Poetry Thursday

Today I am poemless, rhymless, and without meter. I'm seeing nothing in syllables, no images in words, no sound in the rain and wind--except rain and wind. No canto or calligramme. I've locked my muse in the hall closet and she can't get out even by being coy. Not even by slipping Shakespeare or Shelley under the door.

The prompt for this week is, "we want Poetry Thursday participants to be inspired be one another’s work. The idea is that you leave a line from one of your poems in the comments, knowing that other participants might use that line as a jumping-off point for a new poem of their own." This is not that. I participated the last time. For today, I've looked through a thoroughly disappointing February issue of Poetry, a journal I usually devour. None of the poems made much sense--well, Billy Collins' was OK, but you'd expect that from a poet that famous. Therefore, I'm submitting the first line of each poem--thinking this accumulation makes about as much sense as anything else in that issue.

February rolls out its first lines
lifted, fitted, mixed and matched by Norma

If Parmigianino had done it. . .
Having failed for a third time to witness
Starlings’ racket; the straining redbud,
a red-feathered bird on a fence post
cooked by crooked
flames from the burn barrel
in the lost city of gold that was Oroville
I see you in your backyard’s lavender.

If they’re right, the whizkid physicist-theorist think tank guys,
She could be any woman at all.
In this sentimental painting of rustic life
A guitar has moved in across the street
Of course nostalgia Of course brooding
The world is wasted on you. Show us one clear time
You can tell by how he lists
That greasy letter into which my legs entered.