Summer Centos Project

My friend Neil and I wrote poems this summer using a cut-up technique. Every day for a week, and for multiple weeks, we’d choose one line from an already published poem until we had a new collaged poem of our own.

Later, we learn that this type of poem is called a “Cento” a word with greek origins, the meaning roughly translates to “To plant a slip of trees.”

Neil wrote them with a cup of coffee. I wrote them after a morning walk. We didn’t write them “for” anything- we wrote them off the clock.

Here are a few of mine:

Illustration by Hal Baum

Montrose Harbor
I love to stay here, curled up on the rocks
conceived in and by reason of
as long as it takes the sun to rise & set.
In the beginning, there was your mouth
But tonight, there isn’t a country. Just a sky.
How I cannot see the city moving beyond me
Red, — red, and startling like a trumpet’s sound.

Fourth of July
Deep in the midnight the rain whips the
leaves
And what am I supposed to do?
The “Bury Ur Head In The Shifting Sands”, or “Live Forever On The Run”-womblessness became an American sadness & I found it.
Lists, while dreamy fancies come to give repose
spell it with red wheels
and yellow spokes.