petroleum disjunctions

After listening to a radio show on John Cage this afternoon, I found myself in the mood for chance operations.

For the first poem, I sketched an outline of where I wanted the words to go on the page, then flipped through a poetry book choosing one word from the first page of each poet's section to fill in the blanks.

For the second and third I determined the placement of words by closing my eyes and making random marks on the page. I filled in the nth blank with the nth word from succeeding pages in the second poem, and I filled in the nth blank with the first word from randomly-chosen pages in the third poem.

I did make a couple of minor edits in the first poem, and, in the second two, I generally skipped over conjunctive words, definite/indefinite articles, prepositions, etc.

  

 



Glass counsel beyond you

 

	machine apparent a thousand:

 

lines.

 

 

Faith on loan.		Invisible banter.

 

		The Ganges,		shoes,

 

 

a real telephone.	(Center		pulsing,

 

private.          	 Hours --

  					hero.

 

 		This mineral



 

bellhop

 

in agony.

 



		Dry: harbor.

 

		Inky tiger

 

	endless).

 

 

Gangway russet, Old Boy.  Political scraps,

 

 

snowflakes.			Oops.  Spoke -

 

 

Gentlemen.  Membrane.  My forehead.

 

 

 

 

 



 

  

 

 petroleum deafness

 

 

 			Kabul

 

 

 					rustled

 

 

 			national

 

 			fear

 

 				can't

 

equip

 

 

 

 

 	    zoned

 

 

                shaded     counsel

 

                                             one

 

dreaming for

 

 

             explaining grass

 

family

 

 

                               another

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

          even

 

 

                              nonexistence

 

                           applies

 

       open

 

 

                     knots                    future

                     laid

 

 

disjunctions

  

                                              ruins

 

                      fear   arm's

 

 

 

                                  

                                     simon

 

                           stream

                              

                               other pencil

 

 

 

finch close