Saturday, August 22, 2015

New England Mentality (A Poem)

[Originally posted at Ana Mardolls Ramblings, after an exhchange about New England that I'll reproduce at the end.]

We do not want to know if you love your cat
We'd rather not hear that you are part bat
It's not our concern if you are slob
We don't care that you got a job
Don't come to us if you're unemployed
Share your good news and we'll be annoyed
If world domination is your wish
Or you have discovered that you are part fish
Or your mom is from Mars and your dad is from Pluto
And you like Popeye less than Bluto
We don't care of these things, nor do we
Judge, just hear our strong plea
That you leave us alone
And let us stay safe in our home
We wish to be free from your needs, wants, and loves
It's not that we think we're above you like doves
It's just that we're content to be us,
And don't mingle well with those on our bus.
We simply don't care a jot
About your bumper crop of shallot
If you are in love that's really quite great
Be you gay, bi, pan or even quite straight
But don't tell us, we don't care
And all these intrusions we can hardly bare
Unless you like the Yankees
You will not us displease
Provided you don't bother us
By wanting to discuss
                                      Anything.
-

genesistrine wrote:
Like I said, I suspect it's actually due to a blasphemous Cthulhu cult in your area. Have you checked your neighbours for gills and/or immobile, wax-like faces?
I wrote:
This is New England, we don't speak to our neighbors, we don't look at our neighbors, if our neighbors informed us that they were going to summon a dread god and destroy the world our response would be, "Ok, but did you really have to bother me about it?"
New England, one of the places where people claiming they don't want you to flaunt your sexuality do in fact mean, "I respect your right to have a monogamous culturally-approved heterosexual relationship, but don't tell me about it; I don't want to know," every bit as much as they mean the same for non heterosexual, non-monogamous, and otherwise non-culturally-approved relationships.
New England, land of, "We have front porches so big that they take up the entire length of our house but we never do anything on/with them because then someone might *hushed tone* talk to us."
New England ... ok, I'm taking this a bit far, but ever wonder why Lovecraft set his works in New England? Because we respect your right to be a fish person provided that you don't make a big deal about it and, no, we will NOT follow up on possible signs that you might be one because PRIVACY and we have our own shit to do, damn it.
I wrote:
Or, for a short version, the New England mentality is, "You can do whatever you want, just stay in the damned closet," applied to everyone and everything.
And then, in the same post, I wrote the above poem.

5 comments:

  1. *nodnod*

    People keep randomly complimenting me on my DS9 T-shirt. It's kind of freaking me out. I may need to restrict that T-shirt to only times when I am feeling particularly up to random conversations.

    Of course, I think the guy at the grocery store who commented that I must really like cheese when he saw me stocking up on cheddar would have done so even if I hadn't been wearing that shirt. I mean, honestly. *I* only strike up random conversations with people during town festivals, which are special times set apart from the ordinary flow of life in which not all the standard social rules apply*, and even then there's the thrill of the taboo about it.

    *For instance, the standard rules frown upon wearing bodices, but Ren Faire rules encourage it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is pretty good I think, though it's not exactly in my first cultural language. Not quite.

    I'm kind of annoyed by the rhythm, though. It makes me want to mess around with the meter. Also, shallot doesn't rhyme with a lot (or alot), though maybe you did that on purpose? Some of us hate visual rhymes, tho...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Feel free to mess around with the meter, I'd be interested in seeing your version.

      it's "a Jot" not "a Lot" but the not rhyming thing would still hold true. I've never actually heard of shallot before, and certainly never heard is spoken, but something on the internet assured me it rhymed with Jot-Lot-Bot-[so forth] and it's a plant, so I could say "bumper crop of"

      Honestly I'm most concerned about we/plea because I feel like the force of wanting to end the sentence might overpower the line break and make it so that the "we" is lost to the ear and the sound you're expecting a rhyme for is instead "judge" and I have said nothing of fudge (or anything else that rhymes with "judge".)

      Delete
  3. My brain keeps trying to sing this to Iowa Stubborn.

    ReplyDelete