Writing Exercise: Lyrical expansion

Last week we had a writing assignment that didn't inspire me that much. It was to take a song with lyrics and transpose or extend it in some way. Originally I picked Morrissey's "Every Day is Like Sunday" as my source material, and in the end, I didn't come up with anything to expand upon it.

Today, inspiration! We have a tradition at the office of coercing someone into saying the word "Friday" and then blasting Rebecca Black's eponymous song loudly in response. I was surfing the internet exploring poetic rhythm structures (yeah, I know...) and came across the delicious "trochaic octameter", the rhythm that Edgar Allan Poe used in "The Raven."

Bingo. Please enjoy this. I certainly had fun writing it:

Friday (a tribute to Rebecca Black and Edgar Allan Poe)

On the Seventh cockerel’s calling, stir I, shake my dreamy palling,
Unsullied now, to staircase crawling, down balustrade to larder’s lock.
A pot of gruel, my fast to break, in woe-some grains I thus partake,
My thirsty eyes all wont for slake, though sate I na’er the ticking clock.
Curse my eyes! Oh slake abate! and the tick of yonder clock.

Now I off to carriage walk.

Rush! For lo my carriage waiting, tarry now exasperating,
But here my comrads, unberating, see anon my harried shock.
But woe! Alack! A struggle baiting, two seats see I, in carriage waiting,
Two companions (none, I dating), whither for my ship to dock?
Two moorings, neither I am mating, whither for this ship to dock?

So encoached, we rib and jock.

Friday! Friday! Day adoring! Clouds above, that goddess shoring,
Held aloft till Seder’s scoring, gone the thunder giant's knock.
Friday, harken! Bacchus gorging, to the streets our wassail forging,
Nae’r our lips to stolid dirging, Nae’r our hands for shaping rock.
Sing we not that loathsome dirging, toil us not with tool and rock.

Know you now my weekly flock.