Optional Illusions

Not classical dactylic hexameter, more of a bio-degradable retro asymmeter...

Paint me a day in the life of Arcadia,
Peppercorn pageantry, haughtily cultural.
Acid rain dropping on cannabis sativa,
Poppies that parachute into irrational.
Pond life performs a primordial carnival,
Fire-breathing dragonflies burn up the skies.
Herons on stilts jilting frogs waxing farcical,
Terrified dactyls wipe tears from my eyes.
Mushroom-cloud meadows of magical butterflies
Fluttering high as proverbial kites.
Feasting on photosynthetics, they fantasize
Nectar-induced preternatural flights.
While paradise looks to be lost, lovely Rita
Is fixing a hole that she made in the meter.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Total blank-out remission. Having re-established communication between cortex, finger and keyboard, I found references to last year's 40th anniversary of 'The Ultimate 20th Century album'. Whatever its merits in terms of music, lyrics, production & design, there are some interesting metrical constructs underlying some of the tracks. Contemporary poetry and lyrics seem not to be equivalent where scanning is concerned - stresses and caesuras can be more readily (convincingly?) manipulated where lyrics are delivered in a musical context, almost to the point where stresses are less relevant than syllable length, which is more typical of classical poetry.
Aside from all that crumbly shit, I wondered how many 'classic' albums would still be regarded as hypersublime if their lyrics were to be excised, packaged and released as poetry pathologies...

Leanne -
Am loving, will come back when I've had some food and maybe some sleep... I'm getting half rock and roll, half classical references and the mix is doing my head in (in the best kind of way)... I can just picture a collaboration between Aristophanes and Ricky Gervais on the best screenplay ever. And Coleridge would have been an even worse driver than Keith Moon, but they'd have had some pretty wild parties.

Aphasic -

I started out with the 'gardening' directive in mind, but then... came across a reference to 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' and began downloading a few tracks, lyrics, reading reviews - and was virtually subsumed by 60's stuff. The couplet even suffers from a fusion with 'Big Yellow Taxi':>

...the rest I'll leave unsaid for now.

Leanne -

Haha, I saw it already...

The first part of this makes a nice acrostic raspberry sound, have you noticed?

The Smiths "The Queen is Dead" will always be ultra sublime music and poetry (sorry Morrissey, I know you don't want to be sublime). Pink Floyd, obviously, would be slightly less wonderful if you actually had to make sense of the words... Lucy and The Walrus will survive though. (Mr Kite has an uphill battle, given his origins)

L2, "so" is screwing it up for me, what about "peppercorn pageantry, haughtily cultural"?

"Acid rain dropping" is lovely. Well, not the actual stuff obviously, but the words.

The metric shift in the couplet is funny as hell, given the words -- subtle and fantastic. But now I'm going to be singing "lovely Rita, meter maid" for far too long (thirty two seconds is far too long).

Aphasic -

Hee hee - actually, it's still there - I just painted it white :>

I too pored, pondered and pontificated over "so" - I do like your suggestion Leanne, but I really wanted to keep 'haughty cultural' intact, as it's the only direct/explicit link remaining between this and the original gardening theme...me, I want etc. So - I wondered whether 'pure' would suffice? Grammatically and metrically, it blows, but then the whole thing's laced with contraband...

Thank you - I almost erased this, condemning myself to the proverbial pit of despond, so now I feel unreasonably happy and intolerably/distastefully smug :>

Leanne -

The pun isn't ruined for me by any change, but then I'm unbelievably dependant on punnery... pure is better than so though, with the alliteration.

Don't despair, this is tremendously funny stuff even though a lot of readers will miss most of it. I was only saying yesterday how much you irritate me by doing what I'm supposed to be doing, only better.

Aphasic -
...but still a compromise - and pure it shall be.
x for finishing me off with a flourish :>