Shall I uncrumple this
much crumpled me
turning like gray leaves
blue on the floor like
peacock’s wings
like cathedral glass
so like delicious
plums in a frost-filled
jar in the icebox?
Give me hemlock
I breathed so gentle
so sweet so cold
*****
FrostI'm going out to fetch
the little calf
standing by its mother
It's so young
it totters when I
shoot it with father’s gun
You come too
*****
Dickinson
I like a look—of agony
because I know it’s you
Parents don’t sham compulsion
Nor simulate throw
up Eyes glaze death—
impossible to feign
The thickening of tongue?
Heroin-hung
I like a look—of agony
because I know it’s you
Parents don’t sham compulsion
Nor simulate throw
up Eyes glaze death—
impossible to feign
The thickening of tongue?
Heroin-hung
*****
Notes on Mash-Ups:
When writing these poems I had in mind what TS Eliot wrote about the playwright, Philip Massinger: Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
When writing these poems I had in mind what TS Eliot wrote about the playwright, Philip Massinger: Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
Some of these poems are attempting to be the antithesis, not only to what Eliot said, but, as is the case in the Frost poem, to the original as well.
*****
Eric Berge lives and writes in the desert. You can see his blog at http://www.edberge.com/.
