borrowing and recycling...

The Poetic Asides weekly challenge for last week was to write a "cento" poem--a poem that pulls all lines from the works of other poets. Well, I've read a lot of poetry but don't have it all memorized, so I figured it would take a while for me to find the time. But thanks to Miss Pottenger and her 3 notebooks full of poems--and a little bit of time with the works of Billy Collins and my 2 books of various poets--I was able to gather several pages of lines.

Tonight, I spent some time putting these lines together, recycling them in a way, and creating something altogether new. Here's my poem (with a nod to the original authors at the end):

Parentheses

In deserts, where no men abide,
the lone and level sands stretch far away,
and the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes—
the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I know the paths I’m likely to walk tomorrow—
ask me no more if east or west—
down to a sunless sea
(no one should feel this alone.)
You sleep through the thunder
and all that’s best of dark and light.
Things have had time to get complicated.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I am undone tonight;
slain by a single silent piece of ice.
O the bleeding drops of red—
(is loving someone that much of a crime?)
If we could but touch the open space
under the weight of water and years and folly—
pack up the moon and dismantle the sun—
for this, for everything, we are out of tune.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)


With thanks to the following poets: Edmund Waller, Percy Bysshe Shelly, Edgar Allen Poe, T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Carl Dennis, Thomas Carew, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Jewel Kitcher, Madeline L’Engle, Lord Byron, Billy Collins, Ben Jonson, Janet R. Prinzing, Walt Witman, Andrew Pottenger, Kevin Max Smith and W.H. Auden