another filk

From a few years back…

YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE

You only live once, that’s how it goes.

One life and you’re gone, most evidence shows.

You live for your years, you turn your wheel

Some say you get more years; that’s not the deal 

Your life is the least the world puts on your plate

Be fast to the feast, or be late for your fate!

One life all your own, and you’re the price.

One more would be nice, but you don’t live twice

(ttto: You Only Live Twice, DUH)

[slightly revised, 2017]

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a swinging holiday

There's a blackboard in one of my classrooms—actually both, since I take both classes in the same room on different days—with some writing on it about snowmen and whatnot. Down near the bottom, in mixed-case cursive, it says "Jungle Bells," like someone was doing the "i" and made two peaks instead of one. In a situation like that, I could (1) just ignore it, (2), fix it, or (3) do something else. I chose (3). Today, as the rest of the class was filing in, I was scribbling away:

JUNGLE BELLS

Swinging through the trees
With a holly jolly ape.
Music's on the breeze.
Native children gape!
Lights on green fronds cling
And shimmer in the heat.
Let's dance and sing till tree frogs ring
With a yuletide jungle beat! Oh—

Jungle Bells, Jungle Bells,
Through rain forests green!
Carols hum on a wooden drum
From hands that can't be seen, oh—
Jungle Bells, Jungle Bells,
Tinkle through the swamp:
Festive chimes that hang from vines
For a sultry Christmas romp!

So have a happy. The time is out of joint anyway.
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way down upon Toon River

Freckles Friendly

A lot of people, when they talk about their life,

Say, “Sure, I did what I did. I had no choice.”

I’m not judging them, but that describes me:

The poor friend of the richest kid on earth!

What else can you do when one family

Owns everything in the county, in the state,

And the pampered heir decides that he

Has to cultivate the poorest of the poor

To show that he has the common touch?

You going to put your foot down, show your pride

And listen to your kid brother cough all night

In the leaky room you share with your folks?

So you listen to his golly-gee platitudes

And you thank him for everything you get,

No matter how trivial or useless it is.

And try your damnedest to save a little,

Shopping at the company store: lotsa luck!

And one day, maybe, you survive it all

And you escape him and go to another state,

Start your own business, and tell folks

That your last name has always been Welloff.

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we need a new label

I've written a reel. Wrote it on January 11, 2017, and on the 16th, I took it to my regular Monday Irish jam group, who liked it and played it. Now I must write more, and now I have a new label for such items.



It's copyrighted. I was going to go with Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA), but Wikipedia seemed to say that these could lead to a legal thicket, which seems like a lot to put on a poor little reel.
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