Where I Mashup My Favorite Twitter Poets

Inspired by @Soulclaphands' sparky mash poetry site, my current affair with luminous David Shields ("you are seeking to arrive at poetic truth, which can be reached only through fabrication..."), a naggy blocked writing morning, and, of course, some of my very favorite twitter poets, I "assembled" a poem. That is, I mashedup.  

It was liberating to romp with stolen words... to pluck them, lean them against each other, shift, tweak & shift again. Is it an adulteration of the originals?  To be sure.  Is it something new, too? Well, yes.

Knowing the originals adds all kinds of crazy drift (I've included links when available), which I love.  Like song covers, the new is richer when the source is burned into you too.  I also just stepped up and titled the thing.  It felt a tad proprietary at first, but now I can rightly say it's our poem.

Anthem

"Body" doesn’t do

your body justice. Patient

in my fumbling hands.

                                             My kiss

on his cheek the only thing I knew would help him

his hands, my hands,

silk scarves from God's perfumed drawer,

                  where your skin

is a window open on a night

of many weathers

O night, O sea - you are twittery and long.

                                   There is too much

in this world already. In a pile

Mistake yourself for shadows. 

Learn the lullabies of lint.


1st stanza - Gabrielle Calvocoressi Elegy Scale 
2nd stanza - Alex Dimitrov Dish Washer 
3rd stanza - Trish Harris First Baptist
4th stanza - Sarah Sarai Let Me Ask You This 
5th stanza - Kimberly Grey The Difference Between "Oh" and "O"
6th stanza - Stephanie Kartalopoulos Inside a Dark Room
7th stanza - Saeed Jones Sleeping Arrangement

Foodish Poem Love

She's such a master. You already know this if you read Plague of the Doves.

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes.

Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator

and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.

Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.

Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.

Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.

Don't even sew on a button.

Let the wind have its way, then the earth

that invades as dust and then the dead

foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.

Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.

Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles

or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry

who uses whose toothbrush or if anything

matches, at all.

Except one word to another. Or a thought.

Pursue the authentic-decide first

what is authentic,

then go after it with all your heart.

Your heart, that place

you don't even think of cleaning out.

That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth

or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner

again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,

or weep over anything at all that breaks.

Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons

in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life

and talk to the dead

who drift in though the screened windows, who collect

patiently on the tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything

except what destroys

the insulation between yourself and your experience

or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters

this ruse you call necessity.

-Louise Erdrich