imitations of poems while we wait for the homework mountain to be moved... will take faith?

Hey--

I've been stuck in the pit of homework for awhile, but thought you all might enjoy reading something of what I've been working on... Thanks for all the feedback you gave me on the previous poem. I've worked on it much, and will still need to work on it for my class, but the feedback has been very helpful. Thanks again. And, as for the following pair of poems, they were part of an imitation writing assignment and I think that they may be rather lofty-seeming... Let me know if you want me to say anything else with regards to them, because I'd be happy to--though I'm not sure I'll know what I'm talking about.

Precursor to the following RETREAT

Memory betrays.
The infancy of a moment
suffers under wisdom, under suggestion.
For many, rebellion comes as a refresher,
enabling the will to forge its own path for itself.
Very little yields in the desert;
and what is the desert but dry sand?
What, the sage, but a dry-bearded man?
Keen for one
to grow his own beard,
to forge through to his own length.
There is little wisdom,
yet much to gain
beginning with infancy.

Even saliva
clinging moist to hairs
makes one prone to a draft—
to a fierce gust ushering forth with longing,
only to burst these wells
of their stored resources.

SAGE ON RETREAT
[A somewhat mirror-like imitation of Sean Norton’s “JESS ON RETREAT” (35).]

Fluids don’t yield in dry sand,
so the forest has become providential.
Something traced is carved offensively, obtrusively.
No one learns from sage beards unless expected.
That expectation comes from the lips within the beards themselves.
Fluids, such as saliva, may cling to their whiskers,
and therefore razorblades may be moistened, then rust.
Drafty seasons seem untamable,
and humid ones, unable to train,
all these years are wearisome with their constant weathering.
One little thing may be to accept the advice.
When there is a path to take, take it,
or dream you could blaze your own, or don’t dream.
I thought it ran itself out in dying.
But literature still preserves a whole swell.
Trying to quit creating, save everything and return to it.
Hemlock is not water. Neither can age alone value you.