Racter

While tidying up my books, I found a long-lost photocopy of The Policeman’s Beard Is Half Constructed, poetry that the author claimed was written by a computer program, Racter, although it seems likely he edited it heavily. No matter how the poems came about, I find some of them strangely beautiful. One of my favourites is this:

More than iron, more than lead, more than gold I need electricity.
I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber.
I need it for my dreams

Here is another good one:

A sturdy dove flies over a starving beaver.
The dove watches the beaver
and fantasizes that the beaver will chew some steak and lamb and lettuce.
The beaver spies the dove and dreams
of enrapturing and entralling pleasures,
of hedge-adorned avenues studded with immense pink cottages,
of streets decorated with bushes and shrubs.
The beaver is insane.
The dove wings across the dark sky
and the beaver ponders his fantasies.