To be satisfied, comfortable,
nay, even confident avec mon visage,
ma chemise, la couleur de ma texture,
the comforting weather forty years,
silvering chestnut, softened denim,
******* relaxing, cradled lower,
crows feet etched,
sun worn skin leathered well.

To be comfortable with my tone of beauty,
a select vintage for specific taste.

I'll not suite most passers by,
subtle, almost undetectable,
but for the one who cannot
     shake me from his memory,
the one who will turn to follow
     to witness my slow aging,
the one who's weather I recognize as home.

If you
look at me
as though
you
have something
to say,
Tell me,
Say it.
The pause,
with an expression,
gives me
little
to understand
only much
to fill in
with my
own story
of
what
you
want
to
say.

There is no easy route to Liberty and Love
while we wind ourselves up to our shoulders in damages
by stepping on, shrugging off, exploding onto, withholding from,
taking advantage of, not respecting much, demanding everything,
really, just being young, or old, or in the wrong place
with the wrong people.

It's simple and honest when we peek at ourselves
through naked spectacles.

It's resisting the tearing apart that shreds,
like newish Velcro that is so determined to stay together,
despite what forces are pulling it open and away.
Velcro won't be able to resist the ripping,
and eventually, it relaxes back, each side free from the other.

A wind comes in between two halves when they separate.
Grace, fear, danger, sadness, potential, anger, alone time.

I have no rhythm for how one becomes two again.
It can occur with the next rising sun,
or the next passing of Haley's Comet,
or never ever to occur again,
each half to it's own life beat.

I think though,  
if there is an easy street to Liberty and Love,
It probably isn't easy.

It must have a speed limit of eroding stone,
with words like understand, listen, consider, wait, and loyalty
mortared in mosaic all along her way.

In order for our voice
to work properly,
our heart
must be spinning
while simultaneously
our mind
has clear vision.

All the while,
our will must possess
enough force to push truth
through so as to connect
the song of our life.
Then, God too might even listen.

Amen.

Not tonight, I think to myself,
although today was soothing
in it's pace.

Spending time tinkering with oven grease,
domestic moments on my knees.

Still, not tonight.  I care none for
the ache of human neediness.
I wish not to concern my feelings
with another person's wants.
I want us all to be satisfied with what we have tonight.
We can't have all our cravings.
Only the bits that fall in our lap.

simple gestures of remorse like two words
held loosely in the mouth so with a whisper
they float upon the breath as you hum them
through on a song from your heart.

This body needs a break,
heart muscle beaten down,
went tragedy from risk,
made hatred from adoring gaze.
Thought I'd spared his life,
turns out he a casualty.
Enemies all around,
light life flew far away.
Now grief builds in my center,
hardly a breath can leave my chest.
Love lost, never gained, all options just shut down.
Only God can heal this pain.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful hearth,
warm like hot orange tea,
spiced with an arm around my shoulder,
trimmed overhead with a garland draping an archway,
lit with warm flame,
tipped atop honey candlesticks,
standing at attention to salute my approach
to the fire.

I'll take this hand of mine, open palm wide,
fill it full of your stars, friends, laughing, spitting.
I'll enfold them in my grip
I'll lift them higher than I can see,
spin myself around like a prima ballerina
en point, arriere,
open my hand mid-turn and
let you aaaaaaaall flyyyyy awaaaaay....

To the cosmos again you return
to imbibe, rejoice, and celebrate.

Leaving me sitting still,
listening to the clear air passing by my ears.
Not one threat or fear lives in this breeze.
I am alive again!  
Thank God for this lesson before I die,
thanking him that I can try one more go around,
never again letting in the specter of disdain
for my flesh, my innards, my people, my blood.

Bow my head and release angry thoughts,
they need no longer haunt me.

Now good people...find me, find this place,
walk across my threshold and into my hot embrace,
I have been waiting, waiting, waiting,
for this very day.

Yoga is the union with God,
God is love.
I believe in Christ,
a word not often spoken on the mat.

