room unknown
To the burn and turn of time
And the heart print of man
Bows no baptism
But dark alone
Blessing on
The wild
Child.






Now

Now
Say nay,
Man dry man,
Dry lover mine
The deadrock base and blow the flowered anchor,
Should he, for centre sake, hop in the dust,
Forsake, the fool, the hardiness of anger.

Now
Say nay,
Sir no say,
Death to the yes,
the yes to death, the yesman and the answer,
Should he who split his children with a cure
Have brotherless his sister on the handsaw.

Now
Say nay,
No say sir
Yea the dead stir,
And this, nor this, is shade, the landed crow,
He lying low with ruin in his ear,
The cockrel's tide upcasting from the fire.

Now
Say nay,
So star fall,
So the ball fail,
So solve the mystic sun, the wife of light,
The sun that leaps on petals through a nought,
The come-a-cropper rider of the flower.

Now
Say nay
A fig for
The seal of fire,
Death hairy-heeled and the tapped ghost in wood,
We make me mystic as the arm of air,
The two-a-vein, the foreskin, and the cloud.






Ceremony After a Fire Raid

I
Myselves
The grievers
Grieve
Among the street burned to tireless death
A child of a few hours
With its kneading mouth
Charred on the black breast of the grave
The mother dug, and its arms full of fires.

Begin
With singing
Sing
Darkness kindled back into beginning
When the caught tongue nodded blind,
A star was broken
Into the centuries of the child
Myselves grieve now, and miracles cannot atone.

Forgive
Us forgive
Us your death that myselves the believers
May hold it in a great flood
Till the blood shall spurt,
And the dust shall sing like a bird
As the grains blow, as your death grows, through our heart.

Crying
Your dying
Cry,
Child beyond cockcrow, by the fire-dwarfed
Street we chant the flying sea
In the body bereft.
Love is the last light spoken. Oh
Seed of sons in the loin of the black husk left.







   If I were                tickled by
  the rub of love      a rooking girl
    who stole me for her side why then
    I might be able to write them shapes
     just the way Mr. Dylan Thomas could
       do, that is when he was not too sou
       sed by Divine Inspiration which has
      soused many a good writer into
     an early grave. If I were tick
      led by the rub of love, I
       might now have ear
        ned a little mon
        ey from all
          this non
           sens
            e





FLEE! FLY! FLO!: the Fe-M@il version








Flee!

(Flee!)
Flee Fly!
(FLee Fly!)
Flee Fly Flo!
(FLee Fly Flo!)
Fista!
(Fista!)
Cumala Cumala Cumala Fista
(Cumala Cumala Cumala Fista)
Oh nononono, (not) a vista
(Oh nononono, (not) ca vista)
Ennyminey desaminy punana warraminy
(Eeny meeney deci meeny oo na na walla meeny)
Yip belly wapum bapum bobo wa hipum

New Style New Style we got the new style,
Freestyle Meanwhile sister got it by a mile,
Lifestyle, girls smile, we can do it all the while.
Telephone dialing, rub-a-dub styling.

On a really cool tip, You can be a part of this trip
All you gotta do is this, I said, All you gotta do is this. 

(Ooooooooooooh!) Read my lips!

Cumala Cumala Cumala Fista
(Cumala Cumala Cumala Fista)
Oh nononono, (not) a vista
(Oh nononono, (not) ca vista)
Ennyminey desaminy punana warraminy
(Eeny meeney deci meeny oo na na walla meeny)
Yip belly wapum bapum bobo wa hipum

Watch me do it, you can do it this way
North and South and East and Westway
Monday to Sunday, gotta be a funday
We don't care what anyone's gonna say

On a really cool tip, You can be a part of this trip
All you gotta do is this, I said, All you gotta do is this.
All you gotta do is this, I said, All you gotta do is this.

Flee!
(Flee!)
Flee Fly!
(FLee Fly!)
Flee Fly Flo!
(FLee Fly Flo!)
Fista!
(Fista!)
Cumala Cumala Cumala Fista
(Cumala Cumala Cumala Fista)
Oh nononono, (not) a vista
(Oh nononono, (not) ca vista)
Ennyminey desaminy punana warraminy
(Eeny meeney deci meeny oo na na walla meeny)
Yip belly wapum bapum bobo wa hipum

Oooooooooooooooooooh! Re-fry this!



BLOGGER'S NOTE. It was only a matter of time until I found alternate versions of Flee Fly Flo. This is a great one, and I was all set to post a video of it as an example, when I read "subtitles" which said things like "fist my lips" and "don't fist your girl friend". As far as I can tell, fisting is a rather repugnant sexual practice which I don't associate with a wholesome, upbeat song like this one. So I didn't post it, then realized the subtitles were a hoax. Or at least I hope so. Maybe a dirty mondegreen, who knows.




Anyway! I found this other version, the original, which is pristine and has no mention of inserting bodily parts where the sun don't shine.  I like pop versions of these old things because it gives them an extended life in kids' minds. Immortality, if you will. The Clap-Clap song brought back to life my old "rubber dolly" rhyme, along with "three-six-nine, the goose drank wine," which for some reason reminds me of "down by the bay".

I also love the way the lyrics are set up, in word-sculptures, sort of like certain poems by Dylan Thomas (which I'll have to find. . . oh dear, there goes my afternoon).