Gosh,
Bloggy, I am so over the moon! Sister Windy is going to exaggerate MY poem!!
Yep, the one Roma wrote just for me after a visitation to her high school and
petting zoo. She found me with my favorite pet, Petula Clack (she’s a llama in
case you forgot). Mother Superioriosa had given me permission to look after
Petula, and I had planned to go Downtown with her, but in walked Roma and
everything changed, even my diapers. So, when I went to classh yesterday,
knowing that Roma would be thrilled to know how much her song is belaboured, I
set up a complete Dolby 20.4 Surround Sound System to captivate every world.
And now you can listen to the lesion too!
[click]
Classh, pay attention please: we have gathered
together to extirpate Wild Child, the song dear
Roma composed after first meeting OperaKait, whose wild and childish ways will lead
to no good end, as we shall see at the end of the poem.
First, however, we need to consider the title
itself: WILD CHILD. Now, Master Mind, do you
notice anything interesting about this title or are you content to gaze out the
window looking for UFOs? Which reminds me,
you know I have seen many, many UFOs in my time at Roma Ryan’s High School and
Petting Zoo. These "unidentified frying objects" may be found every
single day in the school coffeteria, but I digress already.
Yes, Master Mind, you are correct: the words in the
poem title RHYME. Very good! What we have here, then, is a precognition that
this poem will showcase the multifarious talents of Rhyming Roma Ryan. It will
be a magnificent verbal tower de force!
Now, Roma herself has written down for our
Oedipusation her mellifluous thoughts on this poem. I quote now from the Sacred
Text found in your OT:TC textbooks:
Wild Child: The day is a
wild child. It is unpredictable, it is reckless, it offers you no security, it
promises nothing....
Well, that certainly does sound like
OperaKait, Miss Rhine: wild, unpredictable, reckless, unsecured, and adverse to
promises. OperaKait, do sit down and stop throwing paper airplanes at Master
File.
Roma then progresses:
It is what you make it. So
make it good.
Now, studnuts, let us ponderous upon the meaning of
Roma here. In her infinite wisdom, as seen in other poems we have deteriorated,
Roma is giving us words to live by:
You see, we are all Wild Children in some
way, but OperaKait is in a classh of her own, or at least I wish she were. I have no idea WHAT to make of OperaKait
myself, but I assume all of us have a duty to make her good, or, at least,
better.
Yes, Miss Fired, Roma does indeed sound just like a
Star Trek captain when she says "Make it good.” I can hallucinate Jean-Luc
Picard saying that very thing as he makes wine in retirement. Or that sweet
Captain Amway from Voyager as she chastises the sour Borg Queen (whose name is
really Peggy Sue).
So, Miss Understood, imagine Roma all decked out in
Star Trek regalia and telling us to MAKE IT GOOD! Would you disobey her? Of
course, not! But the question du jour is: HOW do we make
OperaKait good? Well, my fledglings, Roma is going to tell us how in this very
poem, in a suggestive manner.
So, are we now eager beavers, ready to build a big
dam and flood everything behind it? Yes, Master Works that is indeed
what "developers" do. And
I have developed an allergy to them, but lettuce not digress right now.
Roma
begins her ode with a question:
Ever close your eyes
Roma here asks a rhetorical question, for we all, do
we not, Miss Guided, close our eyes at some point in the school day. Master
Card, please wake Miss Heard up, that's a good lad!
Now, since we all, especially OperaKait, who is
snoring VERY loudly into her hidden microphone, close our eyes, it is oblivious
that we must plunge deeper into the quagmire of the poem:
Ever stop and listen
Notice that Roma connects stopping with listening
here. To stop by itself is not enough - no, indeed, Roma wants us all,
but especially the unstoppable OperaKait, to stop AND listen! While we close
our eyes of course, unless you happen to be driving, in which case you must
stop and SIGNAL.
But where is Roma going in this drive to survive?
That is, in simplified language, what is she driving at? I do hope it is
not Brother J. Walk, for we would all miss her so very much. Aha, I see
that OperaKait has stopped to listen for a change - yes, child, you may leave
the room; in fact, the schooner the better! My nose is turning blue.
