Sometimes I will rewrite a poem from scratch over and over until I think I have come up with something. Often, I come up with nothing, and I abandon the piece. I abandoned the following piece(s), but I enjoyed the process. The following are a response to a poem about stone arrangements like Stonehenge in the U.K. I will leave the poet I’m responding to unnamed. It was not an especially good poem, and these are not especially good responses.

1.

in looking at stones,

you imagine a story

of the gods, of the

overwhelming sense

of the sacred they evoke,

assuming it rests in

the stones and not

in you.

2.

the stones, you say,

are sacred, but

they are just stones,

while you, poet, friend,

are a creator

looking for redemption.

3.

you hold a stone,

turning it in your hand,

trying to figure out

how it came to be,

seeing in it shapes,

potential places

it could be.

4.

poet,

fuck you and your stones,

you and your smug

academic lines.

the stones stand beyond you,

if they stand, and you,

with your alliteration

and scattered diphthongs,

will die.

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