Classic Mashes
The World Was Drawn To a Larger Pattern
He leant back against the
hives and with upturned face made
observations
on the stars, whose cold pulses were
beating amid the
black hollows above, in serene dissociation from
these two wisps of human life.
The occasional heave of the wind became the
sigh of some immense
sad soul, conterminous with the universe in space and with history in time.
Their souls expanded beyond
their skins and spread their
personalities through the suspense
of night.
"Why, I danced and laughed only yesterday!
To think that I was such a fool!
By Rick Andrews
All text excerpted in some form from Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles
It Ain't Houses and It Ain't Names and It Ain't Earth and It Ain't Even the Stars
Days running down like a tired clock.
You'd be surprised how people are
always losing hold of it; summer people
around laughing
at the funny
words on the
tombstones.
By Rick Andrews
All text excerpted in some form from Thornton Wilder's Our Town
Phoenix
The people who ate shadows for breakfast and
steam for lunch and vapors for supper:
Mightn't he sum up his entire life in one single
word or phrase that would stay with them
long after the hour had turned?
What could he say in a single word
that would sear all their faces and
wake them up?
By Rick Andrews
All text excerpted in some form from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
This is the Night, What it Does to You
Everything happened.
Slipped out the window the
same way I'd come in;
guts and juice again and ready to go.
By Rick Andrews
All text excerpted in some form from Jack Kerouac's On The Road
Mendoza Was Here, 12 Sept.
They talked as though
killing a man was nothing
more than depriving him of
his vigor.
It was on one of those days
that I realized that the only
corpse I couldn't bear to
look at would be the one
I would never have to see.
Color me gone. Mendoza was my buddy.
By Rick Andrews
All text excerpted in some form from Michael Herr's Dispatches
He Doesn't Mind
He doesn't mind the smell
of mustard gas and roses.
He doesn't mind the wars
coming like glaciers.
He doesn't mind plain old death.
The second hand would twitch,
and a year would pass,
and then it would twitch again.
He would raise his eyes to the sky,
and then it would twitch again.
He would to spend eternity visiting
this moment and that,
and then it would twitch again.
Somewhere a big dog would bark,
and then it would twitch again.
With the help of fear and echoes and
winter silences, that dog had a voice
like a big bronze gong.
And somewhere in there was springtime.
And on and on
it went—that duet.
How nice—to still get
full credit for being alive.
By Rick Andrews
All text excerpted in some for from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five
Under the Sculpture of the Moon
In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion
flashed his cold fires. He hesitated, about to yield to a stealing
tide of inertia. He would have liked to stand there with her
all night in the blackness, clasped a moment longer
than was necessary. Her blood seemed to be in
his veins, shooting through his body. His
heart was bound with chords which
an unseen hand was tightening
with every tick of the clock.
A shy secret spot, full of
the same dumb
melancholy
felt in his
heart.
By Rick Andrews
All text excerpted in some form from Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome