imitation as collaboration

Over at The PoCo, Dana suggested we try imitating someone else, since we know each other pretty well. I haven’t poemed as much as some of the tribe, and there are some folks I haven’t worked with closely at all. So I took the opportunity to try to write like someone I admire, but don’t know as well as I’d like.

Here’s my poem.

Running to You

I’d run more, if I had longer
legs, knees that worked.
Knees that bend over
your torso often, abandoned.

Work at the lovemaking
that keeps us both keen.
I’d run to you and wonder
what kept you so long.

I’d long for days when we didn’t
have to leave this house.
Leave this house, or this room.
This bed, love mussed sheets.

Love must shed old habits,
but only worn ones, frayed.
Frayed edges are what bind
me to you, to your pretty feet.

I used to suck your toes,
massage your soles. I don’t bend.
I’m not as limber as I used to be,
head over heels in love.

This love is rock-solid, more
comfortable than it should be.
Gravel paths are easier on my knees,
my feet than they are on concrete.

Yet I trip on small rocks.
I find stones in my shoes.
If I didn’t have rocks in my shoes
I’d run more. To you.

* * *
I’m not sure I pulled off writing like slynne, but what I was trying to respond to specifically was her athletic ability, which, while I know is not writing, still informs her & is something that is dormant, or sluggish for me right now. She is physical and in the moment. She writes whatever comes in her head. (She gave me a hint about that one.)

I wanted to get out of my head and into the physical world. And I thought reading through some of her recent poems on her blog, and giving imitating her general style would stretch me a bit.

It’s a first, rough draft. But it did what I hoped it would do. Got me physical. Now if slynne could only help me exercise my muscles every day.

Oh, and it was my 13th wedding anniversary yesterday, too.

Related posts:

1. A birdy told me to CoPo
2. A mash-up: I Will Wake Up
3. Collaboration
4. as black as a bird flying out the window
5. Dem bones