Saturday

That it is not Saturday is no barrier to the early morning earworm. Elton John's 'Saturday Night's (Alright for Fighting)' - lyrics by Bernie Taupin - is a song that is evocative of another time. It creates images of bodgies and widgies rocking in a 1950s dance hall and the 'moral panic' associated with the youth rebelliousness. The chorus of the song is raucous - what a great word that is. There's a great version of the song here with Eric Clapton and other prominent musicians. If Saturdays are energy, Sundays are sedate.

Sunday sleeping sitting knitting
Puddling patting purring purling

Right said Fred

Whenever I am contemplating doing something mechanical, snatches of Right Said Fred get stuck in my mind, particularly the lines 'And Charlie had a think and he said 'Look, Fred, / I've got a sort of feelin'/ If we remove the ceilin' ...' I think of the song as a ditty, but it is probably too long for that. I like the absurd story that it tells and I relate to the incompetence of the characters.

If I was feeling witty
I would write a little ditty
About things that go awry
When I or my spouse try
To fix things around our house
To make it bright

It isn't all that funny
It always costs us money
Things seem simple at the outset
We soon find ourselves in more debt
When an expert is called in
To make it right

Anthem

Working class man. Blue denim, likeable blokey and I hadn't expected to wake up with Jimmy Barnes shrieking in the morning. I heard the song on the radio yesterday. It is a stirring lyric and an anthem for a one or more generations. A good song and an anthem of sorts. I am Woman is a more universal anthem. There is something that appeals to me about 'localised' or 'personalised' anthems. They are often about ages and stages, and expectations. Here is my anthem (not autobiographical)

She knitted hot pants for a friend
An intricate sweater for a crush
That he kept as he asked for the ring
A layette for a friend
Who threw it in the washing machine
And shrunk the friendship
She made sweaters for oil-smothered penguins
Squares for charity blankets
Tree adornments and bike stand coverings
She knitted herself a scarf
In silky yarn with a fine lace pattern

Over and over

A hard one to dislodge. Over and Over by Hot Chip. Lasted well into midmorning.
'Over and over and over and over
Like a monkey with a miniature cymbal'
A great lyric and a catchy song, a repetitive lyric about the idea of repetition. Clever.

Repetition

the glue that holds a song together
the 'bookends' of a story
the rhythm of knitting
it is the mantra and the chanting

There's an interesting discussion on this page and a good example of a poem that uses repetition effectively. The discussion raises the notion that, in a poem, the second repetition of a word 'reduce[s] the energy at that point as well as at the first appearance of the word'.

Take it as read

A slow creeping heat from my neck up my face

A hot steering wheel searing my fingers

Blind red ragged rage flashing before I say something stupid

The melancholic tones of a favourite torch song

The fireworks burst of a new season’s cherry tomato in my mouth

Take it as read – it’s red

A little bit of a Mozart piano concerto dancing through my head this morning. Ah! Not really an earworm I want to erase, so I looked to this great site for poetry prompts and wrote a colour poem. Here's the format that I think that the writer was referring to if you want to do one quickly.

Wormfarm

I hope all of these earworms are feeding my brain in the same way that a worm farm feeds the garden, rather than eating it away. Too many this morning and it would be a day's work to identify some of them, which are in my partner's collection of classical CDs.
One thing about having too many is that they clear quickly when I get out of bed. I was struggling for inspiration for today's poem when I heard a great parody satirising a radio presenter that I like to listen to. It reminded me of a parody that I had begun writing to a friend who is critical of social media etiquette. The unfinished parody was based on Shakespeare's Shall I compare thee to a summer's day and has taken on another form. I have also employed the device where the last line defies the rhyme (for obvious reasons)

Shall I reply to thee with emoticons?

I think I’d better not

A smiley face is not your style

They don’t come with blood and snot

Better to use parentheses

To enclose some words of wit

Rather than the email silence

That says I’m in your bad books

The dark side of the street

This morning's earworm was just one line - 'The dark side of the street' - complete with brass accompaniment, running through my head when I awoke. It's from Van Morrison's Bright Side of the Road and I hadn't looked closely at the lyrics before. I like the light/dark metaphor and the references to time passing. Here's some great examples from poets who knew a thing or two about metaphor. This is my metaphor poem inspired by Bright Side of the Road

Ravelling

I pluck the thread

it spirals into a heap

a spaghetti of bumpy bits

worn and weary bits

plies made stringy and thin

by moths, silverfish and elbows

I am ready, it says,

my memory is sound

I will bounce back to be

rewashed, rewound, repaired, reknitted

each stitch kissed by knotted fingers

Bach raving mad in the morning

This morning's earworm was a fleeting passage from JS Bach, hard to identify and impossible to eradicate. Lovely and tangled at the same time. Here's a sample of a Bach piece by the incomparable Angela Hewitt as an example, a metaphor for a confused mind in an up mood. The earworms win today. Today's poem reminded me of the time that I spent in Leipzig, City of Heroes, birthplace of Bach and with other charms ...

She has no English
I have no German. We
smile and speak knitting
In the best woolshop in the world.

Decluttering the earworms - a poem a day

The definition of year at Year of Finishing Off is broad as is my definition of decluttering. I'm fired up to exorcise the earworms (those songs that get stuck in your head) that I awake to every morning. A poem a day for April is my weapon of choice. Today I awoke with one line of the words and music of an Angels song, Marseilles. 'Gimme the whiskey, don't think twice'. Here is my Whiskey haiku

Gimme the whiskey
don't think twice - summer is gone
and spiced tea beckons

One down, thirty to go. One earworm banished.