A while ago I wrote some parodies of/homages to (i.e. respectful imitation of points of style) some contemporary poets. Here are three.
Love Song to Bike (after Lee Harwood)
As your frame is green you move me.
Riding northward with you, “thinking of you”,
and your frame, under me O
O Emmanuel. “biblical quotation.”
And they shall call his name Emmanuel,
which being interrupted is, God with us.
Your pale luminescent tubing
“moves me”, as with the strokes of my pedal
I move you.
Writing (after Tom Raworth)
writing is
writing is
a pain
of course
and painful
don’t like
doing it
don’t like
not doing it
don’t like
dislike
the problem
mainly being
con
cen
trat
ion
–
each time
each time
a paragraph
is such a
long space
away
and anyway
i blame
the internet
each time it begins
even the end
of the beginning
is too far
because
hey, did you know
Catherine wheels
are called
are called
Catherine wheels
because the martyrdom
of St Catherine
they tried to break
her back on a breaking
wheel
which were
which were
common
torture devices
in continental Europe
during the middle ages
but it was the wheel broke
not her back
so they cut off
her head
which i thought
illogical
and so writing
from here
to
there
is fucked
exactly.
Something concerning identity (after Denise Riley)
I have always thought, on the question of persons,
that myself yourself with conversation like a filmy skin
sliding between us, thought that thinking
of what I might be may hamper my being.
On the question of selves I have been consistent and furious.
Conversation births a third self bodied forth from words
dependent horribly powerful dependent on the participants
and unique, and not I, and not you, but not not. So what.
