The other day I attempted a poetry writing experiment where I wrote some verse based off ‘random’ phrases that I had found in various sources.  Initially, I compiled a list of 40 of them but then I whittled them down to 15, which you can see below.  The statements come from a broad cross-section of sources: one sentence is from the well-known poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge; another is from the novel Robinson Crusoe.  Some are from an Australian lifestyle magazine, one is from a Christian devotional, another is from a recipe book for diabetics, and some are from the sports section of a newspaper.  The quotations that I selected are as follows:

• Anise hyssop
• Mistletoe bird
• The Pyjama Federation
• Navicular hotspot
• Muscle twitching
• Simmering casserole of commerce.
• “The naked hulk alongside came”.
• Peering into the collapsed crevasse.
• “Today we love what tomorrow we’ll hate”.
• “None of the bomb damage was wasted”.
• A full account of our calamity was sent.
• So, how are your roots doing?
• Don’t go wasting snowstorms.
• The perfect way to embellish corners.
• Desert is the new black.

I molded and adapted the statements to suit the poem that I was writing and what follows is what I eventually came up with; it’s cryptic and ambiguous, but it was fun to write.  The first two stanzas sound more serious but the last was more playful, one where I was able to find a place for the words “Pyjama Federation”.  It’s 138 words in length and was written in rhyming couplets of (mostly) hendecasyllables, where each line has 11 syllables.  Enjoy.