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Randomly-generated (and Not-so-randomly-generated) Poems


***3:25:07 PM Sunday, September 19, 1999
[The following text was heavily assisted by my JanusNode. It was created on a whim as a 'proof of concept', in response to a call from http://www.instantnovelist.com/ for a poem about balance (but never actually submitted, since it turned out that they only accept entries from AOL members!). The four step process used to create it can be used to try to produce a poem about any topic at all. The first step is to gather together a bunch of texts about the chosen topic. In this case, the texts were taken from the WWW, using a search engine search on 'balance'. More carefully selected inputs texts can deliver better results. The second step is to create a Markov file of the texts gathered in step 1. The third step is to chain the Markov file from step 2, and (optionally) other selected Markov files. In this case, pre-existing Markov files on the war in Kosovo and the highschool murders in Colorado were selected in the hopes they would resonate in an interesting manner with the texts on balance. Finally, interesting lines from the output are selected, and the resultant (rather short) text is Markov-chained again. Text culled from this output can be used to make the final product. In this case, that selection was eecummingsfied, and then edited by a human being to produce the final text. Although the final text reflects substantial human intervention by editing, the title, general themes, and the structure of most of the individual lines here (including the fine phrase 'when emotions have a disordered bullet...') are all my JanusNode's own work.]

          The Stabilizing Effects of Perception.

Let your ears hear only
what does not
    destroy the world.

When emotions have
a disordered bullet,
    I believe in balance.

Balance is
    not achieved by soldiers
    measuring out the world
    in machined straight lines
    with steady gaze and goals.

Balance is
    not an hour
        with your checkbook,
    not an hour
        spent casually shooting
        others dead.

Balance is
    found in wild experience;
    from letting our bodies go forth,
    shifting on uneven surfaces;
    forging their own crooked paths.

Let the world scream;
Let the disordered bullets rain
    on lockers and pews;
Let the wild vertigo
    flourish.

Let your eyes see only
what does not
    destroy the world.

(My own body is
 seething
with signs,
 Be
    loved!)

***11:24:00 PM Friday, February 12, 1999
Your

    under-
   used imagin
      ati
          o
   n

 is

    actu
 ally th
 is

           poem.

***10:19:22 PM Friday, November 1, 1996
    do you
  know
           why I love
  you
     r
   abdomen
            ?

     because you
      r
    abdomen
         makes
    me
      think
    of no
     thing
     ness.

***11:06:49 AM Wednesday, July 5, 1995
 But if emptiness always within us be,
         Its outer intercourse is all that we shall see,

***1:51:55 AM Tuesday, March 26, 1996
     with anger
      disgustingly
       anal
 Look! a
           p
    ass
able bureau
        crat
[Eds. note: This is another good example of how eecummingsfication can add layers of meaning to a text- in this case, to a pseudo-haiku generated by my JanusNode. Note how the eecummingsfication allows the JanusNode to allude back to the initial concept of the disgustingly anal, by producing both 'p' (=pee) and 'ass' from the word 'passable'. At the same time,  dividing the word 'passable' up into 'pass' and 'able' introduces a subtle dichotomy between the idea of excellence (which is primed by these two subwords) and the main theme of this poem: the disgusting inability of bureaucrats to attain excellence. To top it all off, the JanusNode ends the poem with the non-word 'crat', which, despite its lexical status, manages to sound vaguely unpleasant in itself to the the native English speaker.]

***5:21:18 AM Saturday, March 9, 1996
if this word suggests
   more
          than an observed
   regu

 la

      rity

           down

  somewhere
       I have reached
                the
         notion
     of
nature

***8:03:53 AM Friday, March 8, 1996
  one
       is
 mad
           e

     to
         other ends but
  al
      ways
  these
      things begin
       ning now.

***7:31:16 AM Friday, March 8, 1996
   it
          is difficult to
        acquire
    any o
      ther

       efore
         meaning
[This self-referential poem was generated (like the 3 poems above) using a triple-method: a passage from a book was eecummingsfied. The resultant text was chained by pairs. The output was re-eecummingsfied. The use of pair-chained Markov chaining on text which has been eecummingsfied allows for the potentially interesting generation of double-meaning words, such as the use of the string 'ther' in both 'other' and 'therefore'.]

***3:04:21 PM Saturday, June 24, 1995
Genetic
Unprincipled
Rhythmic
Underpants

***10:51:41 PM Friday, April 15, 1994
Wisdom works for you, omnivorous baboon that
       she loves:
  intellect is not an approach to understanding
   these potatos
  are

******

My JanusNode has also written one epic poem (1184 words long). It was written by Markov chaining together the last letter my friend Julie ever wrote, before she died of a malignant sarcoma in her liver, with a letter about love that I had written for the wedding shower that Julie had organized for my wife and I several years before her diagnosis. The whole was then eecummingsfied, and edited by hand, with some repeat Markov chaining. The result is a rambling, sad, incoherent, maddening poem about a rambling, sad, incoherent, and maddening death. Julie was only in her thirties when she died. You can read my poem for her here if you'd like.

 

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