Adie Pena

Anagrammy Awards > Literary Archives > Adie Pena

Original text in yellow, anagram in pink.

NEW YORK MINING DISASTER [NINETEEN FORTY-ONE]

In the event of something happening to me,
there is something I would like you all to see.
It's just a photograph of someone that I knew.

Have you seen my wife, Mr. Jones?
Do you know what it's like on the outside?
Don't go talking too loud, you'll cause a landslide, Mr. Jones.

I keep straining my ears to hear a sound.
Maybe someone is digging underground,
or have they given up and all gone home to bed,
thinking those who once existed must be dead.

Have you seen my wife, Mr. Jones?
Do you know what it's like on the outside?
Don't go talking too loud, you'll cause a landslide, Mr. Jones.

In the event of something happening to me,
there is something I would like you all to see.
It's just a photograph of someone that I knew.

Have you seen my wife, Mr. Jones?
Do you know what it's like on the outside?
Don't go talking too loud, you'll cause a landslide, Mr. Jones.

HUGE CHILE MINING DISASTER [TODAY, TWENTY TEN]

The people wish to see this heart-tugging story,
A hopeful movie of poor kin like me,
The tough men lost down in that mine in San Jose.

You won't look so fine, San Jose?
Sullenly you are doomed in the dark mine
Oh, do not leave me, God, take out this death sign, San Jose.

Muddied, you struggled with pain to see the sun,
Imagining all your weakest men are gone.
You know time, how long everyone waited;
Buried in crumbling muck, will you be excavated?

You won't look so fine, San Jose?
Sullenly you are doomed in the dark mine
Oh, do not leave me, God, take out this death sign, San Jose.

The people wish to see this heart-tugging story,
One hopeful movie of poor kin like me,
Of no tough men lost down in that mine in San Jose.

Now you look so fine, San Jose.
Suddenly you're alive, out that dark mine!
God simply listened, He took down that death sign, San Jose.

Return to Adie Pena Index

NOVEMBER
by Tom Waits

No shadow no stars
No moon no cars
November
It only believes
In a pile of dead leaves
And a moon
That's the color of bone

No prayers for November
To linger longer
Stick your spoon in the wall
We'll slaughter them all

November has tied me
To an old dead tree
Get word to April
To rescue me

November's cold chain
Made of wet boots and rain
And shiny black ravens
On chimney smoke lanes
November seems odd
You're my firing squad
November

With my hair slicked back
With carrion shellac
With the blood from a pheasant
And the bone from a hare
Tied to the branches
Of a roebuck stag
Left to wave in the timber
Like a buck shot flag

Go away you rainsnout
Go away blow your brains out
November

DECEMBER
by Santa Claus
(Ho-Ho-Ho? Oh-Oh-Oh!)

No quiet, no break,
More toys to make.
December.
A platoon of elves
So full of themselves;
A woman
That's no good with a saw.

No leeway in December
To imbibe longer,
Knock a keg in a bar
Or smoke a cigar.

December has bled me
For a Christmas tree.
Get word to Rudolph
To rescue me!

December's wild spell
Filled with toil and hell;
A showman's survival
Involving no nirvana.
December seems daft.
Serve me tankards of draft!
December.

They often annoy me!
Arbitrary, thorny,
Stubborn, horrible!
What Manhattan brats!
To overlook an inventory,
Find both a snivel, a moan!
Villainous tots now,
No penny consolation alone.

Go, you baboon-type urchins!
Go away with your wide grins!
December.

Return to Adie Pena Index

CHRISTMAS HAIKU *
by Alan Harris

Ice on pine needles--
can it hear the Christmas bells?
Can anything not?

Spider in the drain--
Christmas whoops in the parlor--
silent, dark, the drain.

Scrub Christmas tree, bare--
rooms echo--furniture gone--
mother and child laugh.

Sleigh ride all finished--
the mare, eating Christmas oats,
hears house noise, and snorts.

