Sitzfleisch Poetry Hour: The August 2024 Edition

I’m late to our Sitzfleisch Poetry Hour today, but that’s okay: I’ll stay over 10 minutes. Jennifer Crow opened the silent Zoom room for everyone, but she was there alone for the first ten minutes anyway. Now we are THREE, and I’m trying to decide what to write.

I think I’m going to go with the ditties I scribbled for our GenCon Infernal Salon at the beginning of this month. We had over 40 people in the room, and everyone got a group draw (according to their birth months or something), as well as a single additional card that was just their own.

I think Carlos and I did individual pulls for each other, at the very end. My cards were:

YOU ARE MOSTLY HOLES. (Espacio)

GUTS MAKE THE FINEST MUSIC (Carne)

IS THAT THE CRY OF A DYING STAR (Rayo)

I thought to write three nursery-rhyme style bits, thinking about how we build worlds not just through blocks of text, not just through character and dialogue, but through scraps of poetry, song, art, adages, newscasts, radio blips, paper clippings, posters. Anyway. Here’s what I came up with, freshly typed up tonight.

I added the ending rhymes while I was typing them, because I’d let a few drop in the 30-minute squeeze of first-draft writing, and I wanted to see what was what. Bonus words tonight include “swine dame,” so I call that a win.

They’re all very silly, but what can you do with only 30 minutes and a small journal? (Answer: anything, really. One just… writes. SO MANY DIFFERENT THINGS come of it! We have everything from poetry, to character sketches, to bits of novel, to whole short stories. People write plays. People draw pictures. People write reels! It’s AMAZING.)

But here is what I did last time, in 30 minutes.

1. PIG GOD RHYME

Here, piggy piggy A
Mama’s made a bargain B
Daddy’s marching far on B
The reaches, past the hills C
Mama’s gonna catch you D
With her axe she’ll fetch you D
Butcher you and dress you D
Offer up the kill C

Here, piggy piggy A
Look you at the god now B
Entering the brown sow B
Headless and aglow C
Mama’s on her knees here D
Keeping Daddy safe, dear D
Offering her pleas clear D
Any way or how C

Here, piggy piggy A
Effigy of pigskin B
Protector of the farmkin B
From cottage to the pale C
Wedded to the swine dame D
Oink we in your great name D
Thank thee, light the pigflame D
God who will not fail C

2. Lullaby of the Void

Hush, my beloved
Let silence descend
Hear what this prophecy-darkness forfends
Night is your guardian
Her whispers, your friend
Hush now, and sleep now
And dream of the end

The dim stars are screaming
A void for their song
Be easy, you’re dreaming–you’ve done nothing wrong
It’s only, our emptiness yearns to belong
Hush now, and sleep now
Till morning bell’s gong

3. Origins of the Moon

My father has two holes for eyes
A cavern for a mouth
An open pit of belly
And an appetite uncouth

My mother’s head is riddled through
With meteoric dents
Her ribs are cracked and peeling
And her thighs are ripped and rent

Is it any wonder, then
That I, their lovely child
Am hollowed-out and chasm-deep
My innards all out-piled?

They gouged me from their excess
And shaved me down to size
And now I smile, craterous
From o’er your midnight skies

***
I had some bonus time, so I wrote a ridiculous short play–just dialogue.

The scene:

Imagine two, immense, fleshy, golem-like caryatids, holding up a kitchen ceiling on their flayed shoulders, watching with peeled white eyes as a bevy of feral cooks work on their next meal.

They’re facing each other across a vastness, just chattin’.

Dramatis Personae
LF = Left Face
RF = Right Face

LF: They’re at it again.
RF: They’re always eating what they shouldn’t.
LF: So outré.
RF: Disgusting.
LF: Riveting.
RF: Marvelous.
LF: What’s on the menu today?
RF: Rocks.
LF: Rocks?
RF: And tripes.
LF: Tripes.
RF: And rocks.
LF: I was forgetting the rocks.
RF: I think it cleans out their systems.
LF: Roughage.
RF: Sort of flushes it.
LF: And tripes?
RF: Protein.
LF: We all need protein.
RF: Not us.
LF: Not anymore.
RF: They ate us long ago.
LF: Better this way.
RF: Debatable.
LF: More relaxing.
RF: Tedious.
LF: At times.
RF: What are they eating now?
LF: Maggots.
RF: Suckers.
LF: Better to be done with all that.

***

(That’s all I had time for.) (Like LF says, probably “better this way”–but I did enjoy diving back into an all-dialogue format for a hot second.)