Characterization Game

I spent some time last night trying to find a poem that is primarily dialogue driven.  Claudia hosted Poetics over at D'Verse last night and using dialogue was the name of the game. If you haven't done so already you should definitely be checking D'Verse out.

Unfortunately the only dialogue driven pieces I found were pieces of screenwriting, which, without context made no sense to display.  I know I've written some, and probably have at least one here in the archives, but I couldn't find one, and just didn't feel like writing, still don't actually.  Don't worry shouldn't last long, it happens.  But luckily I have at least a couple weeks worth of unpublished pieces, in case the drought gets that bad.  

But anyhow, I found this older poem and thought it would be interesting to post.  It's pretty straight forward.  A witch casts a curse on a library and each year new characters from literature come to life.  I wish I had posted it, then I could sue ABC for the premise behind their new show Once Upon A Time, but oh well-lol

It actually took me a while to figure out who each character was, eventually I got 3 of them and had to cheat and google to find the other 3, afterwards I realized I only used two authors, so I'll leave that here as a clue.  But all this just goes to show that memory is a fickle friend indeed.  Anyhow see if you can figure each character out, kind of a fun piece for a frigid Sunday here in WNY.

A witch placed a hex upon an old abandoned library.

From the stacks came the strangeness…

For fictitious characters, life was served

Resurrected from their place in time

Awakening in the modern day

To live and breathe, in the air that’s yours and mine

Each year a chapter unlocks

At the sound of the midnight clock

Unleashing another set of characters free

Alive, allowed to roam the pages of reality

M.O.A.I. was the first,

Appearing just after the tricking curse,

Still searching, ignorant of scenery’s change

Looking behind the dusty shelves

At a scrap of paper hands clung onto

Rewording in different tongues

Interpreting all as signs

To point him in the direction of what’s his to come

Arrogant Spaniard, braggart too

Boasting of the army he sports within his genes

DADAism, as fate would play

Would be the first book he happed see

Instantly falling in love with the acronym

Never aware of the words behind each of them

A Shrew to tame

Brought forth a member of

The musically disguised

All for love, he pines on for

Yet love evades,

Never giving him the one he desires so,

But a widow would come his way,

If on the page he could’ve stayed

A miserable batch of men these three

Each alive yet know not how to breathe

They pay attention alone to what

Sits atop their brewing top

Ignorant of the other two

Concentrating, but not on what they should do

The second year sparked anew

Birthing free the following trio

So dirty this wife would be

She wore a cleanly term upon her own

Slut today she could be deemed

Although, anymore, who knows exactly what that means

Five times tied and free again

To strut her dress about the microfiche

Pretending to listen to what she can only partially hear

Coy, but only enough to not be left cold in the s(t)acks

A prisoner, one of two,

Strong in both valor and might

Has fallen harshly with the bug of love

Now swooped away to lost and found

Before the tournament for his Emily can go down

Before the pyre could be set ablaze

She was whisked away to the catalogue of cards

If only her wisdom did she shine on he

The perfect cock she’d not mourn at all

Instead she’d stay the favorite in his eyes

Cock-a-doodle-do’s would fill the barn they stay

Yet now, here, a woman she becomes,

Plumed so pretty, she catches the eyes of all the men in this fun

And so, for each and every year, a new character arises

From that wicked witch’s spell.  From what chapter, from what verse, from what author’s story book, is not known, nor rehearsed, but without a shadow of a doubt, as each year passes more leak out, into a world they known nothing about.

God only knows what will occur

If the government closes more

Libraries, or God forbid, they choose to burn our words