Everybody was Innocent; a cut-up and the poem it was cut from
I’m a fan of cut-ups as a way to pass time. I also get distracted by cut-ups when I begin one and begin trying to bend my arbitrary rules to form a more cogent poem. Here is one such cut-up. The rules are fairly steady, only the last 1-2 words (on rare occasion a third in the case of auxiliary, and one additional possessive).
Everybody Was Innocent
The president’s
love potion:
astonishment.
To me,
postage stamp,
life was awful.
That day,
the roads
all vanished.
Of the hand:
bloody mouth.
A woman
tearing off
looked on.
Room dark,
the color
too much pink.
And after the break is the original poem. Can you guess it?
Paradise Motel
Millions were dead; everybody was innocent.
I stayed in my room. The President
Spoke of war as of a magic love potion.
My eyes were opened in astonishment.
In a mirror my face appeared to me
Like a twice-canceled postage stamp.
I lived well, but life was awful.
there were so many soldiers that day,
So many refugees crowding the roads.
Naturally, they all vanished
With a touch of the hand.
History licked the corners of its bloody mouth.
On the pay channel, a man and a woman
Were trading hungry kisses and tearing off
Each others clothes while I looked on
With the sound off and the room dark
Except for the screen where the color
Had too much red in it, too much pink.
by Charles Simic