The pain and agony of sin
tears at our souls and brings tears of suffering.
Ahimsa: Thou shall not ******.
Satya: Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
Asteya: Thou shall not steal.
Brahmacharya: Thou shall not commit adultery.
Aparigraha: Thou shall not covet.

Then:
    You shall have no other gods before Me.
    You shall not make idols.
    You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
    Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
    Honor your father and your mother.
    
It goes deeper,
not even to think a harmful thought, or wish a harmful deed.
Not even to steal an extra moment of someone's time,
Or lie to yourself about how happy you are.

Lift the sin, lift the illness, lift the suffering.
Like a miracle disease is erased once the lie leaves the room.  
God, Christ, watches each moment,
every breath,
each half of a thought
we just made.

A breath of prayer and honesty
lifts the veil we hold in place
over our eyes.

Careful not to lower it too fast all over again.

Did I tell you today how sorry I am?
I remember eating that last loaf of bread,
black bean and brown rice,
down Cherry Street one morning while I walked
myself to work.

Days gone by like tap, tap, tap down.

All my bad, bad days crept up on me.
Tears are fallin' now.
New days with snow light a way,
It's the big give away sale now,
Promise i won't crave what they were made to have.

Not mine, not mine,
do not covet, do not want.
Blessed with a cup of joe and a good son,
I do know what all that is worth.

Hold my hand please,
I'll need you in my hours of needs.

Time now to wait this out...
Life down for the winter.

Hot coffee on a rainy, rainy night
casts a spell,
soothing fright.

Gone away now,
he's gone away.
Ne'er to return now,
never you mind about me.

Foundation block holds solid,
single ladies put it in place,
so when the earth does it's shaken,
not one foot fall misses pace.

Scares come by day now,
breath means more to me.
One foot, two foot,
I'll tread the path through this hollow,
gripping tight to everything bolted down.

All I know is what feels wrong at times feels right at times.
How long should I stand in this space?
Breaking human heart is never a fair game.
Will I destroy myself, what is a real feeling?

Twilight time,
be it day's rise or fall,
brings our cherished companion,
our life's source to us or from.

In hues like kingly plum,
a shy girl's blush,
the Indian turquoise,
diving or surfacing,
it merges through delicate moments.

We wait in it's seamless motion,
watching each second and half,
putting all other details on hold,
soaking up the last or the first of the day's heat,
as the crescendo of light flashes upon the sky.

Black 5,
Phone dead.
No lines,
Whispering winds.
Kittens on the table,
The world still spins.
Black 5,
Phone dead.

Hello Despair, my constant companion,
threatening my stride, corrupting any confidence,
insulting my intelligence, forbidding me to improve,
denouncing me as unworthy, I recognize you.

I'll not let you win, even when you bear more strength,
fighting till the death, mine or yours.
I resist your name for me,
old age coming, colorless shape,
forgotten something,
needless.

Under your heavy core that masses like lead,
I'll wimper with a finale breath,
even when there is no one left to believe, remember, or hear,
I will fight against you.

An apron, blueish, A line
Dress
Long grown, brunette, wave riddled
Locks
Cream fresh, egg shell, porcelain
Skin

Not all life is a state of euphoric bliss.
there is ache within many moments.
Reason with our lives,
convincing ourselves of our peace,
our quest, reaching, working, Tapas on.

Surrendering when exhausted,
our last struggle undone,
crying like children
because we have no recourse
from the power of God.

Whether we move or stand
his breath stokes our fires,
soothing our tears,
cradling our age.

The days wear us down,
the unresolved wish
inhabiting every moment
until we relinquish our grasp
around ourselves
and offer our lives up in a prayer.

Pleasure is for the beautiful,
while with ease of face and blessed body
they float, flow, slink, and slow grace.

Puritan rigor and worked hands
for comely folk.
Thick of stock in legs and waist,
face puffed, fattened cheeks, folding in upon itself.
Grown into a gross excuse
fitted only for hard labor.
Barely surviving.

