An imitation of “A Mount Everest of Time” by Dannie Martin
From Prison Writing In 20th-century America, pages 345-249
Patrick grady
by torrie revell
He stood there tall and stern,
like a colonel directing the frontier.
He brushed his illusory badge on his orange jumpsuit,
now an insignia of melancholy.
Along with the wounds of Vietnam,
Grady also picked up a drug habit-
A habit that he maintained by selling blow.
Charged with possession and conspiracy.
He left Nam in darkness and now
he has to live in it for 31 years.
A scar raised his top lip into a snarl.
He covered it with a skewed wiry mustache,
an imbalance which mirrored his resent:
“I can’t believe that the system of government that
I put my life on the line for could do this to me.”
Now serving in his country instead of for.
One mistake cost him his life and his family.
What happened to “a three-time-loser?”
A rapist gets one-fourth the sentence he did,
does that make him four times as evil?
He shudders at the thought of his daughter
growing up without a father,
but he can’t ask for them to wait.
like a colonel directing the frontier.
He brushed his illusory badge on his orange jumpsuit,
now an insignia of melancholy.
Along with the wounds of Vietnam,
Grady also picked up a drug habit-
A habit that he maintained by selling blow.
Charged with possession and conspiracy.
He left Nam in darkness and now
he has to live in it for 31 years.
A scar raised his top lip into a snarl.
He covered it with a skewed wiry mustache,
an imbalance which mirrored his resent:
“I can’t believe that the system of government that
I put my life on the line for could do this to me.”
Now serving in his country instead of for.
One mistake cost him his life and his family.
What happened to “a three-time-loser?”
A rapist gets one-fourth the sentence he did,
does that make him four times as evil?
He shudders at the thought of his daughter
growing up without a father,
but he can’t ask for them to wait.
This is one of the poems that I wrote for the poetry imitation assignment at the beginning of the semester. This was by far my favorite project because of the opportunity to "copy change" someones work; taking the bare bones of a piece of writing and transforming it into something innovative and new. Imitation is the best way to learn and master a skill and is a technique I often use in art, so it was a great experience applying this practice to writing. Instead of imitating a poem, I decided to take a different route and adapt the essay "A Mount Everest of Time" by Dannie Martin into three poems. There were four people described in this essay and I wrote the poems about these characters. I included "Patrick Grady," my best poem out of the three, in this anthology because it is distinctively different and very personal. I loved applying strong sensory detail and a few quotes from the essay within the poem. I added this to the "anger" stage of incarceration due to veteran, Patrick Grady's resentment towards the judicial system for the amount of time he was served for a drug related crime. He also feels betrayed by the country he served for and frustrated at the though of his daughter growing up without a father: A whirlwind of emotional rage that highlights this phase of grief well.