Day 11 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2025 // Stafford 85

Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: “write a nature poem. Your poem could be about natural nature (think flowers, rivers, mountains, pebbles, weeds, trees, insects, fish, etc.), but don't neglect other iterations of nature (like human nature or the nature of baseball and so on).” Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “Your challenge is . . . to write a poem that incorporates song lyrics – ideally, incorporating them as opposing phrases or refrains.” The model poem today is Kyle Dargan’s “Diaspora: A Narcolepsy Hymn,” a non-rhyming villanelle. Merging the prompts as usual. The "nature" connection is a bit offhand . . . just added a new detail to the myth I'm playing with. The poem is a standard villanelle, with quite short lines, I'm proud to say. If you don't know the myth, click here: Orpheus. Orpheus Using lyrics from Smashing Pumpkins and Johnny Cash The world is a vampire. I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher. I’m Orpheus, called Nature Boy, enchanting trees, stones, but the world is a vampire and took Eurydice, my lover. I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher. Hades allowed me to take her, but don’t look back. Damn, the world is a vampire. Almost up, I turned. After going down, down, down, again flames went higher. Eurydice disappeared. For nothing, I went down, and the flames go higher. The world is a vampire. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein, Orpheus Glances Back at Eurydice (1806) Because the Johnny Cash lyric was so long (twice as long as the Smashing Pumpkin lyric), part of it had to come first in the previous line before that refrain each time. The middle of the Cash lyric also restricted my rhyme options. Fun challenge, though! Worked out well, I think. Here's Alan's poem today. He's also merging both prompts and using song lyrics. Aubade Incorporating Lynyrd Skynyrd Lyrics Though this feeling I can’t change, I would not, sweet love. The night whose sighs passed from us breath to breath, so strange to take three steps, lie down, lie with, arise— If I leave here tomorrow for a path into the swamp, music from the peepers and the free bird, call me the breeze that would return. Let us be sleepers with things goin’ on. I ain’t the one, a simple kind of man, to be untrue. You make Saturday night special, and your eyes like the skies are so blue. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] About this poem, Alan wrote, "I think I have covered both the prompts, and special credit to those who pick out the nine Lynyrd Skynyrd songs alluded to in this piece." Come on, friends, what songs? Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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