All stays quiet around this room
save for the clanking of an architect
below, carving out a plate for noodles.

The sun sets now,
our day finishing up
after this sullen Sunday
wraps up it's show.

On our street outside today
the hiss of large brakes,
a grind of a chipper
cutting into our damp October forest
knock at each fading minute of the rest of the day.

The dry heat of summer leaves out the back.
Gone for the year.
Wild fires rest.
We gather wood again,
bringing the flames inside at night,
drying out October's rain.

I say, "tell your story!"
No matter how many times it's been heard
Refuse the critics dogeared comments
about broken records,
get out of your rut,
let it go.

Our story is our pleasure
our experience of breath
Lived despite the presence
or non-presance of tragic moments.

Cut foot
bad catch
wrong number
missed bus

small instances of life:
lost job
low pay
Lonely Sundays
no friends.

Let me know, tell me each minute.
Share.

"Arise!" I hear an old woman sing.
I could grumble like a glut
and pishaw her joy like an ungrateful
spoiled child ******
from poverty,
punches, and
poor grades.

I could arise dancing,
waving arms over head,
smile mapped from cheek to cheek,
feet tapping on a
chilly
tiled
floor.
drinkin' my oj,
shufflin' my good day,
off to school and away
up.

I could lie still
and wish to die
slow.
Never move.
stare out my bright
window.
Waste inside more.
Close my eyes,
go back to sleep.

I could middle ground,
roll out of bed,
turn to the left,
scratch my hair mess,
hate today, miss my dreams,
remember that one
plan I'd made yesterday
to see.
Turn on the music box,
find a harmonious voice,
cry from this strangle I'm in,
and hope for one more sin.

Monday morning
kitten climbs
cloudy sky.

Tobacco, the first intoxicant wrapping me in a gauze of sultry skip days,
Wine, beer, swimming pools with bikinis, suntans, tropicana oil,
Kansas heat on concrete. Lawrence, Ks, KU, art and black, red ochre conti crayons,

Life drawings of nudes on platforms, fat, poor,
glamorous models, how i wanted to be one of them
stripping myself in front of you all,
my young beautiful naked body
you'll never see that again.

Fresh grass and lemonade,
Volvos driving across our country
55mph...80 was faster.

One night stands
led to terror.

Hurting men forever.

Barns and Nobels stealing book
coffee was new
young at 25.

Walking the street in Kansas City,
Warwick street with it's three story walk up
trimmed colonial white
1995.

Tea, herbs, kale with sesame,
Health food shops on corners
young women of 23 starting their biz.
We could do it our own way back then.

Abortion, adoption, college graduation,
law school, med school, drop out,
write.

Chad Abushanab
Halloween


For Halloween this year I’ll be a man.
I’ll work my hands to ****** rags and use
my fists to prove which truths I understand.

I’ll paint my face into a mask of bruise,
like coming home after a barroom fight.
A man should fight, my father said, and lose

sometimes—his beaten brow will mock the night.
I’ll swallow up the pint of Cutty Sark.
I’ll stumble home and fumble with the light.

He said the bottle barely leaves a mark
burning away the places where you’ve bled.
On Halloween, I’ll drink the autumn dark.

I’ll be a man the way my father said.
On Halloween, we’re closer to the dead.
His teeth were crooked and his hands were red.

↔

Chad Abushanab is a PhD student at Texas Tech University. His poems and essays have appeared in Raintown Review, Bayou Magazine, Jellyfish Magazine, and Colorado Review, among others. He is the managing editor of Arcadia.

