Verbatim found poetry is an intriguing collection of found poems. Poems found in ordinary, and not so ordinary places. Submit yours.
Slippers are designed
to be slipped into
without help from the hand.
They are monuments to
the hatred of bending down.
A quotation from Theodor W. Adorno’s Minima Moralia: Reflections on Damaged Life, first published in 1951. Submitted by Marika Rose.
You can say I am a hater
but I would argue I’m a lover
I’m a lover of traditional families
and of the right of children
to have a father and a mother
I believe the earth gets warmer
and I also believe the earth gets cooler
is anyone saying same-sex couples
can’t love each other?
I love my children
I love my friends, my brother
heck, I even love my mother-in-law
Quotes by Rick Santorum, candidate for Republican nomination in the US Presidential elections 2012. Specifically, quotes as they appear in Rick Santorum Quotes As New Yorker Cartoons posted by Jack Shepherd. Punctuation has been stripped out and the ‘I’m’ of line one turned back to two words for the irresistible rhythm. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.
They existed before my hands.
But it seems like I took them and
put them on my hands and put them
on other hands too. I like the
idea of rhinestones for fun.
Karl Lagerfeld’s response to a question about his gloves in The Peripatetic Fashionista, on the Imagine Fashion website. Submitted by Marika Rose.
You develop an
instant global consciousness,
a people orientation,
an intense dissatisfaction
with the state of the world,
and a compulsion to do something about it.
From out there on the moon,
international politics look
so petty. You want to
grab a politician
by the scruff of the neck
and drag him a quarter of
a million miles out and say,
‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’
Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, as quoted by Futility Closet. Submitted by Marika Rose.
A kitten is so flexible
I should have drunk more champagne. And the rest
of the world can kiss my ass. Plaudite,
amici, comedia finita est.
Better to burn out than to fade away.
Tell Fidel that this failure does not mean
the end of the revolution. I see
black light. I can’t sleep. Rain had always been
a harbinger of tragedy for me.
You can stop now; I’m already dead. All
my possessions for a moment of time.
Please put out the light. Please don’t let me fall.
I am not in the least afraid to die.
I must go to meet God, try to explain…
Do you hear the rain? Do you hear the rain?
(Compiled from famous last words of real people)
I woke up at 4am, before dawn.
You should be asleep. You’re all tired after
a sleepless night. I am like the Queen
of England. I am much bigger
than any rank, for those who are talking
about rank, I am a fighter. Your face
will melt off and your children will weep over
your exploded body. These resentments,
they are the rocket fuel that lives in the
tip of my saber. I have defeated
this earthworm with my words – imagine what
I would have done with my fire-breathing
fists. Life without dignity is worthless
Every great movement begins with one man.
Quotations from recent statements by Charlie Sheen and Muammar Gaddafi, taken from a Guardian quiz, 1 March 2011. Submitted by Marika Rose.
I’ve got seven
kids. The three
words you hear
most around my
house are ‘hello’,
‘goodbye’ and
‘I’m pregnant.’
Dean Martin, as quoted in the Guardian Family section, 7th August 2010. Line arrangements are original. By Marika Rose.
Keen lemon-yellow
Hurts the eye in time
As a prolonged and shrill trumpet-note
The ear.
Or white
Conveys a harmony of silence
Which works upon us negatively
Like many pauses in music
That break
Temporarily
The Mel-
-ody.
A Kandinsky quotation taken from ‘Music and Jugendstil’, Critical Inquiry, Autumn 1990. Submitted by Kate Guthrie.
Verbatim Poetry 