Mashed Poetoes
For my birthday I got… Spam.
This one caught my eye just before I deleted it from my email junk box today. The subject was a line from an Edward Lear poem I read to my son Sam often, called “the Jumblies”:
The link, though crafted from a variation of “akornphoto”, was spam of course, but the email body was comprised of lines from three different Lear poems:
“The Quangle Wangle’s Hat” (3 random lines from the poem)
“The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo” (1 line)
“The Pobble Who Has No Toes” (1 line)
Not only did the Lear reference catch my eye, but this little ditty was strangely similar to a “poetry mashup” I shared with some friends last year. Whoever (or whatever) generated this spam must be playing with some good voodoo.
So, here is my mashup: lines from various poems I thought sounded nice together. With maybe one line of bullshit in there. Feel free to riff back with your own mashups.
Mashed Poetoes
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
looking for an angry fix
And there the grass grew soft and white,
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
This it is, and nothing more.
What the hammer? what the chain?
What the fuck was in my brain?
‘Twas brillig,’ said I, ‘And the slithy toves
in the forests of the night
Doth frame thy fearful symmetry.’
And Alph, that sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Toward heaven still,
across America in tears,
to the door of my cottage in the Western night.