Monday, November 14, 2011

musical chairs




I find myself restless
while the record plays,

get a charley horse
between loose seats.

Unable to do whole books,
I'm a magazine reader,

a reader of poetry,
of grab-and-skedaddle,

anything stab-worthy
with plenty of chutzpah

and ambiguity, like Facebook
or Mother Goose.


tk/November 2011


Listen to R.A.D. Stainforth's reading of this poem:




Join Magpie Tales creative writing group here.
image from Google images, unknown photographer

73 comments:

  1. Perfect, Tess.
    I can sooo relate :)

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  2. Love this, Tess... I did musical chairs, too!

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  3. I do this and then beat myself up for not having more depth. Sigh.

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  4. so true---I chastise myself constantly..one thing at a time..focus..thank you for the reminder;-)

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  5. "with plenty of chutzpah and ambiguity, like Facebook or Mother Goose"

    I almost snorted coffee at that, listening as I was with my eyes closed to R.A.D. read. Fantastic...I so relate!

    Unread books stalk me
    Follow me about the house
    Undead unread books

    (giggle)

    You really are magnificent.

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  6. I think I'm a grab-and-skedaddle type person.

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  7. I have the opposite problem. I like BIG BOOKS and I cannot lie....LOL! I'm reading the new Stephen King novel at 849 pages and I don't want it to ever end....xo

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  8. I'm a pacer and a magazine reader. A book stacker--you should see the leaning tower of Pisa beside my bed!
    Thanks for this, Tess. Haunting image, too.

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  9. some vivid and beautiful imagery implied in your piece.
    enjoyed it.

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  10. I just finished a book and papers and magazines have piled up once again...waiting for me. Too much to read, too little time.

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  11. Michael...the dreaded undead unread books...(!)

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  12. Kay, I have five leaning stacks of books around my head, as we speak!

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  13. Very clever. I think that restlessness is also part of the digital age. So many choices/distractions. So much mind candy! But you handle very well. K.

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  14. Wonderful, wonderful poem.
    I can remember Musical Chairs causing me great anxiety as a child. I was usually the kid who fell on the floor hardest!

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  15. Stacks of books, you say? I wrote my dissertation while living in a third-floor loft...awesome view, great light for painting, fireplace...near perfect setting, really, except I came to fear that the whole apartment building would come crashing down thanks to the sheer weight of my stacks of books! Well, back to musical chairs...love the prompt!

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  16. I'm right there fidgeting and pacing with you! Where, oh where, did my concentration go?

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  17. Michael, the beautiful library at Indiana University is sinking inches every year, supposedly because the architects didn't consider the weight of the books when designing the structure!

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  18. This is sooooo good. I have books waiting too and I tend to flick through magazines in the pharmacy! It may say "Please do Not Read' but I do not associate reading with flicking! And when I have a full basket (which is the only time I flick!) I feel safe if the sales assistants dare to glare at me.

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  19. Bee, I flick through magazines at the grocery store check-out...that's what they're there for, right? Only I call it "flip" through...

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  20. any thing stab worthy....nice....

    yes i feel like this these days...

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  21. I like the image of an actual library sinking under the weight of its own books...c'mon everyone! Check the suckers out!

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  22. I tell my children: "Focus Pocus!" :) The two-year-old loves Mother Goose, too. When her big brother learned to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on his clarinet, no one was more pleased.

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  23. I guess we could add Twitter
    and Dr. Seuss to the list of
    ambiguous reading preferences;
    great sense of restless poetic
    rambling here, picking the
    thanksgiving carcass of poetics,
    snagging the choice bits, like
    a magpie, or a crow, at the
    road kill diner; wary of vehicles,
    or larger predators, but in need
    of sustenance.

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  24. One Day,All Novels Will Be Twitter-Length?

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  25. Tess:

    You describe a fate all too familiar to us all. I read "The Shallows" last year and found it very interesting. Although the author takes some liberties when interpreting various studies, it does speak to and about a common experience of what prolonged Internet usage seems to do to a certain way of thinking, often making prolonged concentration difficult.

    All that aside, I LOVE this piece. Thanks!

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  26. Very unexpected take, but simply beautiful and very relatable...

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  27. who said brevity is the soul of wit.

    or maybe nit-wit.

    i do hope Twitter novels is a fantasy

    But i must say i feel very restless right now in this change of season. flighty and jumping from this to that.

    thanks for your poem

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  28. "like Facebook and Mother Goose"!
    TOO wonderful, Tess.

