2011 Poem A Day Challenge - Day 29

For today's prompt, write an ode. I'm thinking of odes in the more contemporary sense of being a praise poem, though if people want to get all old school with it, then that's fine too.


=================================


Been completely off balance with my sleep cycles lately. Postings have been late. Uninterrupted sleep is impossible. No longer apologizing for it. Simply an explanation.


Ok... I have bandied this word loosely in my lifetime, but since I have a unique lucidity at 3:53 am, what exactly is an "Ode"? The only ode I am even remotely familiar with is "Ode to Billie Joe" by Bobbie Gentry. Which is a pretty amazing song, if you've never heard it before. My all time favorite Ode would have to be Diane Chambers' "Ode To A Cornish Hen". If you know what I am talking about, know two things. It was one of the few things that made me laugh until pop came out of my nose, and for getting the reference, I will pour you a drink and salute you.


Like others of the generation, I turn to WikiPedia...


A lyric poem in the form of an address to a particular subject, often elevated in style or manner and written in varied or irregular meter, a poem meant to be sung.


An ode is typically a lyrical verse written in praise of, or dedicated to someone or something which captures the poet's interest or serves as an inspiration for the ode.

The initial model for English odes was Horace, who used the form to write meditative lyrics on various themes. The earliest odes in the English language, using the word in its strict form, were the Epithalamium and Prothalamium of Edmund Spenser.

In the 17th century the most important original odes in English are those of Abraham Cowley and Andrew Marvell. Marvell, in his Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland uses a regular form (two four-foot lines followed by two three-foot lines) modelled on Horace, while Cowley wrote "Pindarique" odes which had irregular patterns of line lengths and rhyme schemes, though they were iambic. The principle of Cowley's Pindariques was based on a misunderstanding of Pindar's metrical practice but was widely imitated nonetheless, with notable success by John Dryden.

With Pindar's metre being better understood in the 18th century, the fashion for Pindaric odes faded, though there are notable actual Pindaric odes by Thomas Gray, The Progress of Poesy and The Bard.

The Pindarick of Cowley was revived around 1800 by William Wordsworth for one of his very finest poems, the Intimations of Immortality ode; irregular odes were also written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley who wrote odes with regular stanza patterns. Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, written in fourteen line terza rima stanzas, is a major poem in the form, but perhaps the greatest odes of the 19th century were Keats's Five Great Odes of 1819 which included Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Melancholy, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Psyche, and To Autumn. After Keats, there have been comparatively few major odes in English. One major exception is the fourth verse of the poem For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon which is often known as "The Ode to the Fallen" or more simply as "The Ode".
W.H. Auden also wrote 'Ode', one of his most popular poems from his earlier career when based in London, in opposition to people's ignorance over the reality of war. In interview Auden once stated that he had intended to title the poem My Silver Age in mockery of the supposedly imperial Golden age, however chose 'Ode' as it seemed to provide a more sensitive exploration of warfare.

The English ode's most common rhyme scheme is ABABCDECDE.

I will now finish a song I started many years ago. His story is a sad one, yet scoffed and forgotten by later generations. He was a hero, and I will not let him fade like analog...

=================================

"The Ballad of Moss Man"

Come gather, my children
As I sing you a tale
Of a time called the 80's
Where no colors were pale
In a time filled with heroes
When might would make right
There was a fallen comrade
Let me tell you his plight

He was known as Moss Man
And he was a bit weird
An old Beast Man body
Wearing G.I. Joe's beard
He was painted dark green
But his one true color
Was that of a hero
He was like no other

He would travel the world
Battled many places
On the side of He Man
Sometimes Man-E-Faces
Against foes most vicious
A wizard made of bone
And it seemed every day
He was after the throne

At the end of the day
Both sides would head for home
But one twilight evening
Moss Man was left alone
His eyes wide with surprise
Looking dazed as a fawn
He was missed because
He blended with the lawn

He would be lost to time
As heroes found their box
Parents tried to assure
Not taken by a fox
And later on that week
You'd hear a rotten sound
As your father would curse
The mower on the ground

I like to think Moss Man
Is still alive and fine
His skin growing berries
That he turns into wine
In the night he still roams
The playgrounds and the yards
He gathers the lost toys
And the lost trading cards

In a lost toy kingdom
Now he sits on the throne
As all the toys rejoice
For they are not alone
While time and mem'ry fade
There really is no end
For those who knew that toy
Was a word that meant friend

J.