CUPID SEEMS TO BE HOVERING AROUND THIS PART OF THE WORLD

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I decided that for the sake of clarity I should make separate posts for NaPoWriMo poems and Found poems. Here, then, is my first Found Poem of the month. It was prompted by Patrick Williams who describes himself as a librarian and poet "in equal measures" and who says of his prompt, "For my contribution, I wanted to combine some of my favorite things: old books in the public domain, subject headings, and chance."

The Found Poetry prompt is to "write down everything you know about Number Games or Winter for the next twenty minutes. Make the text you generate into a poem named for the first thing you see in this book" (and there was a link to said book).

Other than the header (The Marines Magazine), which, on an iPad is about all I could read without magnification, the first thing I saw was “Cupid seems to be hovering around this part of the world”. (Is that not a great title?!)

First, the text I generated:

There we are, the moment a baby’s born or when we become conscious after any sort of trauma revolving around potentially losing body-parts, counting fingers and toes. One, two, three a-lar-ee. Ready or not, here I come. I’ve got your number. My mother picked this very best one. You can count on me. I can’t count on you. “How many?” says Adrian, selling his hammocks and bracelets and engraved rice necklaces on the beach. One, two, buckle my shoe. Knock three times if you want me. “Uno, dos, tres,” said Manuel on Fawlty Towers. Card games, you get to count, 52 pick-up. Mother Mother may I cross the water? Take three giant steps backward. Cribbage. Now, there’s a number game. (As opposed to Hunger Game). Took me until I was a senior citizen to be able to count fast enough to play that game, yet when I worked I could do everything that had to be calculated on paper. Almost everything. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Pi is a number, math always stumped me, though. Five minutes to go—see, even this is a number game. Count the minutes. Count the times. Count Dracula. Free associate. What on earth kind of poem will this be? Probably it will count as one of the worst, ever! But who knows? Count the stars in the sky. Count on your luck changing. Cape Canaveral count-down. Your number’s up.

Now, the poem I’ve pulled out of it, which I did in erasure fashion adding only punctuation:

Cupid Seems to be Hovering Around This Part of the World

The moment 

(revolving body parts ready)

I come, I’ve got you. 

Want me cross? There’s a hunger.

I count fast enough,

could do everything, almost.

How I love always stumped me. 

What will be, who knows? 

Count on changing.

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