Write word-centos of poetry by California poets
Richard McDowell, Charles Bukowski, Michael
McClure and Bob Kaufman. 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.)

 

UNTITLED

(a word-cento of Richard McDowell’s
“The Origin of Fear” *)

Toothy Death returns nausea,
a beautiful billboard
broken child, merciful shadow
traffic miracles sleep
wailing white to the sun
cackle the long day,
spirit smiles, a man has risen.
Home grieving home
Cross-casket tombstones,
highways of people drive
and tear people down
willing to drive Death.

* Original poem by Richard McDowell
from California Poetry: From the Gold
Rush to the Project, edited by Dana Gioia,
Chryss Yost and Jack Hicks, pp. 330-334.

 

DEAD WORLD FOR RENT

(a word-cento of Charles Bukowski’s
“the tragedy of the leaves” *)

yellow leaves empty and ancient,
corpses, cracked ferns, a woman
I awakened to
dead world, razor and man,
the comedian failed us,
absurd and sweaty,
waving the world,
the dead world
for rent

* Original poem by Charles Bukowski
from California Poetry: From the Gold
Rush to the Present, edited by Dana Gioia,
Chryss Yost and Jack Hicks, pp. 124-125.

 

THE BLIND ANIMAL

(a word-cento of Michael McClure’s
“The Flowers of Politics, One” *)

I AM PERCEPTION, THE LOVE OF LIE
we lie in our vision, our blood,
clear blue ions and gods

OH I AM A DREAM OF FORMS
banality in our blood, break the bright air!
Shape the animal that melts knowing
we are blind, I am blind!

OH I AM THE BLIND ANIMAL
annunciate this senseless light
PERCEPTION
THE LOVE, THE LIE
I LOVE THE LIE
we draw in our blood, our vision
declaring a candle blind
by ourselves we know, I know,
nothing more than the snared flower,
banality in motion,
our blood, our vision!

OH I LOVE OUR VISION, I LOVE
THE LIE
an act. Our love is an act, a huge act
we perpetuate the forms
of nothing but the lie

* Original poem by Michael McClure
from California Poetry: From the Gold
Rush to the Present, edited by Dana
Gioia, Chryss Yost and Jack Hicks,
pp. 183-184.

 

FIRE

(a word-cento of Bob Kaufman’s
“Jail Poems” *)

Gravestones, smoking this self-cage,
mad forever, a prisoner of human souls,
stars swimming in the sky,
water-color hatches, guilt.

God hells a red noise, fingerprints of pain
chilled to bathe with sexy machines,
beatnik pyres, gassy fire-grasping America,
a star,
runs blood, this lie, this world.
The world is a lie.

Lying jelly of compassion, scrambled and drunk,
ancient sadness, introspection
pieces of skin all over the street,
all over the fire.
Kill me, America!

A prisoner in the evening,
a baby of cities, my future
floating for questions, shadows and
skeletons I never wanted
daring, devouring silently
failures on the floor.

My flesh forged flesh,
forged the world,
this lie.

I weep years, drunk and defective.

* Original poem by Bob Kaufman from
Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman (2019).
Reprinted on Poetry Foundation.

 

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.