3
" Halt glared at his friend as the whistling continued.'I had hoped that your new sense of responsibly would put an end to that painful shrieking noise you make between your lips' he said.Crowley smiled. It was a beautiful day and he was feeling at peace with the world. And that meant he was more than ready to tease Halt 'It's a jaunty song''What's jaunty about it?' Halt asked, grim faced. Crowley made an uncertain gesture as he sought for an answer to that question.'I suppose it's the subject matter' he said eventually. 'It's a very cheerful song. Would you like me to sing it for you?''N-' Halt began but he was too late, as Crowley began to sing. He had a pleasant tenor voice, in fact, and his rendering of the song was quite good. But to Halt it was as attractive as a rusty barn door squeaking.'A blacksmith from Palladio, he met a lovely lady-o''Whoa! Whoa!' Halt said 'He met a lovely lady-o?' Halt repeated sarcastically 'What in the name of all that's holy is a lady-o?''It's a lady' Crowley told him patiently.'Then why not sing 'he met a lovely lady'?' Halt wanted to know.Crowley frowned as if the answer was blatantly obvious." Because he's from Palladio, as the song says. It's a city on the continent, in the southern part of Toscana.''And people there have lady-o's, instead of ladies?' Asked Halt'No. They have ladies, like everyone else. But 'lady' doesn't rhyme with Palladio, does it? I could hardly sing, 'A blacksmith from Palladio, he met his lovely lady', could I?''It would make more sense if you did' Halt insisted 'But it wouldn't rhyme' Crowley told him.'Would that be so bad?''Yes! A song has to rhyme or it isn't a proper song. It has to be lady-o. It's called poetic license.''It's poetic license to make up a word that doesn't exist and which, by the way, sound extremely silly?' Halt asked.Crowley shook his head 'No. It's poetic license to make sure that the two lines rhyme with each other'Halt thought for a few seconds, his eyes knitted close together. Then inspiration struck him.'Well then couldn't you sing 'A blacksmith from Palladio, he met a lovely lady, so...'?''So what?' Crowley challengedHalt made and uncertain gesture with his hands as he sought more inspiration. Then he replied. 'He met a lovely lady, so...he asked her for her hand and gave her a leg of lamb.''A leg of lamb? Why would she want a leg of lamb?' Crowley demanded Halt shrugged 'Maybe she was hungry "
5
" Hey!” The male voice sliced through the noise. Terri ignored him, determined to get back to the bar for her next order. A harsh hand gripped her arm, jerking her back into a firm chest. “I asked your name.” Hot breath reeking of stale beer permeated her sinuses, making her stomach turn, as the tenor of his voice burrowed into her ear.
Fear gripped her. Memories of the way Randy would grab her, and where it always ended, slammed into her, making her head spin. Shaking it off, Terri narrowed her eyes and whirled around, jabbing a red lacquered nail into his powder blue polo. “Back off,” she warned, snatching her arm back.
He advanced on her, his large frame towering over her. “Just wanna know your name, sweetheart,” he said with a sleazy smile. “No need to get testy.”
“You haven’t seen me testy.”
As she turned her back on him and continued on her way, he called out to her.
“Yet.”
Terri--from Spring Cleaning--Coming Summer 2012 "
― Brandi Salazar , Spring Cleaning
6
" In Poems of Love and Light: The Light of The Sun…Our Breath as One, the tenor seems to have changed slightly, as the progression of Love and lovers is, in many cases (if not all) quixotic, dependent upon mutual understanding, the conditions of the moment, the awareness of the future, as well as the mundane life, in which we all must exist, embracing real life, as is the natural state, which sentient individuals traverse – illusion may help those in the ‘moment’, but does nothing for the long-term, except misdirect it.
Poetry has always been a way to leave something for those who come after, a legacy of inspiration, methodology, spirit, love, emotion, historical sense and utility, depending upon the subject matter, intentions of the bard, and the situations, which frame the creation of that sense of experience, with which the Poet receives his Muse.
Poems of Love and Light: In The Light of the Sun, Our Breath as One "
― Frank L. DeSilva
7
" And you can glance out the window for a moment, distracted by the sound of small kids playing a made-up game in a neighbor's yard, some kind of kickball maybe, and they speak in your voice, or piggyback races on the weedy lawn, and it's your voice you hear, essentially, under the glimmerglass sky, and you look at the things in the room, offscreen, unwebbed, the tissued grain of the deskwood alive in light, the thick lived tenor of things, the argument of things to be seen and eaten, the apple core going sepia in the lunch tray, and the dense measures of experience in a random glance, the monk's candle reflected in the slope of the phone, hours marked in Roman numerals, and the glaze of the wax, and the curl of the braided wick, and the chipped rim of the mug that holds your yellow pencils, skewed all crazy, and the plied lives of the simplest surface, the slabbed butter melting on the crumbled bun, and the yellow of the yellow of the pencils, and you try to imagine the word on the screen becoming a thing in the world, taking all its meanings, its sense of serenities and contentments out into the streets somehow, its whisper of reconciliation, a word extending itself ever outward, the tone of agreement or treaty, the tone of repose, the sense of mollifying silence, the tone of hail and farewell, a word that carries the sunlit ardor of an object deep in drenching noon, the argument of binding touch, but it's only a sequence of pulses on a dullish screen and all it can do is make you pensive--a word that spreads a longing through the raw sprawl of the city and out across the dreaming bournes and orchards to the solitary hills.
Peace. "
― Don DeLillo
12
" The theology of littleness is a basic category of Christianity. After all, the tenor of our faith is that God's distinctive greatness is revealed precisely in powerlessness. That in the long run, the strength of history is precisely in those who love, which is to say, in a strength that, properly speaking, cannot be measured according to categories of power. So in order to show who he is, God consciously revealed himself in the powerlessness of Nazareth and Golgotha. Thus, it is not the one who can destroy the most who is the most powerful...but, on the contrary, the least power of love is already greater than the greatest power of destruction. "
― Benedict XVI
16
" A voice is a product of the writer’s own Pandora Box of insight, insecurities, bravado, modesty, humility, affection, understanding, and confidence. In short, a voice reflects the writers’ sangfroid. The tenor of the writer’s voice also reflects their insecurities, self-doubt, egotism, testiness, and the ability to identify with their mental and physical infirmities. The inflection that distinguishes a writer’s pitch from other wordsmiths’ tone reflects their collective lifetime of mundane, tranquil, disturbing, and passionate experiences. "
― , Dead Toad Scrolls
18
" These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers’ faults. Which may be farther put beyond dispute by the following demonstration: that whoever will examine the writings in all kinds, wherewith this ancient sect has honoured the world, shall immediately find, from the whole thread and tenor of them, that the ideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and taken up with the faults and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of other writers; and let the subject treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely possessed and replete with the defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole appears to be nothing else but an abstract of the criticisms themselves have made. "
― Jonathan Swift , A Tale of a Tub and Other Works
