Ring around of roses – foto Smith
Promise Land
Greyhound bound
To Tupperware City
Light like liquid Zen
Wars time, tatters tight
As tight asses tie
Meat neat man to kine, kino
Contempt of course
Playing Plato’s barn
Blue bloods
Stabilize fish at 7
Mime the ma’am
Bamboo cathedrals
In wondrous disarray
Just outside real
Where the fat
Flee frantic
Fleece feed the poor
Competing EXIT signs
Dance specific disease
Rude crude
Plus tax
Bouncing Betty’s
Slouching Bethlehem belly
Slips on guilt
& splinters.
— Smith, 1995
Played Dr John’s 1968 tune “I Walk on Guilded Splinters” and remembered I’d lifted part of his title for the last three words of this poem — “guilt & splinters.”
And since I’m confessing, I borrowed “slouching Bethlehem belly” from William Butler Yeats’ 1919 poem The Second Coming which ends with “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Cool white – foto Smith
For me everything is borrowed (or if i twere a professional “stolen”) but i am amateur poet to be sure.
In my humble opinion we all lift and borrow from the greats and from each other and quite likely from experiences and things we do not even recall.
And I guess, though i do not wish to venture too far, that what matters is what the poet, artist, writer, etc . .does with the idea, the word, etc. is what the point is doing art, poetry, etc . . .
peace
and thank you