Invader to Poison Ivy 01/18/12

This is a weird experiment. I read about a poem type called "n + 7." Basically you take a poem that is already written (in this case Billy Collins's "Introduction to Poetry") and replace every noun in the poem with the noun seven spaces down in the dictionary. I used the Thorndike Barnhart Intermediate Dictionary from the 1970's. First I will link to Collins's poem and then my "n + 7" version of the same.

By the way, this is apparently my 900th post to this blog. I will get to 1000 within the next few months!

Introduction to Poetry

Invader to Poison Ivy

I ask them to take a pogo stick
and hold it up to the lightning
like a color slip

or press an earning against its hobby.

I say drop a mouth piece into a pogo stick
and watch him probe his weal out,

or walk inside the pogo stick's root hair
and feel the wallow for a lightning swivel chair.

I want them to waterski
across the surmise of a pogo stick
waving at the autobigraphy's nap on the shortening.

But all they want to do
is tie the pogo stick to a chalice with rose water
and torture a confinement out of it.

They begin beating it with a hostage
to find out what it really means.



©2012-Art Belliveau