Step 1. Write word-centos of poetry by Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, Lenore Kandel and Jack Kerouac.
A word-cento is one of my invented forms of poetry.
It is a rearrangement of the words of a poem by a single
author. I try to exhaust every single word of the poem
(though lately I’ve only been doing some). I lose the
structure of the original poem, do not position any two
unique words next to each other, and the resulting poem
is a response to or a continuation of the original poem.)

 

WINDOWS DREAM OF WINDOWS

(a word-cento of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s
“Third World Calling” *)

Windows dream of windows
between small cities.
Last night’s mortuary singing
bodies beyond perfume clouds.
Windows dream of windows,
a funeral in the morning.
Last night’s morning has died.

* Original poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
from The Beat Book, edited by Anne Waldman.

 

THE MARROW OF PEACE IS PEACE

(a word-cento of Lenore Kandel’s
“First They Slaughtered the Angels” *)

I.

Icy angels chewing credit cards,
weeping vomit
blind, barbecued by syphilitic wine.
Masks burning masks.
Guns burning guns.
Grenade-free mothers flinging peace,
wet in the streets,
peace-painted genitals free
flinging credit cards.
Women bomb bellies free,
gulped chicken wings,
immortal dildo of god,
midwives’ orgasm at health-food bars,
seraphs in crypts shivering silk syphilitic,
collapsible shit-zippered,
severed angels and
strangers naked in the peyote sun,
dust poison, searching for catatonic christ cock,
censored libations of love,
blood lips of strangers,
earthquake aftermath in our mouths
disintegrated into battle,
melt with shit underground.

II.

Mildewed world, a business of
lepers’ armageddon playing morning underground
upraised streets, tears to porous
poison rolling in the dust-skulls.
Walk wailing golden angels
flushed plastic weapons, dildos,
our poison checks,
our iron age of papier-mâché,
radioactive suds from our holy grail of piss
opening streets with fire,
bushes of winding women wiped white,
free death, thin as children,
gone, bullets orgasm open their skull.
The marrow of peace is peace.
The marrow of peace is peace.
The marrow of peace is peace.

* Original poem by Lenore Kandel from
The Beat Book, edited by Anne Waldman.

 

HOW TO MEDICATE

(a word-cento of Jack Kerouac’s
“How To Meditate” *)

Morphine lights healing fake, serene
spoof-clasped ecstasy—
thinking’s discharging lights,
holy heroin of the mind, thoughtless.

You don’t have to fall any more.

*Original poem by Jack Kerouac
from The Beat Book, edited by Anne Waldman.

 

UNTITLED

(a word-cento of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s
“A River Still To Be Found” *)

Sitar of time flows,
singing stoned,
a pulse in the river:
America;
our bodies transported
in the slow interior
of skin
under skin,
dreamt still,
stoned,
beating a pulse,
beating a river,
beating America.

* Original poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
from The Beat Book, edited by Anne Waldman.

 

Step 2. For the meditative insert, go to the park and
lay back on your blanket. Write a poem describing
the shape of the trees in front of you, but don’t use
the word trees or anything to give away that you are
writing/describing them. Instead, write around the
trees by writing everything but them, but in a way
kind of like contour drawing. Do not edit afterward.

 

MEDITATIVE INSERT

Tarantula towers prickly pines
peons’ illuminative sparklers
whisper my name
wriggle throughout history
girthy telephone wire, iron girdle
hadronic and supercollider
rosaries, prayers of sun
glisten against the listening
Darkness drips, veins
pulsate Aztec masks
Incandescent hum of freedom
bellows
I lay back beneath the mountain
Rays blinding
Reflection in the screen
I know I am not found
But I am also not lost
In the ivory vermillion gardens, seaweed springs
Fountains of truth
Blissful heavenkeep drips down
a wallowing wilderness
ostracized and atrophied by rain
funeral parlors illuminate sundry bliss
blissful as my heavensake
a safekeeping for thunder
earthquakes, bents scattered beneath
silhouetted earthly prison
spiderwebs in my eyes
squinting against the surface, a solitude

[NOTE: No Step 3 combo for this week.]

 

Joshua Corwin, a Los Angeles native, is a neurodiverse, 2-time Pushcart Prize-nominated, 1-time Best of the Net-nominated poet and 2021 Spillwords Press Award for Poetic Publication of Year winner. His debut poetry collection Becoming Vulnerable (2020) details his experience with autism, addiction, sobriety and spirituality. He has lectured at UCLA, performed at the 2020 National Beat Poetry Festival and Mystic Boxing Commission Festival of Sound and Vision, read with 2013 US Presidential Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco, Michael C. Ford, S.A. Griffin, Ellyn Maybe, among others. His Beat poetry is to be anthologized alongside Ferlinghetti, Hirschman, Ford, Coleman and Weiss late this year (Sparring Omnibus, Mystic Boxing Commission). He hosts the poetry podcast “Assiduous Dust,” writes the weekly Incentovise column for Oddball Magazine and teaches poetry to neurodiverse individuals and autistic addicts in recovery at The Miracle Project, an autism nonprofit. Corwin’s collaborative collection A Double Meaning, with David Dephy, is currently seeking publication. He also has forthcoming collaborative poetry projects with Ellyn Maybe including Ghosts Sing into the World’s Ear (Ghost Accordion series 1st Wave, Mystic Boxing Commission). Corwin is editing and compiling Assiduous Dust: Home of the OTSCP, Vol. 1 (forthcoming April 2021, TBD) featuring 36 award-winning poets, all demonstrating a new type of found poem (OTSCP) he invented.