they speak whatever’s on their mind
they do whatever’s in their pants
the boys i mean are not refined
they shake the mountains when they dance.
*– e. e. cummings
Teenage Lotharios at the Dance
Along the gym wall they are lined.
These young men of the teen-aged kind
are young and beautifully designed,
but they aren’t subtle, and they aren’t kind.
They speak whatever’s on their mind.
They pose, they preen, they strut, they prance.
They walk by girls and joke and glance,
at intermission make their advance
and if they score a date, perchance,
they do whatever’s in their pants
For them, romance is a slow grind.
For years, they’ve plotted and they’ve pined.
so after girls are wooed and wined,
it’s very likely they will find
the boys I mean are not refined.
But, if girls can put up with their rants,
beguile the knight, repel his lance,
stay firm in their “wont’s” and “cant’s.”
and get them back inside, by chance,
they shake the mountains when they dance.
The prompt for NaPoWriMo today is to write a Glose or Glosa Poem.The glose or glosa is an interesting Spanish form. The basic premise is that you quote four lines of poetry as an epigraph from another poem or poet. These four lines act as a refrain in the final line of the four stanzas written by the poet. So the first line of the epigraph would be the final line of the first stanza, the second line ends the second stanza, etc.
The most common convention is for each of these stanzas to be ten lines in length, but NaPoWriMo is not holding us to this rule. There are no other hard and fast rules for rhymes or syllables, though line length is usually consistent within the poem (so the epigraph kind of sets the line length).
*From “the boys i mean are not refined” by e. e. cummings:
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
Oh my gosh, those boys! A fun write.
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Good thing you do not hold me to the rules because you already know that I never follow them anyway~! But I had to defend myself~!
Cummings and Goings
At least you used the less vulgar verse
for Cummings later got much worse
vulgar thoughts from his mind did burst
he should have stopped with the first.
You hurt my feeling with your askance
I could not control what was in my pants
when I asked if you would like to dance.
But if today you give me another chance
things, due to age, are now much advanced.
Because I would be a lot more suave
and no embarrassment would evolve
for my childish thoughts are now solved
your opinion of me can be absolved
though worse problems may now be involved~!
My dance today is not so bouncy and fast
in fact, to the end of a song it does seldom last
and my childhood thoughts are long ago past.
The chattering ladies will no longer be aghast
for even their minds have much improved crass.
So now tell me, which of you girls came up with the decoration of those balloons in the photo.
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I did. Aren’t they lovely? By the end of the next summer, we’d tiled the ceiling and i had tiled the entire basement. My sister painted a huge mural of a man with a sombrero over his face taking a siesta leaning against a cactus. Go figure
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This was a really fun read. I love the use of the same end rhyme throughout each stanza, I don’t think I could’ve done it without too much repetition or predictable rhymes but you made it work so well!
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Thanks, KR..I’ve been doing this for 8 years now. I am of the opinion that it is helping to ward off Alzheimer’s! Let’s hope I’m right.
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Excellent poem Judy. The use of lines is so well done.
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Thanks, Sadje.
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You’re welcome
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