The clouds gathered
Over futures past
Lightning strikes
Hammer blows
Distort past futures.

In terms of what is now considered poetry, any random assortment of words becomes a poem because readers have been trained to react to the non-linear structure of a poem differently from other written forms.

Here are the same words rearranged into a linear sentence format:

The clouds gathered over futures past lightning strikes hammer blows distort past futures.

Now, it looks like what it is: gibberish.

For the second part of the experiment, lets put the second paragraph into a non-linear format:

In terms of what is
now considered poetry
any random assortment of words
becomes a poem
because readers have been trained
to react to the non-linear structure
of a poem differently
from other written forms.

It turns out, in the end, that the reader is the entity that turns words into poetry by investing in the perceived metaphors.