Doing Alright in my Dreams (Patter)

[dukealien]

[This is more of a diary entry than anything else, but, strictly speaking, a lyric (composed with Gilbert & Sullivan patter songs such as My Name is John Wellington Wells in mind).  Critique if you wish - I know it's loose as a goose, poetic sins to be dealt with by the hypothetical composer.  Mainly just for fun - enjoy.]

Doing Alright in my Dreams (Patter)

Now...

My life was all complex and glum
What with duties and tasks yet to come
With family woes and the stress that just goes
With far travel, and then there’s my joints -
Some days it seems booze has its points.

You’d think with such nagging trials pending
Morpheus would be constantly sending
Me nightmares of falling, and snakes, and vain calling
For trousers I somehow forgot.
(Yes, dear Doctor Freud, that’s the lot.)

Yet...

Strange as my telling it seems,
I’m doing alright in my dreams.
Last night or this morning I joined without warning
My old crew, we climbed off the plane,
Having been of red Ruskis the bane.

Not a loss could be spied
For not one friend had died
Only smiles could be seen in our suits of sage green
For the day’s weary mission was done -
The battle was finally won.

So the crew gathered round to the sound
Of country and western, and found
That the beer wasn’t flat (see, Valhalla’s like that)
But tomorrow we’d rise with the sun
With another tough mission to run.

(Did I say Valhalla?  Say heaven
Is like that, to be endlessly given
Hard tasks to perform, with comradery warm
And a cold beer to top off the night.)

So...

Tell me, please, Dr. Freud, am I right
That my lack of bad dreams may convey
In a perfectly Freudian way

That...

I’ve done what I should just as well as I could,
And prepared for the morrow, accepting its sorrow,
My conscience is clear, I can smile ear to ear
In my sleep, then awake I may pure pleasure take?

For...

My subconscious gave pleasant dreams
Having found on my conscience no themes
Of which it disapproved,
So no nightmares reproved.
Pleasant dreams to you, too, and good day!

[Achebe]

It would read better without the rhymes: they are a bit forced.

[Erthona]

I love G&S. I was in the P of P and Yeoman of the Guard. This isn't patter, just a thought on what you wrote.

Fine to take delight in things,
in dreams that bring no screams.
Despite that one piece is de-lish
it gives no right to the whole dish.


Dale

[dukealien]

I love G&S. I was in the P of P and Yeoman of the Guard. This isn't patter, just a thought on what you wrote.

Fine to take delight in things,
in dreams that bring no screams.
Despite that one piece is de-lish
it gives no right to the whole dish.


Dale

Oh, no, I'd never lay claim to the whole dish - particularly the lyric soup-plate. 

Hope G&S fandom isn't dying out:  My father was arranging for a medical procedure during which he'd have to remain awake; the nurse offered to set up a musical track for his listening diversion.  He asked for Gilbert & Sullivan.  The nurse (whom I'd have called a sweet young thing, if such language were still politically acceptable these days - no obvious piercings or tats) thought for a long moment and confessed, "I don't think I know that group."  True story.

@ronsaik - Forced rhyme is something of a feature in the patter song, though I surely abuse it.   Hear, for example, I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General , listening for the hypotenuse.  (Also for Dale, of course.)