3by3by3 Poem

Honest Seekers In

The incestuous trains
of politicians, the relentless
pitchfork outside the gates.

Newspapers admitted they
had no information. The public
took comfort in bars, in mourning,

until earthquake, tsunami, and
nuclear meltdown, until dignity
chanted its name.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-japan-soccer-win-means-late-night-joy-for-recovering-country/2011/07/17/gIQAy9DlKI_story.html

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-music-goers-sun-seekers-brave-high-humid-temps-20110717,0,243061.story

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-we-deserve-an-honest-and-uncorrupted-police-force-2315443.html

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The above poem was written using the language from the first three paragraphs of the linked news stories above. Lance Newman, a poet I am completely unfamiliar with, runs this operation over at his blog.

Read, participate, submit.

Ashes on Saturday Afternoon

The banal machines are exposing themselves
on nearby hillocks of arrested color: why
if we are the anthropologists canopé
should this upset the autumn afternoon?

It is because you are silent. Speak, if
speech is not embarrassed by your attention
to the scenery! in languages more livid than
vomit on Sunday after wafer and prayer.

What is the poet for, if not to scream
himself into a hernia of admiration for all
paradoxical integuments: the kiss, the
bomb, cathedrals and the zeppelin anchored

to the hill of dreams? Oh be not silent
on this distressing holiday whose week
has been a chute of sand down which no
factories or castles tumbled: only my

petulant two-fisted heart. You, dear poet,
who addressed yourself to flowers, Electra,
and photographs on less painful occasions,
must save me from the void's eternal noise.