Three Poems (Bill Yarrow)

INVERSIONS OF POUND: CANTO I

Sun-rays of glitter with flour white with mixed water, wine sweeter then, and mead; first speech hurried in, cried I, and spirit pitiful, dead, impotent, impetuous the off, keep to… Sat I sternward from winds and weeping with heavy shouting with me, about crowded many these tender girls tears recent with stained souls, brides of dead, cadaverous Erebus; unguarded ladder long the down going…came Anticlea then and companions all lose. Odysseus then said, blood, ever unpierced mist, close-webbed, with covered heads, lance bronze, with mauled many men, sword narrow: the unsheathed cities peopled and lands Kimmerian, the bronze of slain sheep herds the slaughtered beasts more for men. My to cried, me upon pallor canvas bellying with onward out us bore, there men wretched over stretched night, swartest seas dark over Neptune, spiteful through return: shalt eyelids dark with thou bands, breast and girdles, coast dark, this to come? Thou art. How? Elpenor first spoke and me knew, wand, golden his holding.

ANTHROPOMETAMORPHISM

I have known a head become a callus, matriculate, stop shaving, move to Vegas

I have known a mouth become a gland, install a flange, sail to the Western Isles

I have known a bicep become a tear duct, argue its authority, sabotage the patriots

I have known a skin tag become a pustule, take up the flugelhorn, exterminate the badinage

I have known a heart become a kidney, vibrate, grow wings, fly off, into the piss

KICKING OUT THE ENJAMBS

I can be iambic when I want to be! Another day, another dolor… The forgotten man has been: forsaken. The forsaken man has been: forgotten. For heaven’s forsake [n]. Looky, looky, everything’s très mystique. Usury for you? Misery for me. Agita for breakfast? Telos for dinner. What price, tag? Wake me when the narcoleptics arrive.

The Pound poem is made up entirely of inverted lines and phrases from Canto I of The Cantos by Ezra Pound.

Anthropomorphism + metamorphism = anthropometamorphism.

Kicking Out the Enjambs: disrhythmic pentameter.

-- Bill Yarrow