Mambrina asked, "Have you considered making a Fifth Sentence poem of this Grendel's Laundry List?" So I did:
ON MY DESKTOP
It is a temenos
or ritual precinct,
a Greek word I adopt for the discussion of art.
If paradoxes could pop up so easily
in set theory—a theory whose basic concept,
that of a set,
is surely very intuitively appealing—
then might they not
also exist
in other branches of mathematics?
To find out you?
Does the apparent contradiction
within the assertions of a prophet
destroy
the validity of his message?
It was this very
scientific enterprise that articulated
the connections
between the existence of life forms
seeking a way to live
a worthwhile life,
and the dynamics
at the beginning of time.
Birds’ voices contain deep mysteries of the Torah.
Fear of pain suppresses desire for coitus.
“Fine” was omitted
as an unnecessary qualification for “knives.”
I believe that many children
are born with an inquisitive mind,
the mind of a scientist,
and I assume that I became a scientist
because in some ways
I remained a child.
Note: I harvested fifth sentences only from the 23rd pages of the first ten books on the list. One sentence apiece from all 49 makes a rather long poem.
Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia
Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
The Prophets: An Introduction by Abraham J. Herschel
The Universe Story by Brian Swimme & Thomas Berry
For the Time Being by Annie Dillard
The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Sex by Drs. Willy, Vander, and Fisher (1950)
A Field Guide to Contemporary Poetry and Poetics edited by Stuart Friebert & David Young
Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard by William Lanouette
11:34:43 PM 
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