Songwriting Without Boundaries Page 18
Or this (by Sting):
I can hotwire an ignition like some kind of star
So you can be somewhat relaxed in constructing your lines. Just make sure they have only four stresses.
For the first two days, you’ll work in rhythm without rhyme, after which you’ll jump into couplets, before moving on to other line lengths and rhyme schemes.
Have a good fourteen days.
DAY #1
TETRAMETER LINES
This begins the last of the four challenges, and it is intended to use all the skills you’ve gained so far. Keep your writing sense-bound, and keep your eyes open for metaphor.
As usual, set a timer and respond to the following prompts for exactly the time allotted. Use only tetrameter lines, concentrating on a duple feel. No rhymes for now.
Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell Body Motion
10 minutes: Sunset
CHANELLE DAVIS
Peeling rays of orange light
Juices dripping through the clouds
Flung across the rippling ocean
Swirling blue to black in minutes
The moon rushes the sun away
Hungry for the stage and a crowded street
Cool night air chills me
Slipping its fingers under my scarf
CLARE MCLEOD
Sinking into the horizon’s trees
The sun’s burnt amber disc
Is swallowed whole by the green tongues
I pull the scarf around me tighter
As a light breeze picks up my hair
The twilight air is a little chill
And the purple time descends gentle
Turning, I head for warmth and home
Look at their use of metaphor. Pretty cool, “night air … slipping its fingers under my scarf,” and the forest as “green tongues” swallowing the sun. Count the stressed syllables for practice. Then it’s your turn.
5 minutes: Art Museum
TAMI NEILSON
Walls a crisp and sterile white
Like bed sheets on a hospice ward
No sound but heels that click and scuff
Echo, bounce off concrete floors
Colour pops to life in frames
I almost smell the paint not dried
While brushes whisper canvas secrets
SCARLET KEYS
Swirling twirling dance hall dress
Kicking legs, white petticoats
Porcelain bosom cancan dance
Beer mustaches sway and ask
To let me turn to liquid now
Slipping off this canvas now
To feel her tiny hand in mine
Across this crowded museum floor
Really nice use of senses here. The “I almost smell the paint not dried” and “feel her tiny hand in mine.” Both pieces pull you in. Go ahead, pull me in. It’s your turn.
DAY #2
TETRAMETER LINES
Now that you have a feel, from yesterday, for tetrameter lines, do it again, to lock it in. As usual, keep your writing sense-bound and your eyes open for metaphor.
Set your timer and respond to the following prompts for exactly the time allotted. Use only tetrameter lines, concentrating on creating a duple feel (moving in twos).
Mary had a little lamb is a duple feel.
Mary, she had the littlest lamb is a triple feel.
No rhymes till tomorrow.
Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell Body Motion
10 minutes: Digging for Gold
SUSAN CATTANEO
Sand and silt and painted earth
Kneeling down in rushing water
Feel the frosty bite of cold
Pan in hand, sifting, shaking
Golden sparks shine in sun
Matted moustache spitting chaw
Squinty eyes and cavern chest
Leather boots sucking mud
A circling hawk spins in flight
Kicking up the desert dust
Hand trembling, heavy metal
Gleaming, yearning, jealous rage
Pulling hearts, boasting, brawling
Heavy fists swing and sway
Muscles tense and whiskey slow
Fill your mouth with blood and dirt
SARAH BRINDELL
Your fingernails collect the dirt
as each hand pushes further
hoping that with every grab
you’ll find, inside the brown, some yellow
so bright, the sun surrenders
Who cares if this apartment yard’s
been excavated long before
and many kids have searched in vain?
Maybe they all missed a spot …
As dinner permeates the air
You know your time is running short
Just then a glimmer grabs your eye …
Both of these examples use the duple rhythm well. Note that the lines with feminine endings (water, shaking, metal, brawling, further, yellow, surrenders) still retain the duple rhythms.
Your turn.
5 minutes: Pickup Truck
PAT PATTISON
Smell the tires that stripe the asphalt
Smoke and rust and burning oil
Wrists and forearms show the veins
Grip the wheel and fill your bed
Cool black earth in barrow’s heaps
Or gravel shorn from solid rock
Groan beneath the heavy load
Truck that bends it back for you
Sweaty slave in iron chains
Pull the slabs to pyramids
CHANELLE DAVIS
Limping down the empty highway
Wrinkled paint in shades of blue
Coughing motor stops and starts
Headlights squinting through the night
Working in second person can be effective. It allows you to write actively, sometimes using commands instead of statements. And look at the personification in “Truck that bends it back for you” and “Headlights squinting through the night.”
Your turn.
