If your Friday is creeping along at a preternaturally slow pace or you are waiting for yet another call about the current, exciting job opportunity, ruining perfectly good poems and prose is a fun way to pass the time.
You can try an add on or you can omit the last line of a stanza and create a nonliterary work of your own.
Here is Basho's famous frog poem with an add on that pollutes it with an urban contemporary feel:
old pond
a frog jumps into
the sound of water and the beeping of the UPS truck backing into the driveway.
Here is the last stanza of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken with an add on:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
because it's slightly longer but less crowded.
Here is the same stanza with an altered last line:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that is why I was 15 minutes late.
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Comments: 163
I never hope to see one
But I can tell you anyhow
Purple isn't a normal cow color.
but thank you for the purple cow.
I took the one less traveled by
And was stopped for speeding in a rural area.
and I took the one less traveled by
and ended up running into a lot of spider webs
...and yikes!
on little cat feet
and then sheds alot.
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all which can be really annoying.
Impatient of no child,
The feeblest of the waywardest.
Her admonition is that you get eaten and that's it.
(Sorry. Just came from a bloody evolution thread.)
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
Unless you'd like to get a job somewhere,
In which case I hear nursing's pretty hot.
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there
and from a lack of reliable health insurance
I'm not any nicer now, Ann, I'm just quieter. :)
Unless you live in New England
Then it's May
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient laughing gassed upon a dentist's chair.
Or maybe one of these plums, they look nice?
and try to get the damned peach stains out of them.
until we got a yardstick
And they are tone-deaf.
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
"Where did I park my car?"
but only god can make a fool like me.
A divine contribution to the collection. Thank you.
In the forest of the night
Your fur really reeks.
sing no sad songs for me
but dance ye not upon my grave
lest I come after thee.
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;—
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
So, perhaps, we should give up Caffeine!
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor", I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door —
hoping that it's not Al Gore."
What about , "It looked like Robert Mitchum... No wait... It's Victor Mature!
And round it was, and full of sour mash likker.
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the jars in Tennessee
Yield such an alcohol!
and all the boards did shrink;
water, water every where
Let's have another drink.
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse -- maybe some Hummus...
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,
but for those times when I must visit the restroom.
after I visit the ladies' room...
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
Your credit cards will reach.
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and little children sing,
But there is no joy on Gather cause no one here can ping!
Your mother bending Daddy's ear
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Your hippie Dad was barely alive
And doesn't remember that famous day and year.
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year
except for Hal and he don't make no sense.
of the night I stole your father's beer...
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And some gin from Tennessee. Yee-Haw!
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
Then you are a better man than me Gunga Din!
It fell to earth, I knew not where...
Until my neighbour came charging over,
with an arrow in his eclair...
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
And there the wino sleeps.
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
To step over the sleeping wino.
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville - mighty Casey has started dating Madonna.
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And also a GPS. That would be handy.
I was pleasantly surprised to see it take off. This was a lot of fun!
I never saw an African snail.
I hope I never see one,
But I can tell you this right now:
I'd rather see than be one.
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode Clint Eastwood.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
did gyre and gimble in the wabe,
until the psych nurse brought my meds.
And all the boards did shrink
Water, water, every where,
Why couldn't it be Coke Zero?
And not one "are we there yet?"
Dapple dawn-drawn minion
Right in my gun sight.
(I apologize.)
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis,
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
... She shouldn't have used so much Miracle-gro.
Close bosomed friend of the conspiring sun, you sinner.
I have not winced nor cried aloud in pain.
I had had some really good brownies.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Ghosties and vampires will come and get ya, at the dying of the light.
That's what he gets for sunbathing nude!
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
The guys from Publisher's Clearing house.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
There's a shoe sale at Macy's... what a thrill!
Leo L. Sep 18, 2009, 6:56pm EDT
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee.
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child
In this kingdom by the sea:
And we were puzzled about how to do it.
Even though we had the kit.
Gang up on me.
"If you want to hear God laugh, make a plan."
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
To look for that guy who still owes me, watta loser and a creep.
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
We swallowed a salt pill and wiped our brows.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And maybe an intermission or two for popcorn and soda.
Duckie!
Good to see you round these parts again.
William Wordsweird: "Ode: Intimations of Immorality"
Gather produces such strife.