Poem: "Battle Rap"
Jan. 7th, 2022 12:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis poem came out of the January 4, 2022 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by ng_moonmoth. It also fills the "Attack / Defense" square in my 12-23-21 card for the Story Sparks Bingo Fest. This poem belongs to the Polychrome Heroics series.
"Battle Rap"
[Saturday, May 2, 2015]
It was a bright sunny day
in San Francisco, people
packing into the parks.
There were guys
flying stunt kites,
musicians and
jugglers busking.
A whole yoga class
pretzeled themselves
on the green grass.
Someone had started
an impromptu contest
of chalk art on one of
the smaller plazas.
The food vendors
hawked their wares.
Two supervillains had
gotten into a dispute
over something.
They weren't flinging
superpowers, though.
They were doing battle rap.
A man with a black hat
and tattoos chanted:
Dubiety's
reality
is questionable
hubble-bubble.
A girl with long hair
and shimmery lights
around her called out:
Rumblety-bumblety
Hardbody Morrison
looks for some troublesome
gangsters to crack
thinks he's invincible,
not quite convincible --
it would be better to
watch his own back.
A big crowd had gathered
to watch the peculiar contest.
The policeman who came
to see what the ruckus was
decided not to arrest them
because they weren't
breaking anything and
they were entertaining.
* * *
Notes:
A quirk of Terramagne is that some people with superpowers have devised other means of settling disputes than by physical fights. Some are idiosyncratic and spontaneous; others are culturally established and ritualized. This is one of the more whimsical examples, but it still belongs to a larger class of literary competitions.
Battle rap includes bragging, insults, and teasing in the form of verse.
The clerihew is a four-line poem of two rhyming couplets and was invented by the writer and humorist Edmund Clerihew Bentley. Clerihews usually deal wittily with some aspect of the life or career of a well-known person, whose name forms the first line.
A dactyl is a three-syllable poetic foot with a stressed first syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (DA-dit-dit). Ex: national, jelly roll, mention it, memory
The Double Dactyl is a humorous take on a subject (usually a person) with the following rules:
• Two 4-line stanzas, each with three lines of two dactyls followed by a fourth four-syllable line that begins with a dactyl
• The first line must be a double dactyl of nonsense language, ex: Higgledy-piggledy, Pocketa-pocketa
• The second line must be the name of the subject in double dactylic form
• The 1st, 2nd or 3rd line of the second stanza must be a single double-dactylic word. Ex: iconographical, megalomaniac, egocentricity
• The final lines of the two stanzas must rhyme
ng_moonmoth. It also fills the "Attack / Defense" square in my 12-23-21 card for the Story Sparks Bingo Fest. This poem belongs to the Polychrome Heroics series."Battle Rap"
[Saturday, May 2, 2015]
It was a bright sunny day
in San Francisco, people
packing into the parks.
There were guys
flying stunt kites,
musicians and
jugglers busking.
A whole yoga class
pretzeled themselves
on the green grass.
Someone had started
an impromptu contest
of chalk art on one of
the smaller plazas.
The food vendors
hawked their wares.
Two supervillains had
gotten into a dispute
over something.
They weren't flinging
superpowers, though.
They were doing battle rap.
A man with a black hat
and tattoos chanted:
Dubiety's
reality
is questionable
hubble-bubble.
A girl with long hair
and shimmery lights
around her called out:
Rumblety-bumblety
Hardbody Morrison
looks for some troublesome
gangsters to crack
thinks he's invincible,
not quite convincible --
it would be better to
watch his own back.
A big crowd had gathered
to watch the peculiar contest.
The policeman who came
to see what the ruckus was
decided not to arrest them
because they weren't
breaking anything and
they were entertaining.
* * *
Notes:
A quirk of Terramagne is that some people with superpowers have devised other means of settling disputes than by physical fights. Some are idiosyncratic and spontaneous; others are culturally established and ritualized. This is one of the more whimsical examples, but it still belongs to a larger class of literary competitions.
Battle rap includes bragging, insults, and teasing in the form of verse.
The clerihew is a four-line poem of two rhyming couplets and was invented by the writer and humorist Edmund Clerihew Bentley. Clerihews usually deal wittily with some aspect of the life or career of a well-known person, whose name forms the first line.
A dactyl is a three-syllable poetic foot with a stressed first syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (DA-dit-dit). Ex: national, jelly roll, mention it, memory
The Double Dactyl is a humorous take on a subject (usually a person) with the following rules:
• Two 4-line stanzas, each with three lines of two dactyls followed by a fourth four-syllable line that begins with a dactyl
• The first line must be a double dactyl of nonsense language, ex: Higgledy-piggledy, Pocketa-pocketa
• The second line must be the name of the subject in double dactylic form
• The 1st, 2nd or 3rd line of the second stanza must be a single double-dactylic word. Ex: iconographical, megalomaniac, egocentricity
• The final lines of the two stanzas must rhyme
(no subject)
Date: 2022-01-07 10:54 am (UTC)Yes ...
From:Re: Yes ...
From:Re: Yes ...
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2022-01-07 03:28 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: Yes ...
From:Re: Yes ...
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2022-01-09 05:44 am (UTC) - ExpandRe: Yes ...
From:(no subject)
Date: 2022-01-07 03:43 pm (UTC)Seriously, this is awesome. I would so be in the audience for this, especially if the combatants leave off the shorter verses and go for the longer flow.
Me too!
From:Reward Them!
Date: 2022-01-08 07:25 pm (UTC)