Essential Colours (A Read Write Poem)
Thursday, January 1st @ 10:37 pm
| Poem, Poetry, readwritepoem Tags:collaboration, collaborative poetry, Poem, Poetry, Read Write Poem, rwp
This isn’t a poem, you know.
This is a splash of colour
(black)
on scraps of dirty paper
(suddenly valueless, green, 155.956 × 66.294 mm
when we give up the ridiculous imperial measurements
distributed with foreign government and unrepresented
taxation, which, it seems, we also need to
give up)
saying "thanks for being around.
"Thanks for being
constant as the cloud of
crows at stirling castle
or the voice in Ted Haggard’s head
(he calls it "God," but whatever).
Thanks for lasting
the same 65 million
as dinosaur bones
and not being calcified.
"Thanks for being
the bass line when I
was playing lead
and embellishing the melody
when I couldn’t strum
anything other than
c – c – c – c."
This isn’t a poem, you know.
This is my map of you
and where your bones move
softly through your muscles
and skin into my skin
and muscles and bones
so we vibrate at the same pitch
which is the pitch of grass
growing in a summer afternoon
reaching for the sun.
Shhhhh… Listen closely.
A response to Nathan’s Collaborative prompt #59 where poets donated titles and those titles have been used as the basis for the text of other poems. I didn’t use them all, I slashed them to pieces and added in more words, but I think that’s the joy of these prompts that we start with complete (or nearly) texts and disassemble and re-create in the writing process. Definitely, if you have not, check out the other responses to this prompt over at Read Write Poem.
This is wonderful!
I like how Linda’s title “this isn’t a poem” became a springboard for a lot of the collages created. Proving a negative and all that.
The last stanza–you’ve nearly approached perfection.
angie´s last blog post: cowbird
I found myself entangled in this piece — and enjoying it…
rob kistner´s last blog post: SpitShine
I too was drawn in and delighted by this.
Carole´s last blog post: A world in shadows
The collage has created great verses. This too is one of those. Very well done!
Have a great new creative year 2009!
packets of love
gautami tripathy´s last blog post: butterfly cinquain
I love the self-referentiality and the way the poem “talks” to you. Good stuff!
I enjoyed reading this and like how you wove things together especially the crows
As always- Everyone, thank you for taking the time to read and comment. I am far from the best at acknowledging them in a timely fashion, but I do read and appreciate all of them. This is currently easy to do since there are not pages and pages of comments, but even if there are, I will read and appreciate and all-too-slowly respond. Thanks.