We now must drive on in a higher gear:
Ever feel alive
Oh my, what an existentialist question: do we ever
feel ALIVE, truly, madly and deeply alive? Feeling alive: what a wonderful
image - not just breathing in and breathing out, but FEELING life itself course
through your cholesterol plugged arteries! We must listen to the Heartbeat of
Life, which can be heard online at Roma’s personal Oracle. Welcome back,
OperaKait, so nice to see you didn’t have to try again, but returned quite quickly
to your seat - perhaps you are already improving!
Anyway, Roma, after asking such a vital question,
recedes thusly:
And you've nothing missing
What Roma is trying to invey here, classh, is that
"feeling alive" means that you feel "complete" - that is,
that nothing is missing from your life. Yes, I know that Miss Spent has
no money, and that OperaKait has no cents, but what do money and common cents
really, truly MEAN in life? You see, Roma deplores us here to evaluate
ourselves - are we truly alive, or do we feel that something is missing? Like
my car keys, which mysteriously vanished just after I parked my vehicle in the
Muckross Garage, but I must not digress, at least not right now.
Now, where was I? Oh yes:
You don't need a reason
Roma is thus unreasonable here: we, she rhymes, do
not need a reason, we must go with the flow of things, even an ice flow
of things in the case of OperaKait, though in that case I would strongly advise
that you take an extra pair of thermal socks.
And then Roma tops all of this with:
Let the day go on and on
As if we could stop it!! Why, even Mother
Superioriosa cannot stop the day. Some things are FIXED by Nature, others by
veterinarians. For everything else, there’s Master Card.
Letting the day go on and on, however, is a much
deeper crevice here, as far as Roma is concerned: for she advises us to NOT
IMPEDE the day, to do nothing to BREAK the flow of Time. And altering
the Time Line is simply unthinkable, OperaKait, so put your Only Timex Machine
™ away this instant!
So, then, the poem begins with a clear statement
that Roma places in front of our collective noses:
We should close our eyes (except when driving, of
course), stop and listen (but not look), feel LIFE itself trying to course
through our clogged arteries, miss nothing at all - not even my car keys - need
NO reasonable reason, just let the day flow on and on. How udderly sublime! But
we have so much more to come:
The second stanza of our poem begins with another
Roman command:
Let the rain fall down
Now, RAIN is one thing Roma knows very intimately,
being drenched in it daily. So she inculcates here “Let the rain fall down” - well, it really can't fall UP
now, can it? We all understand the gravity of the situation.
And, moreover, what can we do to STOP the rain from
falling anyway? This query was posed much earlier in history, by one Barry
Gibb, who sang: "How can we stop the rain from falling?" Well, Roma
here replies to Barry: "silly, we can't, and we ought not anyway."
But then, Barry lives in Florida, not Ireland, so he may be forgiven for his
views on rain and hanging chads, but I digress....
Roma then adds:
Everywhere around you
Yes, OperaKait, you are indeed expected to stand in
the rain and get very, very wet! This, according to Roma, is GOOD for you, will
make you grow faster, and greener too. You are still so small, my dear;
next to you a microphone looks more like a macrophone. No, you won’t shrink if
you stand in IRISH rain - shrinking is a property only of Canadian rain and
laundry detergent!
Moreover, Roma adds:
Give in to it now
NOW, yes, OperaKait, that is the operative word
here: you must stand in the rain right NOW, not tomorrow or next week.
Surrender to the rain, and bring a bar of Irish Spring for maximum use of all
that water that we must conserve for future generators. Yes, you may come back
in, shortly.
Well, what comes next?
Let the day surround you
Do you see, classh, that Roma is here using a form
of “repetitio” to get her point across? She
must know how thick our heads are.
So, the rain is falling down (and not up) everywhere
around you, you give in to it, and now you also let the DAY surround you.
Feeling claustrophobic yet, Master Full?
Let the day surround you: what an enchanting image:
there we are, soaking wet, but oh so happy, and letting the day itself take us
in its arms in a drippingly wet embrace! So the day is meant for a Wild Child
who is wet and very snuggly, and OperaKait has just now bounced back in with
Snuggles the pit bull. Yes, you may move your desk, Mr Woof.
