…is on the web at http://www.righthandpointing.com
Best,
Dale
Dale, I do so enjoy these. Thanks.
(I would submit something, except for that pesky “No graphic violence” rule, which prohibits poems about tongues throbbing in ashtrays.)
… now you’ve raised my curiosity.
tongues throbbing in ashtrays. These are a dime a dozen. Such a literary cliche.
Famous first drafts –
Dickinson –
Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me
The Carriage help but just Ourselves
And a Tongue Throbbing in an Ashtray.
Yeats –
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the tongue throbs in the ashtray;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
Frost –
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have a tongue throbbing in an ashtray.
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Eliot –
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a tongue throbbing in an ashtray;
It’s pure poetry I tell you -it’s golden Gonzo, golden!!!
and this is why you are infallible!
I think you’ve really got something there…let’s see…
Longfellow-
Under a spreading chesnut tree, the village smithy stands;
like a tongue throbbing in an ashtray,
the muscles of his brawny arms, are strong as iron bands…
or my fave-
James W. Riley’s The Outhouse
When grandpa had to “go out back”
and make his morning call,
We’d bundle up the dear old man
with a muffler and a shawl,
I knew the hole on which he sat-
'twas padded all around,
Like a tongue throbbing in an ashtray,
'twas all too wide I found.
How quick we forget those contests we set up for judging each other’s poems.
Especially when we, Bloomfieldishly, have no prizes to award.
Not even a tongue … throbbing in an ashtray!
You cut me to the slow. I still feel guilty about the unfinished poetry contest. sacra fama auris.
I had no idea there was any sacred gold up for grabs. I thought it was just
a shirt that said “I wrote the best poem and all I got was this T-Shirt”.
Don’t feel guilty, though. If I’m any judge, that thread was its own reward.
in)
a
sh
t
ray(
throbs
a)
ton
g
ue
–e.e.cummings
in an ashtray
a throbbing tongue
and a bloody peony
–Issa
I want to play too!
Shakespeare:
But soft! What tongue in yonder ashtray throbs?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!
Chaucer:
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the sever’d tongue
Hath in the ashe-traye throb’d the ful day longe,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages…
Poe:
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
My eyes with kerchief daubing, like a tongue in ashtray throbbing,
Long dark nights I lay a-sobbing — sobbing for the lost Lenore —
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Nameless here for evermore.
I’d go with this for Poe:
“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! – tear up the planks! – here, here! – it is the throbbing of his hideous tongue!”
nice one!
My coworkers are asking what I’m laughing at.
My tongue throbs at both ends
It will not last the night;
In the ashtray there, my friends -
It makes a lovely sight.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The caged bird sings with
A fearful trill of things unknown
But longed for still and his
Tongue throbs in a distant ashtray
For the caged bird sings no more
Maya Angelou
Lewis Carroll:
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the tongue-throbb’d ashtray.
There be none of beauty’s daughters
with a magic like to thee,
and like music on the waters
is thy sweet voice to me
When as if the sound were causing
the charm’ed ocean’s pausing,
And the noisy gulls are mobbing,
like the tongues in ashtrays throbbing…
–Lord Byron
I would have gone with “And the tongue-throb ashtrayed.”
Ashtrays to the left of them,
Ashtrays to the right of them,
Ashtrays in front of them,
Stubb’d and extinguish’d;
Storm’d at with match and lighter,
Boldly they throbbed and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Tongued the six hundred.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
djm