DAY #3
TETRAMETER COUPLETS
A tetrameter couplet is a pair of tetrameter lines that rhyme. Like these:
There’s a wire in my jacket. This is my trade
It only takes a moment, don’t be afraid
Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village though
Today you’ll add rhyme to the mix. Keep your writing sense-bound, and keep your eyes open for metaphor. If you need help with rhyme, please check out pages 37-43 in Writing Better Lyrics and take special note of the effects of rhyme types. For a more complete handling, see my Essential Guide to Rhyming.
Here’s a sample from the online writing group:
Avalanche (10 minutes)
GILLIAN WELCH
It’ll bury you and carry you and pin you to the bottom
You will suffocate in minutes boys so smoke ‘em if you got ‘em
And the weight on your chest is as nothing to the sound
Of the blood in your ears and the mountain crashing down
Oh the avalanche has got you and it will not let you go
You are sucked up in the slipstream of fusilage and snow
You are dancing with the witches in the Mardi Gras parade
Arms akimbo as you limbo in a bloody bone glissade
Oh the avalanche has got you and will secret you away
To the sea beyond the sun where there is no night or day
Where the grass is never green and the peaches never fall
And tomorrow there will be no dawn at all
But the limousines were wrong and the coffins weren’t right
Death is white death is white death is white
PAT PATTISON
Tumbling and tumbling, boulders and rocks
Fallen away from the red mountain top
Dust on the horses, dust on the town
Dust like a ghost cloud swirls all around
Col
or of blood, the color of pain
Some of these children won’t breathe it again
Crack of the mountain narrow and torn
Safe from the bite of the big winter storms
The risk that you take to be safe from the wind
The risk that you take to be close to your friends
The voice of the mountain still ringing so clear
Thunder at sunrise, the chill rush of fear
Stones hurtle downward, growling and wild
Send them to rest in the valley a while
SUSAN CATTANEO
Roaring down the emerald chutes
Trees on either side salute
The cackle of wind and the cart wheeling rocks
The snow takes the hits, the bumps and the shocks
Screeching with glee, picking up speed
Pigtails of snow, frosty white cheeks
Crumble and rest at the base of the hill
Icicle lungs breathing still
SHANE ADAMS
She broke my heart with a white-scented letter
The “we’ll be friends” tag didn’t make me feel better
A postscript as soft as her angora sweaters
And all of the cunning of Las Vegas bettors
Intrusive and cold as a credit card creditor
I bleedin the jaws of a relationship predator
Regretting the day that I ever bedded her
I knew long ago that I should’ve just shedded her
But even back then I knew we had no chance
So I suffocate in thiswhite, three-hole punched, college-ruled paper avalanche
SCARLET KEYS
The cookies were crumbling and tumbling fast
His teeth bit right through them like cold breaking glass
The avalanche sputtered with each bite he took
Pieces of cookies peppered his book
Caught in the story right through the big quake
Chocolate and sugar covered the page
Little desperate crumbs in the side of his mouth
Like a dozen spring skiers holding their ground
Clinging for safety like small chocolate chips
In the mustache like tree limbs losing their grip
As usual, set a timer and respond to the following prompts for exactly the time allotted. Use only tetrameter lines, creating couplets by rhyming lines in pairs. And this time, feel free to vary your rhythms with both duple and triple feel. Remember,
Mary had a little lamb is a duple feel.
Mary, she had the littlest lamb is a triple feel.
But stay with four stresses per line.
Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell Body Motion
10 minutes: Mountain
GILLIAN WELCH
I remember as a child I was looking at the mountain
At the penny bright leaves and the river dark fountain
And the brushy willow bending and the granite all a-shiver
And the quiet pine a-standing by the sudden laughing river
And I looked at the sky and I looked at the ground
And I wondered at the mountain that could bring the night down
In a silent creeping shadow like a vapor like a stain
Spreading out and deepening and emptying the vein
Spilling down into the valley from the lee side to the plain
And there it cast a shadow like a place with out a bottom
There was summer in the meadow but on the mountain it was autumn
Made a worry in your bones just to pass beneath the pall
With a lonesome kind of empty like a cupboard on the wall
And a withered kind of purple like the fruit upon the ground
That’s the color of the mountain that could bring the night down
KEPPIE COUTTS
Rising up like a bicep curl
Ridges and rims unfold and unfurl
The earth like the face of an ancient man
Twisting his smile and making the land
Houses sprout in Los Angeles
In places you never think they would be
Nestled into the crust and folds
Of the mountains that frame the glittering gold
The Hollywood sign is an acne scar
From a teenage romance that went too far
The boulevard is a magazine
With pages torn out and glutting the streets
The mountains behind must sigh as they watch
The pimples swell until they pop
The metaphors and similes are wonderful. Go ahead and underline them. Can you feel the triple meter in both? The rhymes are mixtures of perfect and other assorted rhyme types. Remember when you’re doing yours that the whole rhyming panoply is available. Use them, especially when you’re on the hunt for a rhyme match.
