The Nearctica Waltz
Love bugs, Plecia nearctica, doin' what they do best. The male is facing left, the female facing up.
I perform a cappella singing and spoken word at the Woodview Coffeehouse in Lecanto, FL. My singing is scatting -- i.e., wordless -- and I make up the tune as I go along. No two renditions are the same.
Most of the Woodview performers are musicians singing their own or other people's work. As I listened to them over the months, I had a hankering to write a song, something that had particular music and lyrics.
Last year, an especially hefty swarm of love bugs gave me my opening.
"The lucky in love spend about three days together gorging on nectar and pollen, gleefully snorting tailpipe exhaust, flaunting their marathon lust on the breezes," wrote Amber Mobley last year in her St. Petersburg Times article, "Feel like telling them 'Get a room'?" "Lacking the decency to get a room, these two are intimate the entire time. Eat, copulate, repeat."
"The Nearctica Waltz" received its public premiere this past August at Denvention 3/Worldcon. I'd performed it during the speculative poetry panel and introduced it as, "a musical poem with visual aid," because I'd printed out an 8x10 of the photo above and held that up for the audience.
My Friday night audience at Woodview needed no such explanation. This fall the love bugs made a rather modest (as it were) appearance in my area -- nothing anywhere close to the thick, lusty clouds last year that made me say I feel a song comin' on!
Lyrics follow. Click on the eSnips widget (it'll open a separate window) to listen to Friday night's rendition.
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| The Nearctica Walt... |
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The Nearctica Waltz
They meet in the grass, rising up from the dirt.
And before we all know it, he's stuck up her skirt.
They pump their sweet lovin' right onto your shirt --
Such tender romance. Up your arms. Down your pants…
(Chorus)
They float in a passion. The world is their bed
For his tiny body and her tiny head.
And after their tryst, they will finally drop dead.
For that's the Nearctica Waltz.
They couple on walls, in the air, on your clothes.
She drags her companion wherever she goes.
And glued end to end, they go where the wind blows --
On windows, on shorts. How they're flaunting their sporting…
(Chorus)
They float in a passion. The world is their bed
For his tiny body and her tiny head.
And after their tryst, they will finally drop dead.
For that's the Nearctica Waltz.
Plecia nearctica, little lovin' flies.
They mate in mid-air with the greatest of ease,
Gumming our windshields as we watch them die
In their short-lived, pornographic trapeze.
Ohhh…
I give them the finger, but it does me no good.
They're already on it, producing their brood.
Wherever I go, they're lascivious and lewd.
How devotedly he humps her, right onto my bumper…
(Chorus)
They float in a passion. The world is their bed
For his tiny body and her tiny head.
And after their tryst, they will finally drop dead.
For that's the Nearctica Waltz.
They teach me on the highway,
Every spring and every fall:
'Tis better to love and then be squashed
Than to never
Love
At all.
 | Covenant, the first volume in the Deviations Series, is available from Aisling Press, and from AbeBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Book Territory, Borders, Buecher.ch, Buy.com, BuyAustralian.com, DEAstore, eCampus.com, libreriauniversitaria.it, Libri.de, Loot.co.za, Powell's Books, and Target. Deviations: Appetite is now available for pre-order at Barnes and Noble. The Deviations page has additional details. |
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