Lauri Anderson Alford
more or less



fifteen years ago more or less
my father killed a man
on the road with his car
of course to him
it isn’t more or less
he knows the date the time
to the minute
the pattern on the man’s shirt
how blood on asphalt looks
only like water
lately he’s been repeating himself
calling to tell me the same things
over and over again
my grandmother has died
his sisters are *******
there was bone in the ashes
I worry he might disappear
again as he did
fifteen years ago more or less
when the road took the man
more or less
after he died more or less
while my father watched
more or less or more
which is it I want to know
because a thing like that
can never be both
or else it is nothing
only more and never less
or less and never more
more road more black
more wet more night less
stars less sight more
fast more glass
less heart less breath
less hands on chest
more quiet more time
more nothing and always
more and more and more
and more less

↔

Lauri Anderson Alford’s writing has appeared in Cincinnati Review, Greensboro Review, The Common, Willow Springs, Meridian, and elsewhere. She lives in Auburn, Alabama, with her husband and sons. Visit her online at www.lauriandersonalford.com.

Poetry sings humanity's tale of living.

My tired gray hair destroys zeal.

Cat sticks in the thicket deep.

A long time ago we spoke.

Here's a challenge for any poet out there...and a tiny bit of critique, on this site many of the poems are about the same subject, love, sadness, the blackness of life, suicide, hate for the life they are in, nature. And they are often times very general. What about something more specific, a moment, an event, a person,

Here's the challenge:
Find one of your favorite poets and pick a poem you like by them. Look at the subject matter and write a poem of your own using the same or a similar subject matter. Leave your poem in the comments section...


Here's my poet and poem i picked:

The Morning Baking

Grandma, come back, I forgot
How much lard for these rolls

Think you can put yourself in the ground
Like plain potatoes and grow in Ohio?
I am **** sick of getting fat like you

Think you can lie through your Slovak?
Tell filthy stories about the blood sausage?
Pish-pish nights at the ****** in Detroit?

I blame your raising me up for my Slav tongue
You beat me up out back, taught me to dance

I'll tell you I don't remember any kind of bread
Your wavy loaves of flesh
Stink through my sleep
The stars on your silk robes

But I'm glad I'll look when I'm old
Like a gypsy dusha hauling milk

by Carolyn Forché

Disaster mister why do you haunt me?
Why do you send me beauty formed of friend
singing lullabies, wooing me even though he says
Not him, not me.
I can not help myself
craving his eyes to look, from a distant place
in the room I swoon in.

Upon my hands, the white of my skin,
the arc of my back, my shy insecurity.
His eyes never sway, swerve, or veer upon
any other delight that might tempt him with angelic grace.

This daydream consumes me,
each moment of waking hours ticked off by
a pretend tearing me from my life in three dimensions.

"The man of God does everything opposite to what the world does or approves of; he goes "against the grain" of society because he knows these things displease God"

So I fail to be upright, in full view.
   I ask to take this replayed vision away,
          remove the desire,
               change me, change this, let me know, remove my life.

Be bold enough
to send me to him
or from him
or him to me
or him from me
Or what have you given us all these days?

Goodbye...why?

Don't leave out the wandering door,
sit and finish these spiraled nutted cookies,
Apple Hill Special from the twisting trees
aging in the generations old summer tilled acreages.

We can glide our right hips over our right thighs

Shut down that calling of faint voices,
chattering through their cocktail party smiles.
While they promise a wealthy life
of building the all the world's a  stage,
hammers fall one-two, one-two.

Rest here your child upon this wood plank floor,
see how he crawls swiftly, ambling upwards, notice his mobility?

Child's pose, rest here

The pocked market walls of this tatty room enshrine him,
he has laid his foot falls down, see,
Resounding, forever to re-sound.

Breath in, breathing out

Wait You!
Before you leave,
turn towards the rising horizon,
this foothill sun has still to set.
The day draws on so we can listen, the fiddler,
have you seen him yet? In town? No?
Then you shall not leave until his strings are spent.

The body of a tree
stretches beyond arm's length
of our five year plan,
brittle leaves descending upon our child's head.

I would do anything to warn you not to turn into that direction keeping you safe and warm.

I can carry you on my shoulders for the rest of your life until I walk into the dirt.

it will be 3 days before you decide that you're going to fall down so far you smell the waste and happiness of everyone around you.

