Tweetspeak Poetry

The Ballad: Poetry Prompt and Playlist

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Our playlist pays homage to the ballad, a narrative poem put to music. Never pretentious or fussy, ballads have a way of equalizing the human condition. They are timeless. The plainspoken language of ballads remind us to listen well, keep it simple, and if all else fails… dance.

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here’s a poem from Michelle we enjoyed:

the one that got away was never
meant for me to hold

though i stand barefoot and
firm in silt at the cool water’s
edge hands poised to trap the
silver beauty and bring her to
my atmosphere

though she glides into the space
between my palms and our vibrations
intercourse

though i deftly close my hands
around her facile form the grasp only
serves as a warning and propels her into
deeper waters

she is gone before i can exhale

though my hands are far from empty
as her opalescent scales bedazzle
my palms

—by Michelle Ortega

Ballads often weave interesting stories alongside a deeper message. The songs usually leave enough space and shadow for the moral lesson to be left to interpretation.

POETRY PROMPT: In just a few stanzas, write a ballad about a superstition in your family. Does it work? Where did it originate? What was it meant to teach?

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Photo by rhodesj. Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Heather Eure

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Comments

  3. Elizabeth W. Marshall says

    Ballad To The Ballad

    Oh you generous soul
    You
    Pour out your story
    To anyone who has time
    To listen
    And those who don’t
    Hear you
    Anyway

    No one escapes
    Your grip

    No one escapes the wooing
    Sounds you make

    In a world where
    Fifteen seconds is a lifetime
    I swear
    You won’t be a dying breed

    Not on my watch

    Give us more of your stories
    Set to notes
    Pining after loss
    And love
    Accompanied by violin
    And mandolin
    And a crooner’s voice
    Like a baying hound dog

    The moon rises and falls
    To your waxing and waning
    Songs

    The world cries
    Nobody got time for this
    But I miss
    The long and winding roads
    You took us down

    Wrapped the blues round
    Pain like a morning glory vine
    Strangling
    My lamp post
    You
    Take our breath
    Away

    Sing us a lullaby
    Sing us to sleep

    Inspire us
    And wake us up
    Again

    Tell me story
    Of loss and love
    And more
    Oh you generous
    Soul

    Reply

  6. Richard Maxson says

    Fire Hides In the Quiet Air

    Maybe time will tell
    that all we’ve imagined is true
    for earth and after.

    The day dying in the distance
    is neither here nor there as it turns
    with our desires to see what seeing means.

    In the wild grass the sunlight drills
    through the earth, makes spots of gold
    that for hopeful breaths grow old
    and float like rain clouds awaiting rain.

    I believe in the field of stars,
    rising from unseen milky stems—
    delicately masked flowers, flakes
    shaken from the Diamond Frost
    on the hillside and scattered
    like wishes deep into the far sky.

    It is a wild heaven that awaits us,
    filled with weeds aloft in the light,
    like dandelion seed?

    Fire hides in the quiet air;
    the proof rises from summer suns
    in the pale lawn of your childhood.

    In a glass jar filled with grass—
    for awhile the fire ticked like a heartbeat,
    then faded quietly into a world of words.

    Reply

  7. Richard Maxson says

    I do not fare well with rhyme, but this month I will try to write a rhyming ballad, following Marjorie Maddox’s most informative post and examples under “How To Write a Ballad.” In the meantime, this is (shall I say an unrhymed ballad) something I wrote several years ago; a fiction inspired by a real family on whose farm I lived several summers as a very young boy.

    Furrows and Morning Glories

    Zane’s first steps broke the spell of your absence;
    he cut a row through a living room of kin
    like fresh spring ground on his way to your chair:

    Things are only things, until we touch them long
    and shape them to us, to our ways: like trees turned by vines,
    the knee backs of your coveralls are what I mean:

    The dust rose up on braids of light like thistle down
    when Zane slapped the seat with his small arms
    and pressed it in—a whooshing sound like breath:

    Chair cushions billow back some when we’re gone;
    favorite coats, especially shoes, remember us
    in detail, faded and creased, they note our days:

    His wondering reached into the bright swirl
    taking form, like a ghost of you he never saw,
    asleep there, dreaming in your Western book:

    Stark — like dreams and morning glories — memories
    diffuse themselves with our hope and reclamation;
    though by dust and light, we die and live again:

    It was more than I could bear, that room,
    faces torn with sympathy and joy, a void
    like the screaming silence in a freight train’s wake:

    You — still more alive than dead. Work gets done;
    the fields are mowed and plowed, but in my head
    my hands remain where they’ve worked for years,

    in this house, not in the days and days in
    a daze of fortitude behind the Case wheel,
    before the rake and plow, where I remember you:

    One room could just as well be another
    now, they twist continuously through me
    like vines in the arbor beyond which you lay:

    Strange I should run to hide in this room,
    the heart chamber of our lives, where you
    ever sit ‘round the long oak table where we dine;

    this kitchen window, where so many times
    I felt your hands on my waist at noon—sweet
    musk and diesel, alfalfa dust perfume;

    where I would read my poems or others’—
    my high-toned learning, so you said—of love lost,
    or the brave wanderings of mythic warriors:

    I move under waters, and in the deep,
    deep parts of me I hate you being still
    here with me, caught between your life and death:

    Twilight came and drove you from your chair;
    where Jo Ellen and Zane in her lap, concerned
    themselves with honeybees and a wizened owl:

    I often wonder if you feel yourself
    lost in a strange sea, an enchanted isle;
    death, I imagine, is both of these:

    Which mind should I choose over the other,
    wanting not to forget, not to remember;
    today was Jo Ellen’s birthday—I don’t know:

    Alone, I am this house through which I move:
    The moan of a long distance train sounds
    down the hallway—a wail for the heart-strong:

    I turn out the lamp over your chair
    for the first time; move your pipes and books
    for a curious bear. Now, we are three.

    I long for a sleep like death, without dreams,
    but the bedposts are intricately turned,
    the foxes bark, and two trains pass before dawn:

    For a while yet I will be confused by sunlight
    through the kitchen window, and weave morning
    with midnight, and then, unraveling, wait for no one.

    Reply

  8. Monica Sharman says

    Oh, fun! We had so many superstitions. My mom told me that when it’s not a full moon, the other half is in New York. On New Year’s Eve, she hangs round things at the front and back doorways to bring prosperity. (Last December 31st, it was grapes.) Another one we did at New Year’s: when it hits midnight, shake coins from her lucky-coin stash between your cupped hands, to bring good luck and, I guess, more money. 🙂 Anyway, here’s my poem, about what I think is our most amusing family superstition:

    “A Family Superstition”

    I relished car rides, windows down,
    air rushing, freeway speed.
    Made faces with my brother (clown!),
    heads stuck out in the breeze.

    My index fingers pulled my mouth
    to stretch the lips out wide,
    and forced the eyelid corners down,
    exposing whites of eyes.

    Our older sisters (adult age)
    would warn us with a grin:
    Your silly face will freeze if you
    make faces in the wind!

    So now, though I still revel in
    car windows opened wide,
    I only make expressions when
    my face is safe inside.

    Reply

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