Jeff Derrickson

Dreams au Lait

Feet first! Deep end! A lively story at the most!

Eat, sleep, and be entertained by your hoary host!

Spinach frittata, Lake Titicaca, Cuckoo for coq au vin.

Come, Eurydice, don’t be fidgety, ride a Parthenobahn!

Business socks, poisonous gasses, Google the gogoplata.

Hearts break even, fly free even, you are persona grata.

Have waffle fries; lose the shys with electrifried breasts and thighs.

No lies, just lies, afternoon sighs on the prize, and you joins forces with I’s.

Bed and Breakfast kickback, before the Flashback breaks my neck fast –

Best annual Roman XXX blessed bushel and a peck fest.

We are duck feeders, not mouth breathers.

Let’s play with our looks, whiff into the ethers.

Late Indianian Dairy Dreams au lait.

Save the drama for another date dait day.

Revision Account

The idea behind the poem was to write a love poem that didn’t fall into that mushy Hallmark trap that so many writers fall into.  My original intent was not to be ruled by rhyme, but the lines just sort of happened that way.  I would often write a second line that rhymed long after I wrote the first one, and then I’d just cut and paste them together.  Somewhere along the line, I became intrigued by internal line rhyming, and the use of similar-sounding words, and it just kind of exploded from that.  My revision accountants were Naomi, Ryan, Veronica, and my girlfriend, Mary.

I wanted the poem to start off in sort of a prologue-ish vein, similar to the tone of a carnival barker, or the beginning of an epic poem.  Hoary is a good word there, because I am eight years older than Mary.  Also, we were playing a video game where a character named Dr. Strange says “by the hoary hosts of Hoggoth,” and it made her laugh.

I meant for the next section of the poem to read as a magic spell, ala “double, double, toil, and trouble.”  Mary and I eat frittatas at Katz’s Deli, we both like the cartoon Animanics, which has a song about Lake Titicaca, and coq au vin is a cooking style at my restaurant, The Melting Pot.  On our first date we saw a play called Orpheus in the Underworld, and Parthenobahn was a way for me to say that she had to take a new road with me; an uncharted, virgin path, if you will. 

Socks, gasses, and gogoplata come from two of our favorite shows: Flight of the Conchords and Monday Night Raw.  The break even line refers to a time in which we went to a casino, lost a lot of money, and then won it back with a two-dollar profit.  Waffle fries are served at her favorite fast food, Chick-Fil-A, and the breasts and thighs were my tribute to hers.  Our affinity to honesty and napping comes through in the next line, and the join forces notion is a nod to a book I let her borrow written by Michael Ian Black.  The next two lines are references to my thirtieth (Roman XXX) birthday, and how we stayed at a Bed and Breakfast before riding Flashback at Six Flags over Texas.  “Bushel and a peck” is from Guys and Dolls, but more significantly it’s a cute song my mom used to sing to me, and I sing it to her now.

The next section gets down to business, I guess you could say.  The crazy images stop and it becomes more direct towards her.  The duck feeder line is pretty much how I feel about us as a couple, and the next line implies that we are constantly growing.  I recently took her to my home in Indiana, and to one of my favorite eateries, the Dairy Dream, so the play on words there is fun because Indiana is a place relatively free of stress and drama.

Ryan’s Suggestions:

-First off, I don't think I have any clue, at all, what this poem is about - if it's about anything. If it's just playing around with language, that's another story. As part of my confusion, what does the title mean? With "hoary", there begins a nice string of uncommon but entertaining and useful words. Nice work with language and wordplay. Enjoyed the Eurydice reference (again, not sure why). Is "Parthenobahn" supposed to be Parthenon?

-I did "Google the gogoplata"; in fact, I goggled about half the poem, which was fun. I'm a big fun of allusions and odd references. The "Waffle fries" line is good, for whatever reason. I like the "duck feeders" line as well.

-Two words, or three, on rhyming. The end rhymes "breathers" and "ether" could be changed somewhat to fit the rest of the poem, which rhymes magnificently. As should the last two, "lait" and "date" because, unfortunately, I believe "lait" is pronounced without the "T" sound. Also, the internal rhymes via each line were mind-blowing. A strong point, for certain.

-I'd say the "Roman triple x" line is the most jumbled/confusing, and my least favorite. But again, I'm not exactly sure what's going on. Any reason why "Dairy Dreams" is capitalized? And should the "and" in Bed & Breakfast be capitalized as well? I like how it sort-of stutters at the very end. But what is "dait"? More wordplay?

My initial concern was that the poem would have too many inside references to be understood, and that was confirmed by my revision accountants, as well as my girlfriend, who might have picked up on the inside references before anyone else.  Of course the poem plays a lot with language, but I didn’t want a nonsense poem, or at least one that only made sense to me.  So to this end I took out some words that did not mean anything at all.  The best example of this is “rabbit eyes.”  There was no real connection to my girlfriend through that, so I changed it to “lose the shys,” which gives me another nonsense word to play with, and also connects it to my shy girlfriend.

In the opening lines, I made some punctuation changes that I felt would help with the rhythm.  I changed the “break even” line on Naomi’s behest, as it messed with the rhythm of the poem and was vague.  “Hearts break even” was also a line that intrigued me, because sometimes two hearts need to break before they can fly free. Once that was taken care of, I made some changes to different lines to both synch up their rhythms and also play up the internal rhyme schemes (i.e. the addition of kickback to the “bed and breakfast” line).

The line that everyone was having trouble with was the XXX line.  It was important to me to keep it, because my thirtieth birthday was an integral part of our relationship.  Naomi suggested that I spell out “triple,” and I did that for a while, but I then decided that spelling it out distances “Roman” to the point that triple X would be associated with the film rating rather than the Roman numeral.  I’d rather the porn meaning be more subversive than direct.  I added “blessed” to help the rhythm of that line as well.  Finally, I corrected my “stutter” rhyme at the end to match the correct pronunciation of “au lait.”

Then it came down to the title.  Veronica suggested the title “Too Much Mushroom,” for some reason, then later “Go XO Go,” which I almost went with in the form of “GOXOGO.”  I then talked to Ryan, and he suggested that I take a phrase from the poem to be the title, and I settled on “Dreams au Lait.”  The last change I made was with the alignment of the beginning and end sections.  I figured this would separate the sections of the poem that have different rhythms, and, as strange as this may sound, I wanted the last four lines to kind of have a fade in-fade out effect, sort of like waves.   

All Is Well

by Jeff Derrickson

Feet first! Deep end! A lively story at the most!

Eat, sleep, and be entertained by your hoary host.

Spinach frittata, Lake Titicaca, Cuckoo for coq au vin.

Come, Eurydice, don’t be fidgety.  Ride the Parthenobahn!

Business socks, poisonous gasses, Google the gogoplata.

We break even, ahead even, and you are my persona grata.

Waffle fries, rabbit eyes, electrifried breasts and thighs.

No lies, just lies and afternoon sighs on the prize as we join forces, you and I’s.

Bed and Breakfast, before the Flashback breaks my neckfast

Roman XXX, best annual bushel and a peck fest.

We are Duck feeders, not mouth breathers.

Let’s play with our looks, whiff into the ether.

Indianian Dairy Dreams au lait

Save the drama for another day dait date.