I will be the observer, bound,

Frozen, crazy, sprawling on the floor, drunk, forgotten, wasted, slobbering, stabbed and stapled, whining, cluttered, contaminated, stolen.

Till the day we die
tiny words upon our lips
our eyes drill into the unseen
for us to create what will become.

Late in the day we find
a sunset too soon upon us
rushing down a hush
before our world bloomed to life.

A young impetuous boy
terrible with temptation
taunting the audience
daring them to discover unwanted secrets.

Made sullen, weakened
drunk and unvictorious.
Ripped by a wave called Timeline
that was more monsterous than his provocations,
making no exceptions, just anhilating all without predjudice.

Suntea ripened and flatend
before we could attend to it's invitation
the afternoon sank without us
taking one moment to cuddle amongst ourselves at dusk.

Now evening lolls in, black shoulders knudging
peircing lamps outside disturbing a softer natural dark
buzzing us, alien energy stimulating our eyes, our humors.

Someone orders a drink, and the night becomes lost
as his mind fades to forget his tiny, tiny words.

When I am alone I can imagine a future for myself
I plan, It seems like there are possibilities again.
I might meet a stranger with potential
I might meet an outstanding lover.

If my room is empty of anything save my life
then I can fill it, empty it, fill it, empty it
as long as I am able to attract something to me.

I can rewrite my story time and time again.
Today I can be a drunk sleeping with slobs.
Tomorrow I can be vegan cooking with my earth friends.
Then I can be a writer and pick up some dangerous man
who will steal from me soul or property.

Walking through my life again, from begining till now.
I want to find my life again, and somehow keep what is gone.

What do you do when the world stops encouraging you?
You've passed the nubile age of 18-24
you are no longer a fledgling,
in fact, long past that point.
You have no charm in terms of possible potential
you've aged out of that category
Now you are only an uncomfortable, wierd old person in the audience
and God forbid if you try to get on stage,
embarressment, boredom, pity
that is your comeuppance.

What do you do, then, when the world has no more encouragement for you?
By now you should have succeeded, or be on your comeback tour,
not still be in the gate!

Breath, hold in the hate, dissolve back into understanding, breath again.
Your chance hung there like a celluloid moment
on your twenty-third year, you were daring.
When the Midwestern plains rolled by undiscovered still
Preserved innocently in a Laura Ingels Wilder novel.

Rolling green waving grass
sunlight burning warm to my skin
sweat beads down and wets my cheaks
no where to go, everything to be.

The intellectual saddness of Camus was found by only by those diving into the abyss in search of divinity.

Bow your head, take one more breath, release...
your life had mistakes, fear, weaknesses you let rule the day.

Someone asked why (if you write) do you write.
Well...

I can't say I have a cause anymore,
I'm not an activist these days.
I've given up on the fight between good/evil
right/wrong
big/little
rich/poor
Let them all win, let them all lose
the side to be on changes too quickly
and in one slow word, I am the enemy.

I am not after being the ***** mystery.
I don't write to be a *** symbol, ******, a **** poet
It just doesn't work for me.
My boyancy deflates,
there is no pucker to my lips,
no pout on my face.

I hesistate to declair writing "fun".
It isn't, well, it can be if you don't care if it is "good".

It's not that I even have anything to say to the world.
The World knows much better than I.
So why?

No reason.

Your lives are much sweeter than mine,
triumphs mixed with parties,
action and crowds.

I can hear it when you speak up
despit your fear, agony, youth, or depression,
at least you drive
finding someone
or you paint your lips with color
smacking them on the cheek of a compadre.

You drink crap beer or wine
maybe you even smoke.
Vices.
Mine are long gone,
sacrificed.

You visit darkend, pulsing clubs
people know you
they even come up
honestly glad to see you,
you are embraced.

This room is empty now. No words in here to complete the sentiment for the feelings that sweep over you when a person you care for walks away from your life leaving you in the room you have furnished for yourself.

