Verbatim found poetry is an intriguing collection of found poems. Poems found in ordinary, and not so ordinary places. Submit yours.
Phaeton chariot and Argus’ head,
One lion skin.
One tomb of Dido, one bedstead
Canopy, old Mahomet’s head.
Iron targets, one Mercury’s wings,
City of Rome, one golden fleece
Belin Dun’s stable, one bear’s skin
Tantalus’ tree
And Phaeton’s limbs.
Items picked out of an inventory of ‘all the properties for my Lord Admiral’s men’ – the Elizabethan theatre company – taken by impresario Philip Henslowe, 10 March 1598. Via Futility Closet. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.
The broken down train has started moving.
We will be able to get all the trains moving soon.
The train has just started moving.
We will be able to get everything running soon.
The train has moved,
we will be able to move all trains now.
Some residual delay will occur.
The broken train has moved,
trains will be able to run again.
Sorry for the delay.
The train has just started moving,
trains are able to run again.
Some residual delay will occur.
The broken down train is now on the move.
Residual delay is expected until 19:15
Ha, Make sure you tweet again next time.
You’re welcome, sorry for the delay.
Sorry for the delay today.
Consecutive South West Trains tweets, 16th March 2013. Submitted by MsJinnifer.
I want to sit out in privety
with my dressing-gown on
and nobody to see
but it must have a balcony.
Then I can finish my writing.
It’s a hundred-and-forty a night, with a hot tub.
That’s no good. I can’t write
with a fountainpen in a hot tub.
I wonder if there’s background music.
I can’t have the sort of music
that keeps you jumpin’ all the while.
There needs to be quiet.
The windows have got to open.
I must hear water all the time.
If I get a room that’s luxurious
I’ll get writing in half the time.
I want to see Rooms One and Eight.
I want to see if they’ll do.
I don’t need you to come with me,
but I’ll need you to move in with me.
It’s all sketched out already,
just waiting to be filled in.
I’m tense till I get this settled.
Can’t get my head round it till then.
Overheard in a hotel bar in Ludlow, Shropshire, on the 10th March 2013. Submitted by John Killic.
We were getting new recruits
sixteen and seventeen years of age
when we had to do this attack
The two youngsters were crying
It was such a shock
We moved up to the attack
They had cleared off
three or four miles from the action
They were brought back and charged
The verdict of the court was read out
The two young men had deserted
They were going to be shot at dawn
The two young men
were brought out
to a yard
blindfolded
Fire at the head
At the heart
The chances were
they would be killed instantly
As of course they were
The four men who had to shoot them
were sick with it all
There was sympathy for the boys
but more for their parents
We lived with it all
for days
weeks
I can see it all now
(Private William Holmes in Forgotten Voices of the Great War. Submitted by Lisa Oliver)
The color paintings were prepared on fine,
brilliant Wu silk, which were closely and wonderfully woven.
Traditional Chinese paints were used. The blues
and greens came from azurite, malachite, and indigo;
the reds from cinnabar, realgar, and orpiment, with the brilliant red
from coral and the pink-red from a flowering vine; umber from an iron oxide
called limonite; yellow from the sap of the rattan plant; and white from lead
or pulverized oyster shells. To all, powdered jade was added
for good fortune. These colors were mixed with stag horn, fish or ox
glue, or glue made from the pulp of the soap bean. The black
Chinese ink is ten parts pine soot, three parts powdered jade,
and one part glue made from donkey hides boiled
in Tang River water. The paints were mixed with boiling water. In
the first stage, the water looked like fish eyes; in the second,
like innumerable pearls strung together; and in the final stage,
like rolling breakers. The paints were applied with Chinese brushes made
of sheep, rabbit, goat, weasel, and wolf hairs picked in autumn,
as well as of mouse whiskers, with handles of bamboo and buffalo horn.
Where changes were required in the art, the paint was removed
by wiping the area with the juice of the apricot seed.
Illustration notes from The Nightingale by Demi (Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1985). Submitted by J.R. Solonche.
Ever since we were an item,
for years, we had an affinity
for crayfish.
They didn’t stay for long
in the garden.
They didn’t like the pond then
– was it running water?
It was very quick. It didn’t have time
to be un-running.
Did they all go together?
How could they know where to go?
They’ve got eyes and feelers,
Yes, but for underwater, not on land.
And how could they do that, across fields and roads?
I don’t think “road” is in their vocabulary.
I wonder if they went in a line…
What we don’t know is how
they got out of the garden. The fence
it comes right down to the ground.
Maybe a cat killed and ate them –
Oh no, then you’d see the shells.
A cat wouldn’t do that!
Yes it would, if they were moving around.
A cat will eat anything that moves.
Well, they just disappeared.
A conversation between an older man and a younger woman, overhead at breakfast in a Shrewsbury B&B, 2009. Submitted by MsJinnifer.
Glance sideways into the wings,
and you see the tacky preparations
for the triumphant public event.
You see your beautiful suit deconstructed,
the tailor’s chalk lines, the unsecured seams.
You see that your life is a charade,
that the scenery is cardboard,
that the paint is peeling,
the red carpet fraying
and if you linger you will notice the oily devotion
fade from the faces of your subjects,
and you will see their retreating backs
as they turn up their collars
and button their coats
and walk away into real life.
(From Royal Bodies by Hilary Mantel. Submitted by Angi Holden)
We have water all around us, and in these lochs,
and we have the boat –
and there were porpoises – we
have to cross the causeway… These
great big rocks.
This is Raasay, this is Skye; there is nothing
as far as the North Pole.
The sea was like a millpond, the sky was
a great… American blue.
We could never imagine ourselves alone,
with the sheep… and the gulls were laughing
like people.
There are yachts that just arrive
in the North Inlet,
and people arrive in bad weather
and we bring them in.
Here is the croft, with the white walls;
the tide is low here.
This photograph,
this is our island.
My friend’s Mum, in her kitchen, talking about photographs of their holidays on an island off the west coast of Scotland. Just as it was. Submitted by Kerry Featherstone.
Death is so intimate –
more intimate than first love.
I could hold his hand,
gaze into his eyes,
stare
unhindered
at his tender face,
stroke
his frosty hair.
He was very thin,
skin the colour
of a dried corn husk.
His mouth
a dark tunnel.
The jagged mountain ranges
of his ruined teeth.
The petrified forests
of his hair.
The failing locomotive of his breath.
The sadness of the black bobbled socks on his calves.
Yet he was
irreducibly
who he had always been.
Taken from Tim Lott’s Guardian article, My father’s final moments, 23 February 2013. Submitted by Ailsa Holland.
Rise and dine
The winner will appear
When you’re too hot to move
Don’t worry about snagging a picnic table
The winner will appear
Don’t just watch the Food Network
Don’t worry about snagging a picnic table
Just toss ‘em in your pitcher
Don’t just watch the Food Network
Make pulled pork with the Neelys
Just toss ‘em in your pitcher
Happiness is simple. Cook with bacon.
Make pulled pork with the Neelys
Keep everything cold for nearly a week
Happiness is simple. Cook with bacon.
It will travel forty feet on a flat surface
Keep everything cold for nearly a week
If you find anything else inside our bag…
It will travel forty feet on a flat surface
Not all love notes are written.
If you find anything else inside our bag…
See if the judges pick your dish
Not all love notes are written.
Where can I buy it?
His and her refrigerators
Happiness is simple. Cook with bacon.
Where can I buy it?
Where can I buy it?
Rise and dine.
When you’re too hot to move.
Ads and headlines from ‘Food Network Magazine’ 2009, arranged into a pantoum. Submitted by Lita Kurth.
Verbatim Poetry 
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