Me! A Damn Dirty Plagiarist! Imagine That!

So I wrote this tiny little poem, which I posted on my poetry blog:

portrait
her mouth is a wide
cut, her eyes
pierce
you
can't tell
who is being
and who has been
hurt

Pretty minor, just a few descriptive slashes and pokes. Hardly more than a haiku, really. But something bothered me about it, and rightly so! Because today I googled up a few variations of the key elements and imageries (what few there were) and of course, smack my forehead! As if I didn't know! The image of a woman's mouth as a cut figures prominently right at the front of the quite famous "The Kiss" by Anne Sexton:

"The Kiss"

My mouth blooms like a cut.
I've been wronged all year, tedious
nights, nothing but rough elbows in them
and delicate boxes of Kleenex calling crybaby
crybaby, you fool!

Before today my body was useless.
Now it's tearing at its square corners.
It's tearing old Mary's garments off, knot by knot
and see — Now it's shot full of these electric bolts.
Zing! A resurrection!

Once it was a boat, quite wooden
and with no business, no salt water under it
and in need of some paint. It was no more
than a group of boards. But you hoisted her, rigged her.
She's been elected.

My nerves are turned on. I hear them like
musical instruments. Where there was silence
the drums, the strings are incurably playing. You did this.
Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped
into fire.

Now mine is hardly to be compared to hers - clearly. That goes without saying. And it goes without saying that I must acknowledge the clear debt to and primacy of Sexton's imagery, here. I have no idea what sort of mental block allowed me to post mine in the first place, but having done so, I would rather pay tribute than take it down.

Bless.

Anne, with her father
is out in the boat
riding the water
riding the waves
on the sea.
- Peter Gabriel, "Mercy Street"