This is the result from the "Engaging the Absurd" exercise 9 from pages 104-5 in Writing Poetry:
Droppings
A porcupine postures himself in the limelight
of a casinoed street. Neon razors coagulate
as he struts his stuff. The spindles of his shell
bristle as he admires his rolex,
sprinkles of cauliflower tickle the humid air.
A mosquito takes in the scene
like a drag of blood breath,
siphoning mother's nature from a piercing
of the Nissan's nipple. Indigent extract
slightens a smile.
A cow catches her breath
after punting a wounded starfish.
All systems go. Wheezing
through the solar plexus,
asexual and wondrous,
like a snowflake on a school boy's
temple.
Take a look at Robert Lowell's "Skunk Hour" for a great idea of how to bend some of this wonderful writing toward another context. Again, Darren, there's hardly a line in here without some wonderful and wholly salvageable beauty.
ReplyDeleteWe should talk soon about taking your writing to the next step. You have clearly mastered line-by-line strangeness and unlikeliness, but you also don't go TOO far. Even in a poem expressly indebted to absurdity, you are able to mine language for something like this:
the limelight
of a casinoed street
or
asexual and wondrous,
like a snowflake on a school boy's
temple.
This is clearly the DNA of poetry. Now let's build an organism.