Now Roma inveighs again:
You don't need a reason
thus plunging us back to the first stanza, where
these words also appeared! This device is called “referentio backwardia.”
Yes, studnuts, we still do not need a reason, but
this time Roma moistly tells us this:
Let the rain go on and on
My, how bleak that sounds! The rain will never end,
it will go on and on and on and on - why I must email Brother Noah and tell him
to fix up that Ark. And we WANT that to happen, classh, we surrender to the
rain - the earth will be flooded and all coastal areas lost, even Killiney. I
do hope you all have Aigle Flood Insurance ™.
So, to summarize, Roma is urging us NOT to fight
against the elements (the day, the rain, the elephants) but to ACCEPT those
things that are GIVEN, like Miss Rhine’s endless supply of Ice Tea. Surrender,
my fledglings, give into LIFE in all its many wonders! Do not rail against the
rain, do not dismiss the day, FILL yourself to the brim with both. What,
OperaKait? Yes, you can go potty again.
We come now, my fledglings, to the CHORUS. I
shall refrain from saying too much about this phenomenon, as we have already
encountered it in other gems by Roma. Let us just remember that it is so very
impotent that it keeps coming back and back and back, and won't go away, away,
away, just like OperaKait!
The chorus commences with:
What a day
Please note that Roma does not say "what
day is it" here, for she has a calendar at hand and a watch with the day
on hand, and thus needs not dwell on dates, pitted or not. Instead, she
exclaims "what a day" this has been, what a rare mood I'm in, why,
it's almost like falling in love." What, Miss Begotten? Oh, I have the
wrong song in mind; so sorry, dear, but I do so love Broadway musicals.
What a day - it's a NEW day, you see, and Celine
Dion is not singing, and so the sun has indeed risen again, much like the loaf
of bread I baked this morning, but I digress. So, we have been given one moment from heaven - and we call
it the DAY! Now, what are we going to DO with this celestial gift?
Follow along now, classh:
What a day to take to
Aha! We are going to take the day to someone, but to whom? Can you guess, Master
Full? What? OperaKait is snoring too loudly for you to think? Perhaps waking up
her pit bull would help? Yes, you may leave the room, Mr. Woof.
Now, Roma loves suspenders, so she does not tell us
at once to whom the day is about to be taken! Instead she inveigles us with:
What a way
What a way
Note, classh, how "way" rhymes so well
with "day". Yes, we can all see the rhyming wheels turning in Roma’’s
clever head at this point. But, what is the WAY
she is talking about here? Is it My Way or the Highway? On My Way Home? The
Milk in My Way? The Sun in the Milky Way? And,
if one is going to TAKE a day, one needs to know the WAY to take the DAY – it’s
perfectly comprehensile!
And next, Roma roams one step farther along this
path into wildness:
To make it through
Yes, Miss Beguiled, we all want to "make it through"
whatever it is we are bogged down in, elephant grass for example. Though I will
heartily assert here and now that, while I have indeed smoked elephant grass, I
NEVER INHALED! Alas, I cannot say the same for our beloved Mother Superioriosa,
but I digress.
There, I feel much better now.
Next, we hear familiar words:
What a day
What a day to take to
Yes, once again we encounter “repetitio,” a very
popular literary advice in Roma’s Book of Days and Ways. After all, if it was
good the first time, it should be good the second time, right Miss Represented? But, my dears, TO
is left hanging! We still need to know WHO is going to get the day - and now
Roma comes Irish Spring clean:
A wild child
A wild child! And the wildest among us is
sitting at the back of the room with a Dolby sound system and a sleepy pit
bull. You see, classh, when Roma first met OperaKait she just wanted to hug
her; after a few minutes, however, she wanted to hug her to death! Murder being
somewhat illegal (though one could argue self-defence in the case of
OperaKait), Roma released her penthoused angst in the composition of this poem.
I trust that is now clear to everyone.
I shall, accordianly, refrain from saying any more
about the refrain. We shall waddle on to the next stanza of the poem - you see,
I get very hungry and in a moment of starvation-induced madness I recently ate
a whole hectare of seabiscuits. Now I am feeling a little hoarse and somewhat
rotund. But I digress.
