Classic Mashes

Rick Andrews

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

Bio: Rick Andrews is a recent graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. He is originally from Boston, a town he now misses for the first time. When he’s not writing, he enjoys running around, thinking about the brain (and the things it does), and making things up in front of other people. His work has appeared, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere—he’s as mystified about it as you are.