The Sorrows of Young Goethe

So, there's something odd that happens to my brain when I plug poetry into it; somehow, I delude myself into believing that I too could say something to the effect of "what ho" or "alas, poor Elsibeth" with a straight face. Of course, Culler has already covered the dimension of embarrassment that results from saying the absurdly silly sorts of things one finds in lyric poetry, so I'm not going to dwell on that. Instead, behold the product of Nicholas' brain and Goethe's Roman Elegies (and Kelly Clarkson... don't ask).

Oedipus after Goethe

what I saw I couldn’t even see, the pain
had swollen my eyeballs shut. I rubbed
them rawer than fresh fish slices ele-
gantly laid out on his shoes:

so the legend goes

the bruises I saw crawling over my ankles
I rubbed them rawer than the freshest fish
market she dragged me to ta date it out;
my feet never gave up hating her,

so the legend goes

the elegant slices of fresh fish we bought
with absent money made us sick, sicker
than a plague of angry bees and C’s I gave
a class of brainy hoboes,

so the legend goes

but when baldy, snide, most likely blind
Tiresias saw me waiting for him to tell
me what my problem was, he blew over
his coffee to cool it and stared,

so the legend goes

Immediately after which I got up with the intention of making some tea, walked into the kitchen, grabbed a beer out of the fridge, took it back to my desk, cracked it open, took a sip and spat out, "this isn't tea!" The following resulted from that:

frogger

the first of my idol thoughts said the frog
was lying (to me) like that, because he
wanted something more, wanted me to
ravish him till I was Donne; but I stuck

four small pins in pie slices of skin to
the four cardinal directions and took
my first good look at his guts, shiny,
and relatively smooth to the touch.

the girls who gagged and the pants that
sagged went about their business with
unnecessary patience: at any moment
the pickled frogs might leap across the

table to the window, where, the traffic
willing, they’d see their ponds again.
the second of my idyll thoughts lept
from butt to boob careful to avoid the

the saggy pants that caught stray stares
in a handful of bloody knuckles.
the third caught a bird twittering in the
corner a song of dictation to the fetal

pig whose organs she claimed for God
and country with tiny white flags.
I asked my frog if he’d like me to do
the same, but… he was ambivalent.

I was thinking about high school, because I recently got an email about a class reunion. At first, I was dead set against the idea, but after writing the above, I have to say the idea of seeing people whose names and faces I barely remember intrigues me. I'm wondering whether it will be some sort of persistent, creepy deja vu.

Doch man horcht nun Dialekten
Wie sich Mensch und Engel kosen,
Der Grammatik, der versteckten,
Deklinierend Mohn und Rosen.