The next vivacious stanza begins thusly:
Only take the time
From the helter skelter
Now, studnuts, note the poignant juxtapositioning of
"only" and "time" in the first line above your head. Don't
you think that Roma here engages in omniscient prognostication, as she will
compose "Only Time" as well, that is, when she only has the time.
Anyway, Roma here urges, nay, commands us to
"take the time" - what time is it, OperaKait? Oh, you lost your
Mickey Mouse watch in the loo? Well, I'll arrange for our caretaker Donald to
duck down there as soon as possible.
Take the time: yes, my fledglings, an important
command: far too often we forget to take time for the really important things
in life, like jelly donuts and dark chocolate and tiny marshmallows. To say
nothing of Pepto-Brennan ™!
But Roma goes even further: we must take the time not
from any old thing, BUT instead "from the helter skelter". Now, what IS
the helter skelter? No, Master Mixer, it is not a heavy metal band, but nice
try. How about you, Miss Rhine, do you
know what the helter skelter is? Well, jolly good for you!! Here, take a
seabiscuit, and add Devon Cream if you'd like to.
Miss Rhine, bless her heart, knows that the
"helter skelter" is the evil menace of DISORDER! Our lives are
lived too much in disorder and confusion; we lack the ability to STEP OUT and
smell the prickly roses. We must ESCAPE the daily helter skelter and FIND
ourselves. Just like that famous and amazing Grace.
Well, it is now clear that Roma is commanding us to REMOVE
ourselves from daily disorder - and one way to do this would be to use
Metamucil by Enya ™- a very effective remedy against disorder, but I digress -
mainly because I own 20,000 shares in the company that makes the stuff. They’re in my Fiber Portfolio.
So let us all MOVE on:
Every day you find
Everything's in kilter
You see, when we take the time from the helter
skelter, we DO find that everything is in kilter! Now, what is
"kilter"? Anyone know? Yes, Master Key? No, it is NOT a garment worn
by a male inhabitant of Scotland. That is called a “celt.”
OperaKait, you seem to be relatively awake at the
moment - what is "kilter"? Brava! You have hit it on the head:
"kilter" is the REVERSE of helter skelter - kilter is ORDER;
it reflects everything being in its place, like, say, Enya in Ireland, or
Petula Clack in the petting zoo. Not that those two are alike in any way, of
course!
Yes, all of us must seek KILTER. We must restore
natural order to our lives, no more confusion, no more chaos - BALANCE
rules!! Ooops, did you just fall over, Miss Cued? Well, do apologize to Miss
Ery for falling over her please.
Now, we reconvene our wits to complete this stirling
stanza:
You don't need a reason
Let the day go on and on
Now, classh, does this sound familiar? Yes, indeed,
it appeared earlier, in the very first stanza - good for you! It is repeated here to emphasize that
we do NOT need a reason to enjoy the day - as the ancient Romans said: CARPE
DIEM, or "seize the carp" -
they ate a lot of fish, those Romans did. Ever hear of Fishbourne,
Master Mind? No, I didn’t think so. So we
conclude this mistressful stanza on a positive note: indeed, an A sharp!
But, classh, we must contemporate further into Wild
Child, coming now (to a theatre near you) to a very seminal stanza. Yes, Miss
Taken, that does indeed mean it's very seedy.
Our next stanza commences thusly:
Every summer sun
Sun? In the Summer? Where has Roma been this year?
EVERY Summer has sun? NOT SO! Why, the Sun this Summer has been missing in action,
perhaps over Mars, or maybe even some far far away place like Alberta! Who here
has seen the Sun? Let me draw a picture of it on the board, just to help you
remember it. There!
Well, in Roma's utterly imaginary Irish world, there
is SUN every Summer - so let us go with the flow of that. To show respect for
her huge poetic imagination, and/or her huge bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream.
Roma superannuates next:
Every winter evening
Well, now she is on Terra Firma: yes, every Winter
does contain evenings - many of them, posto facto. Long evenings keeping warm
by the woodstove, wearing 12 layers of sweaters and three pairs of socks.
Finally reading "War and Peace" and all those other books filling
your shelves. So perhaps Roma's little pink slip about Summer sun may be
forgiven now? You do forgive her? Thank you, dears.