They walk away into the empty zone mixed with new faces, red haired ladies in tight see through black bras, excellent jobs like stock analyst, lobbyist, journalist, emergency room nurse, or worse. They don't let anyting stick to their walls, not yet, not now. They get to rewrite their songbook while yours becomes yellowed, dogeared, coffee stained.

Your room, blanketed in dust, dirt in the corners, dog hair covering your bedquilts.  ***** laundry piles up, you never become wealthier or smarter.  Your circle of friends degenerates into locals and deadenders like yourself. Days pass, you become old.

You latch on to anything that is moving.  Hopefully it is moving upward and outward. You dream about driving away, far away from where you live, driving for miles into the desert.  You want to live in a town where nobody knows who you are, you don't know anyone either; your home an isolated, small, cheap apartment like the one you had when you were a freshly freed adult.

Dreaming and dreaming about a life where you can be left alone so you will have the freedom to maybe, this time, find a life that resembles your fantasy of what it is supposed to be like.  All the promises of what education and college would bear.  Intelligent friends, moving and shaking the conciousness and politics, life, and town were supposed to surround you, invite you to dinner parties where you would drink smart wine and discuss shaping the tone of the future.

Turning over in your sleep, you wish everything around you would walk out and leave you. Everything except your child. He would stay, weather the change, ride the storm into your own empty room where you could paint the walls of life newly.

as my body rots in place
as new souls stand out and shine
as I die without notice
my age, my age
I will not survive.

why does Christ want me?
So much to send to me
a valient messenger
so beautiful a soliloqy
even when I am present.

Christ thank you for
your message, fearful
am I not to be humbled,
humiliated, terrified of my
own wickedness

What a coward I am
not to believe, to scoff at the idea
of you, believing that my
faith in God is stronger than you.

How ****** am I to think
I can live without remorse or
conviction, only how will i know
when my heart has turned towards you?

You'd th nk, with HUNDREDS
of people flocking to yoga fest vals
'd be able to f nd someone
to talk to.

Dharma talks, people s t and l sten,
where do they go when they return home?

My door bell  s s lent,
none enter to s t and further the talk.

  guess  'll never reach Samad , passed by,
no one wants me to get there,
only myself,
   guess  'll walk alone.

Cannot be extracted when during meditation
liberation is gained thought becomes more
They do not see society. Unfortunately, Shankara's own
loss to a nation, transcendental consciousness the
becomes greatly overshadowed.

A feather table: reckless gratitude.
It is that-there that means best.

White the green grinding trimming thing!
The disgrace, like stripes.
More selection, slighter intention.

Rosewood stationing is use journey: curious dusty empty length.
Winged cake: the cake, the plan that neglects to make color certainly.
Time long could winter: elegant consequences monstrous.
So much and guided holders garments are—and arrangements.
Staring then that when sudden same time’s necessary, that circular
     same’s more necessary, not actually aching.

And why special?
Not left straw, the chain’s the missing, was white winningly and
     occasion’s entirely strings.
Reason is sullenness: it’s there that practices left when six into
     nothing narrow, resolute, suggests all beside that plain seam.
Pencils, mutton, asparagus: the table there.
There reddening is not to change that in such absurd surroundings.
Considering clearly, a feather’s large second heat is there.
There that thing which smells that whistles that there’s denial,
     difference, surfeit-dated choices—everything trembling
imitation.

Imitation?—imitation is a joy gurgle.
Best bent, likely disappointed.
Cake season’s not more than most.
That cake makes no larder likely.
Not a single protection is even temporarily standing.
Sugar and lard there are sudden and shaming.
That single set comes orderly.
There the remarkable witness made no more settlement than
     blessing.
Increase the way steak colored coffee.
Wheatly that music half-noisy.
Reason’s decline is not a little grainy.