Now, try it.
5 minutes: Snowstorm
CHANELLE DAVIS
I hear her rattling the kitchen door
Whipping the roof and chilling the floor
Her breath is angry and restless tonight
Screaming through the huddled pines
The streets are devoured in clouds of snow
And the stars shiver with nowhere to go
BLEU
Blurry and furious blusterous wind
Stinging your face like millions of pins
You can’t feel your fingers or find your direction
The road disappeared in a coat of confection
This stuff is so frigid you can’t call it snow
It’s more like the sky is just dropping small stones
You trudge through the white at significant angle
And pray that the storm is too weak to strangle
You struggle and stumble and crash to your knees
And feel your throat squeeze as your vocal chords freeze
Again, the metaphors are lovely. Also note the personification in Chanelle’s and the use of second person in Bleu’s. Some nice rhyming with tonight/pines, wind/pins, snow/stones. Notice especially how they “open” the couplets and make them move. That’s what creates instability, which can be very expressive in itself, like a film score enhancing the meanings of the words.
Your turn.
DAY #4
TETRAMETER COUPLETS
Keep your writing sense-bound, and keep your eyes open for metaphor. As usual, set a timer and respond to the following prompts for exactly the time allotted. Use only tetrameter lines, creating couplets by rhyming lines in pairs. Feel free to vary your rhythms with both duple and triple feel.
Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell Body Motion
10 minutes: Train
GILLIAN WELCH
Slowly with a puffing and a pulling and a chugging
It is moving like a mountain with a hundred horses tugging
Now just a little faster you can see the wheels a-turning
You can hear the steam a-hissing you can smell the diesel burning
In the silent sliding window see the wishers who are waving
Into daylight as we jettison the platform and the paving
Then the scrappy city fences and the blur of the trees
And then the old conductor will be taking tickets please
BLEU
Like African drums way off in jungle
Calling to you with a rippling rumble
You slip out the window and into the black
Feeling your way to the rusty old track
A faint star appears too close to the ground
And you know that it’s coming, no stopping it now
Then comes the whistle, changing in pitch
From lower to higher, your heart starts to twitch
And now you can feel the wood shaking in time
And smell the coal burning, and see the smoke rise
As the iron rushes forward you raise up your fists
And scream at the engine and the world in the mist
You stare down that killer, and don’t move an inch
Note Gillian’s use of all feminine rhymes, until the last couplet, which ends nicely with the one-syllable masculine rhyme trees/please. They are all perfect rhymes. Look at Bleu’s rhymes and try to name the different rhyme types. Both use triple rhythms well, making the train really move.
Your turn.
5 minutes: Sleeping Late
KEPPIE COUTTS
Like fireflies in a frenzy of light
Flickers of dreams still dance in my mind
A frolic of faces that whisper my name
And tempt me with secrets if I promise to stay
But morning arrives in a pulsing of waves
Swimming and sliding and half awake
Finally breaching the shallow surface
Sunlight streaming through open curtains
BLEU
The sound bangs your head like a hammer to gong
A series of sounds more like screams than a song
You squeeze your eyes, they’re pretending they’re dead
But you make out some numbers blinking bright red
11:11 never looked so damn evil
And the torture you’re feeling seems almost medieval
Your breath hits your nose and you smell last night’s booze
As you fall out of bed straight into your shoes
Both Keppie and Bleu use identity rather than rhyme in: waves/ awake and evil/medieval. Note how the sounds don’t feel like they connect—that’s typical of identities. Lovely metaphors and similes in both.
Your turn.
DAY #5
TETRAMETER COUPLETS
Keep your writing sense-bound, and keep your eyes open for metaphor. As usual, set a timer and respond to the following prompts for exactly the time allotted. Use only tetrameter lines, creating couplets by rhyming lines in pairs. Feel free to vary your rhythms with both duple and triple feel.
Sight Sound Taste Touch Smell Body Motion
10 minutes: John Brown
GILLIAN WELCH
Who is that raging cauldron that is hissing where he’s sitting
That is fuming like a geyser and sulphuriously spitting
Now he’s leaping to his feet with his fists in the air
And his eyes are slowly burning through a cumulous of hair
Wilder than a wolverine starting to unravel
He is brandishing and hollering and pounding like a gavel
And shouting like a madman with the fire coming down
But this is not a madman this is John Brown
A Baptist in a buckskin with the spirit in his bones