We go on once more:
Every spring to come
Aha, we have here a fearless prediction! Yes, a
Spring WILL come: "always and ever, ever and always, Roma can promise a
Spring to you". Ooops, wrong notes; I needed an A flat and pulled out a B
sharp, and I do wish I could BE sharp, but I digress.
So, as the seasons perform their cyclical dance on
bicycles, SPRING will come, year after year - an affirmation of life itself, a
blessed confirmation bestowed by Roma herself.
We move on, ever wiser:
Every autumn leaving
Oh my, a virtual play on words! "The Autumn
leaves drift by my windows XP...." Yes, of course, Autumn is leaving: it
leaves its leaves behind and leaves. And as the leaves fall, Autumn fades away,
away, away...................
Roma here, of course, refers to the END of Autumn as
opposed to the FIRST of Autumn. Just as Spring comes every year, so too will
come, at a quicker pace I dare say, every Autumn, and every Autumn will meet its
end hammered by Winter's cold blows. It's a wise idea not to get hammered,
though.
Well, now that Vivaldi, er Roma has covered the Four
Seasons, where do we end up? Yes, you are right, Master Chef: back at the same
two lines now well ingrained in our collective heads:
You don't need a reason
Let it all go on and on
The difference here, OperaKait who is passing notes
to Miss Rhine again, is that Roma uses "it" instead of
"day" or "rain.” Now, what is the significance of this? Perhaps
Roma is attempting here to objectify the concepts of day and rain in an
existentialist manner? Or is she just using the poetic principle of
"variatio,” according to which one should change words once in a while,
even when in a rhyming Roman frenzy?
In any event, we shall deal next with a most
evocative stanza of Wild Child, which displays to best effect the RHYMING technique of Rhyming Roma Ryan. Roma
will now unleash her poetic prowess!
Now hear THIS:
What a day
What a day to take to
What a day, yes, what a day! What a day this has
been, what a rare mood I'm in! This day, this VERY day, is "what a
day,” but what a day for what? Why, yes, Miss Placed, to take to! We are to take this day
somewhere, maybe for a walk with Mr. Woof, or maybe not. To discern this we
must refocus our blurry eyes on the next lines of the poem:
What a way
What a way
Aha! Roma here does one of her famous curve ball
tricks on us: she switches from DAY to WAY! Do we take the day to the WAY? My,
my, that seems awkward. Is there a way to take the day and give it to Master
Craft? Does Miss Anthrope even deserve a day – a holiday named after her,
perhaps? No, but there is still hope for OperaKait, who has quite a way about
herself!
From day to way, to what next? Roma is on a roll,
buttered and peppered, ready to rock:
To make it through
A way to make it through? Through what, Master Key?
Yes, of course, a way to make it through the DAY! Well done. Now, some may need
help to make it through the night – especially singers of Country and Western
songs – but the rest of us just focus on getting through the day. In any way.
So I say. Please don't play. Go on and pray. That's what I say. Hey hey hey, I
can't get no satis..........oops, I know I am digressing now.
Ahem, returning to our text:
What a day
Yes, noch einmal, as the Germans would say - once
again, Roma throws the day at us, like a DART, and those trains are not all
that sharp, trust me. I once took the DART to Killiney and was bayed at! Ah well…those were the days!
Then Roma exudes:
What a day to take to
This poetic advice, known as "repetitio until
you get ittio", here re-re-re-emphasizes the importance of the DAY. Which
we now must take to:
A wild child
Roma once again tells us to whom we are to take the
day: OperaKait, of course, and doesn't she deserve it after all? Of course, she
does, that annoying little…ahem.
You see, Roma does indeed get to the end of a
thought before the day ends. And good for you, Miss Appropriated: you are most
observant - Roma does indeed REPEAT this same stanza in the NEXT stanza! Why,
you ask, my dears? Well, THAT is what all of you must determine as your HOMEWORK!
Yes, indeed, I want you all to compose a whole
paragraph on WHY Roma repeats this stanza. And you must also explicate
what all those “das” are doing - did they get lost on the DART and just slide
into the poem by random chance?
I, on the other hand, shall go home and watch
"The Young and the Restful" on TV.
Ta!