In honor of the Kaufman Centennial, the Society for Bingian Translational Reanalysis presents randomly chosen sections of “Jail Poems” subjected to, as you might expect, Bingian Translational Reanalysis (BTR), and fashioned—not by any chance operation but in a distinctly volitional manner—into six-line poems. Why six? The Chinese hexagram, the Abrahamic Days of Creation, the six-pointed Star of David (the Buddha-centric Kaufman had a Jewish father but was raised Catholic and baptized at the age of 35 while in the Merchant Marine) and the crucial consideration that there is never likely to be six sardines in a can, three to five being the typical number, according to AI.

BTR, it should be noted, is not an AI-based procedure per se. It is done manually, as it were, via repeated filtering through the still-unreliable Bing Translate, just as it was in the pre-AI days. It occasionally produces bursts of prophetic brilliance such as inserting Snoop Dogg and Cesar Chavez in a work written in 1959. And it is capable of generating marvels of etymological spontaneity such as the extremely Kaufmanesque boompurania, which we have already deemed the Word of the Year, never mind what the Oxford people may say.

A Kaufman Sestet (A) 

There is a red spider on my head. 

It is painted in my state. 

The scarcity is not the one that is one. 

The scarcity is on top of the yak. 

I have never seen a poet’s wild bread, 

But if I did, I would eat it, crab and everything. 

(Bingian Translatational Reanalysis, filtered via Albanian, Afrikaans, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Assamese, Asturian) 

A Kaufman Sestet (B) 

The soul of the soul is filled with the same mess, jazz and dancing at the party. 

The jungle swam intensely in a long net. 

Squeeze this part of the outer ring with a mannequin’s button. 

Who has not done that with cannon fodder?

The castration of the match. 

The warm dough does not saturate the net in steering the fog of self-analysis. 

(Balinese, Bangla, Bashkir, Basque, Batak Toba, Belarussian )

A Kaufman Sestet (C)

In these deep plastic forests, the long nights are cold. 

The peacock’s belly is just a bunch of rough intestines and tissues.  

I want to press a button and go from the inside out. 

Should I break bones? Should I draw out the ancient pains of the moment?  

Again, the fireballs in the boompurania, swallowed by the heat, 

establish a fog of self-reflection that will be in the air. 

(Cantonese, Catalan, Cebuano, Chhattisgarhi, Corsican, Croatian) 

A Kaufman Sestet (D)

There is another day of hell. 

The liquid earth has faith. 

A large metal mass opening like a chain of silver:  

Three long cords of light have collided with this chain. 

One day the apple will display itself. 

I worry that my past has crossed my dream. 

(Danish, Dari, Divehi, Dogri, Dutch) 

A Kaufman Sestet (E#)

I’m sitting here writing everything on paper, not graffiti in the air. 

The battle of epic defeats continues.  

The hope of a good defeat reigns during the day.  

Trapped in an imaginary network of consciousness, I believed. 

Those who do not cast shadows will never die for free bread. 

The end always comes to an end. 

(Esperanto, Estonian, Venetian, Vietnamese, Welsh) 

A Kaufman Sestet (F)

Are you a member of the IRS? 

Fat Snoop Dogg, the one who says: “Food and drink.” 

Are you a fan of the Battle of the Ardennes?  

Universality, duality, completeness . . . prayers. 

And some of those who are true, and some of those who are true.  

The Temple of the Sacred Heart was built by Cesar Chavez and Zeus.  

(Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian)