Accidental Perfection: A Series

This was an interesting commission that I received: The poetry was to compliment an art show with the theme of "accidental perfection"... So, I used (what I think) is a creative approach to meeting that mandate.

I used a series of random generated events, combined with a series of rigid and mindful editing processes to create "accidental perfection"

First I took The titles of some of the principal pieces in the show and used these as topical themes.

Then I took classical quotations on the topic from established sources…I then created a new poem based on a condensed selection words that were contained within the body quote.

Next I entered this newly created poem into a random generator which scrambled the content.

I repeated this process through several cycles until I found an order that resonated for me

My final edit was to use lyrical license to restore this series of poems to a “perfect” and poetic state.

The results are below:

Accidentally

It is accidental
Not monumental
It is that art is
…Is that our art monumental?
…Is not accidental that art
Not monuments
…Are intimate

Perfect

Wanted
The way
Some beginning
I perfect
Hard and stories
Changing often
Some don't clear
An ending
Some don’t clear
Learning
That rhyme middle
Clear
Poems

Pine Cone

As of rudimentary fish…
Pine cone
Form the often
Small like leaf bud
Like “a”
Like “A”
A-s of
A-ppendage
A-s of small

Squirrel

I squirrel for meaning
Living like example
I must
…No

Great looking and whole
Living is you
Like
It means something

Collision

Of literature all the arts
Complicated
Theatre all
Visual
And tactile
Fractal

All the arts
Are a collision

Desire

Irresistible irresistibly to
Is
Too irresistible irresistibly
Is desired
Love is to be an
Love is a desire to
An be is Love
Desire desired be irresistibly

Interval

Another in mind or hate
Is freed
It two

It separates perfection
In the another
In which
It comes interval
Freed thought
Satisfied in separate calm

Hound Dog

Keep
Teeth
Among a hound

Bite it!
Bite like it lives you
Sticks you

Discovery

In attaining what we want
And all-which human
Our what-happiness
Illumination
Discovery
Reason
Nature can
Give none our obligations
Nor set the comparable

Process

Successive you arrive with portrait
Start search for/through egg
When start
The same
Again
Starting process:
The one with eliminations
The Volume
Comes through inevitably

Walk

Space you relate another person
Real space
We around and
Relate it almost as another
…Another
Walk around it as
Sculpture
And relate as
Real around it

Living Room

Doing over bad and community
About living bad pride
Can
About living room and
Can
Buildings in spots gathering
Someone is restoring
Someone be the new spots

Western

It's all guys
Where the
Weak

It's guys
…The strong guys

Where like - with weak
It's like with the weak

And the
Western good and bad guys

TV

Of lost rooms
On the
Television brutality
Into the room: America
Brutality into living of Vietnam
Comfort the living Vietnam

Brutality
Of the lost
Television was
America
…Learning

Resonance

I touched you
And I thought that I would never speak again

I touched you
And I forgot… What?… I kept forgetting

An E sailed out
Suspended on itself

Never setting
Tacking organically to the Horizon

It never looked back
Why should it?

It had said all it needed to say
It had said all that needed to be said

I tried to chase it with an A
But that note went its own way

Ignoring the compass And conformity
I released a D
And then a G

Set each free to seek
Their own infinities

I went with them all
Exiled and sustained

Long-later and light-headed
I returned to breath

Slightly
       …Changed

Literary Porn Star

Through the letter box today
Discreetly labeled and discretely sent
A package
No casual passer-by
Could determine the
Subversive nature of its printed content

Delicately I laid it out
Upon the bed
Turned page on page
Didn't realize my breath was held
Until I gasped and let it out
I had made the center spread

Shivered at the bondage clamps across
The navel of this publication - Cut in two
And perfect bound
The staples gleamed
My virgin work lay naked on this scandalous sheet
Spread-eagled in this nude review

Whatever would my mother think of me
If she knew that just this June
I was a Playmate of the Month
In that pornographic mag: the LRC


(On being first published in the June 2010 edition of the Literary Review of Canada)

At the No-Tell Motel

It started and it ended
At the no-tell … Motel

You were late
And I was drunk
And we were both
Again … Yet again

You were married to your job
And probably to someone else
But we talked about your work
And how your boss was such a jerk

And how to deal with clients
Who were slow-pay … No-pay

And while we took our customary showers
We joked about all the DNA
On the top sheet and the floor

And with all that contamination how
They’d never be able to identify ours

Unless it was a TV show

We tried to recreate our own Crime Scene
But the lust … Was dust

We were thinking of somewhere else
Afterwards - We lay there

Imagining the ticks
Of a digital clock

Waiting to see
Who would suggest
The early checkout

To make a simple statue

The sculptor says:

Consider the subject matter
Prepare sketches
From every angle

Surprise yourself with its geography
Ride imaginary camels
Across the desert of its flanks
The caverns of its flaring nostrils
The mountains of its shoulders
The rivers of its mane

Listen so carefully
That you can hear the sound of each hoof placed
The before, the during and the after of its pace

Feel
The thud of mud
The recoil of a thousand pounds
Vibrating through soil
To engage the soles of your own feet

Now take a mallet
A chisel and a block of stone

And simply
Chip away
The parts
That are not horse