    Kay, Alberta, Canada
    An Unfittie’s Guide to Adventurous Travel

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  29. Standing or seated, I like the idea of musical chairs, Kincaid style.

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  30. I always ended up on the floor!

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  31. this is fine writing. a wonderfully imaginative take on the prompt!

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  32. Musical chairs.....love this Tess!
    :-)

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  33. I wonder if everyone's attention span is getting shorter...

    I still like a big thick book to read but I'm trying to write shorter paragraphs in the ones I write.

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  34. I am becoming less this way as I grow older. But it used to fit me perfectly.

    And the reading was wonderful, especially the way he said "stab-worthy."

    What a treat.

    =)

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  35. Enjoyed…. Have been doing the same lately…

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  36. Sue, yeah, I love the way Stainforth put the stab into "stab-worthy"...but my favorite part of this reading is his "magazine reader"...

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  37. I suspect you've got a lot of company! I can hardly sit through a movie at all anymore.

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  38. I love the image. It reveals much.

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  39. Your poem's a wonderful match for the image.

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  40. perfect for the image tess - love these lines:
    a reader of poetry,
    of grab-and-skedaddle,

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  41. Your grab-and-skedadle and anything stab-worthy are super expressions that lift my soul...I relate to these more often than is good for me.

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  42. Yes you would get terrible cramps from those shoes- even a broken ankle in the grass.Thanks

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  43. I too must get organized...tomorrow! What a list...

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  44. it's a perfect poem for that photo - i love that you saw a kind of metaphorical musical chairs in it :)

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  45. I agree with Sukipoet. This time of year makes me jittery...which chair to pick? Remember entering the classroom for the first time in September to establish your spot? Which seat, which book, which project, 'tis the season of "pickiness" The musical chairs of life...how wonderfully wonderful!

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  46. anything stab-worthy
    with plenty of chutzpah...i like and oh i can feel this..wishing me into a red wooden house in sweden with snow and a fire burning and just time to read...whole books..smiles

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  47. What a delight, the photo and your write.

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  48. And never enough time. Books began, waiting, for my return. Loved the prompt.

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  49. ambiguity ... sucks me in every time

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  50. Loved hearing the reading of this. Great take on the pic.

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  51. Very satisfying reading. Thank you.

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  52. "a reader of poetry,
    of grab-and-skedaddle,"
    You said it and I relate but it isn't how you really feel, Tess Kincaid!

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  53. Perfect - timely and universal!

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  54. I like this:

    "anything stab-worthy
    with plenty of chutzpah"

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  55. "grab-and-skedaddle": I'm smiling at that. Intriguing poem!

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  56. The band played Aulde Lang syne
    Like a cold wet blanket draped
    and heavy
    Unwanted
    Nobody came to hear them play
    Seats for ghosts
    long past
    I turned to remember
    seeing they were
    gone.
    Lovely Tess, really lovely.
    Cheers!

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  57. How appopriate that Facebook should be uttered in the same breath as Mother Goose!

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  58. Superb. I really appreciated this - I'm fast going that way myself.

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  59. What a new way of evaluating Musical Chairs, and how it translates into our "real" lives, as a sociological statement!

    (btw, Musical Chairs scared the heck out of me when I was a kid!)

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  60. can so relate to this love reading and getting stuck into a book but so love also flipping through a trash magazine ...thanks x

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  61. Dear Tess: Par excellent! "I find myself restless" pretty well sums it up for me too! Hahah! Funny!

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  62. I'm at both ends of the spectrum depending on what, I have no idea...
    Nice one!

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  63. " Grab-and-skedaddle"…my kind of reader! My Magpie this week is Goldilocks.

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  64. beautiful poem
    can feel the underlying restlessness and yearning

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  65. lovely
    sense the ambiguity
    and the stunning picture

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  66. PBTG, thank you...coming from a talented poet such as yourself, that means so much...

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  67. Thanks, again, everyone...you make sharing my poetry so very rewarding...you're the best!

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  68. "anything stab-worthy with plenty of chutzpah
    and ambiguity..."

    Like this poem. Perfect, Tess. Thank you.

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  69. a perfect one yet again ... loved it.

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Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.
― O. Henry (and me)