Flashing Christmas lights
entrance three speechless patients
slouched in parked wheelchairs.

Tree's all taken down--
year's end--where is Christmas now?
Deep within each pulse.

CATHARTIC HAIKU
[Somewhat Entertaining Headline Resulting]
**

Hark! The people gnash,
A starless Christmas has passed,
Praise his crownless prince?

Peace on their earth; for
Yonder breaks, a morn shimmers;
Happiness allures.

Ordered the hashish,
Laughed at reminiscences,
Inhaled merriment.

Downwards in straight lines,
Armchair classic in their trash,
Young child in small crib.

Success is thrilling.
Thank that circle of friends and
Open those bottles.

Year has ended; hence
Out with the obsolete and
Usher in the new!

Return to Adie Pena Index

After being lost at sea for almost two years, the Aviatrix Amelia Mary Earhart was finally declared legally dead in January 1939. The subject is a poem by Dylan Thomas; and the similarly-titled anagram, which contains an acrostic of her name, is dedicated to her memory.

JANUARY 1939
by Dylan Thomas

Because the pleasure-bird whistles after the hot wires,
Shall the blind horse sing sweeter?
Convenient bird and beast lie lodged to suffer
The supper and knives of a mood.
In the sniffed and poured snow on the tip of the tongue of the year
That clouts the spittle like bubbles with broken rooms,
An enamoured man alone by the twigs of his eyes, two fires,
Camped in the drug-white shower of nerves and food,
Savours the lick of the times through a deadly wood of hair
In a wind that plucked a goose,
Nor ever, as the wild tongue breaks its tombs,
Rounds to look at the red, wagged root.
Because there stands, one story out of the bum city,
That frozen wife whose juices drift like a fixed sea
Secretly in statuary,
Shall I, struck on the hot and rocking street,
Not spin to stare at an old year
Toppling and burning in the muddle of towers and galleries
Like the mauled pictures of boys?
The salt person and blasted place
I furnish with the meat of a fable.
If the dead starve, their stomachs turn to tumble
An upright man in the antipodes
Or spray-based and rock-chested sea:
Over the past table I repeat this present grace.

JANUARY 1939


Azure as the sky and the sea on this journey;
Vast like the never-ending watery landscape.
I plunge from the open clouds
And drift on the cerulean ocean.
Truths to be swept about tirelessly.
Receding from the dishonoured purpose in life
I look beyond the traitorous, the white-crested waves.
X to mark that stark historian's spot too.
As the spray of the salty water startles
My mind sinks, buffeted by death's blowing wind,
Ebbing, falling, trusting in no one.
Lost in the submerged steel soul of a tattered Lockheed Electra
I stutter and take the unfathomable tide with someone,
A blue bottomless void of cold brine awaits me.
My kind heart to trouble me
As I suffer like a piece of cork bobbing up and down to the sound of the
Rough damp weather's growl.
Yesterday, I saw fish and dolphin in flight;
Even withstood the splash of tortured afterthoughts.
A sunset of copper-colored shafts replaces the hope of dawn ahead,
Reminding me of the breath-stopping dark that threatens.
Howland Island fades in the distance.
Adieu, as the desperate bubbles rise to the surface,
Rescuers abandon their search.
The two-year vigil is over.

Return to Adie Pena Index

Return to Poem Page


Updated: May 10, 2016


Home

 | The Anagrammy Awards | Enter the Forum | Facebook | The Team

Information

 | Awards Rules | Forum FAQ | Anagrams FAQ | History | Articles

Resources

 | Anagram Artist Software | Generators | On-line | Books | Websites

Archives

 | Winners | Nominations | Hall of Fame | Anagrammasia | Literary | Specials

Competition

 | Vote | Current Nominations | Leader Board | Latest Results | Old Results | Rankings

Miscellaneous

 | Tribute Page | Records | Sitemap | Search | Anagram Checker | Email Us | Donate

Anagrammy Awards

  © 1998-2024