This means taste where toe-washing is reasonable.
Salmon carriage?—action hanging.
Scene bits and this nervous draught don’t satisfy elevation,
There is no change.
Much was temporary behind that center and much was formerly
     charming.
Then the then-triumphant showed their disagreeable hidden worries.
The chair asked the speech be repeated, supposing
     attention-resemblance.
It is just summer.
Another section has a light likeness to pedestrianism.
Which is light?
That used this there.
The chair’s justice: nothing-colored mercy.
No, perhaps some is likely.

That is not a genuine bargain.
There preparation so suits white bands’ singing and redness that the
     same sight’s a simpler splendor.
No, not the same.
Wishing the same is not quite the same as a different arrangement.
Any measure washed is brighter than an occasional string set.
A precocious nothing discolors that extract sooner than showing its
     starting.
A bag place chain room winningly reasons with shining hair.
What with supposing without protection, no wound is sudden.
Coloring sullenness rushes bottom reason in gilded country.
What if it shows?
Necessarily, the whole thing there is shining.
Is that anything?
More single women stitch tickets.
To show difference exudes reliability.
Inside that large silver likeness, Hope tables thick coal.
Coal makes morning furnaces darker,
Joy and success are exceptions.

Four suggest a sadder surrender.
Pretence and cheaper influences are staining tender Pride there.
Sort out that little sink.
Why is the size of the baking remainder something that resembles
     light more than cutting?
This cheese is more calm than anything solitary.
It is still an occasion for bottom anticipation.
Reason’s season cracked that which was ripe.
Nearly all were neglected by blessing, not without nervous actions.
He’s readily beginning to seed the cheese and estrange the Whites.
The celery curled its lashes at the slam.
Not-so-heated reason will be little able to satisfy another.
This was formerly much used as a charming chair.
Pedestrianism showed itself triumphant and disagreeable.
That which was hidden worried them.
They asked that her speech be repeated.
Summer light bears a likeness to justice.
Then the light is supposing attention.
That section has a resemblance to light.
Is it a likeness of the justice chair?

Chance Operations are methods of generating poetry independent of the author’s will. A chance operation can be almost anything from throwing darts and rolling dice, to the ancient Chinese divination method, I-Ching, and even sophisticated computer programs. Most poems created by chance operations use some original text as their source, be it the newspaper, an encyclopedia, or a famous work of literature. The purpose of such a practice is to play against the poet’s intentions and ego, while creating unusual syntax and images. The resulting poems allow the reader to take part in producing meaning from the work.

The roots of using chance operations to generate poetry are generally traced to the Dada movement in Western Europe in the early and mid-twentieth-century, involving writers such as André Breton, Louis Aragon, Tristan Tzara, Philippe Soupault, and Paul Éluard. The Dadaists were deeply interested in the subconscious, and they believed that the mind would create associations and meaning from any text, including those generated through random selections. In one section of Tzara’s “Dada Manifesto on Feeble & Bitter Love," he offers the following instructions to make a Dadaist poem, here translated from the original French by Barbara Wright:

“Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are--an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the ****** herd.”

The use of chance operations in contemporary poetry has been used most famously by the international avant-garde group Fluxus, poet Jackson Mac Low, and the poet and composer John Cage. A good example of a poem that was written using chance operations is Jackson Mac Low’s “Stein 100: A Feather Likeness of the Justice Chair," which also includes Mac Low’s explanation of the methods he used to compose the poem.

And more than echoes talk along the walls.

'Tis education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclin'd.

I am his Highness' dog at Kew; pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

A Lame Beggar
I am unable, yonder beggar cries,
To stand, or move; if he say true, he lies.

Hero and Leander
Both robb'd of air, we both lie in one ground;
Both whom one fire had burnt, one water drown'd.

Antiquary
If in his study he hath so much care
To hang all old strange things, let his wife beware

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful.
To be in it is merely a bore.
But to be out of it simply a tragedy.

I hope you have not been leading a double life,
pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time.
That would be hypocrisy.

The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on;
it is never of any use to oneself.
To be modern is the only thing worth being nowadays.