When Eddie challenged Billy to a race
we all piled in and rushed to Dead Man's Curve.
Bill couldn't back down without losing face,
though otherwise he might not have the nerve.
Ed's Mustang's engine roared in neutral, fierce;
Bill toed the start and revved his Camaro's.
We felt both men drawn back, all set to pierce
the velvet night like two huge, flaming arrows.
Then Sue untied a silk scarf from her skirt
And waved it in the air like a surrender;
Those metal beasts sprang forward, slinging dirt
and sped toward Dead Man's Curve, fender to fender.
We smelled burnt rubber, heard the tires scream,
and watched them disappear, like in a dream.
Temporarily removed. Currently under consideration elsewhere.
3 comments:
A formal note, for those of you interested in mechanics of the more poetical sort: I often use the feminine ending (a line ending in a hypermetrical unstressed syllable), as I do in lines 10 and 12 here, in my pentameter. Usually I find it best suited to comical sonnets--for some reason the rhymes just seem funnier that way. (Here's one example; here's another.)
However, I've also noticed through practice that it seems humorous or wry more when on the first and third lines of a quatrain than on the second and fourth, as it's done here. Maybe because in the first case it's a stumbling set-up to the strictly metrical following line, that is to say the punch line. Without that, it seems just an extra syllable or two.
Anyway, in this case it's more serious, obviously, and maybe the placement in the quatrain has something to do with it. Interesting stuff, if you're interested in that sort of thing. ;)
And that's when I fell for...
the leader of the pack.
Vroom. Vroom.
*in deeply felt falsetto*:
She meet him at the candy store!
He turned around and smiled--you get the picture?
(Yes, we see)
Thats when she fell for--
The Leader of the Pack!
Love. That. Song. :)
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