January. The days
are short but dramatic scenes
await the hardy.
(From the Great British Year poster. Submitted by Uschi Gatward)
Verbatim found poetry is an intriguing collection of found poems. Poems found in ordinary, and not so ordinary places. Submit yours.
January. The days
are short but dramatic scenes
await the hardy.
(From the Great British Year poster. Submitted by Uschi Gatward)
“Two left shoes” he remarked encouragingly.
“And an equally devastating sight of two practically blind states in America”.
Smiling broadly, they were leaving like a airship. The war is
(P20) always exciting.
In a harmless war he had not had time to dig light that is
confidential on Monday afternoon.
I suppose you knew it was not out at sea, took it for granted.
Our submarine is echoing all which was expedient for a well-
(P40) known lady employer.
“What course for the news?”, replied the girl. “Can I see who
had been asked out?” The man will tell you anything and rather
gratuitously it seemed.
Carrados could watch them licking. When the answer here
should be paid no attention until this chair is vacant and the
(P71) room without a word; like a shaken hand.
Murder something with one mistake. He will never notice a
strange message of misgiving had no difficulty in finding her.
A little attempt now to hear there’s nothing like a good
testimony in a low voice. No photograph possessing
(P95) identification is unnaturally white.
It was the first time an empty chair splashed like a moments
worry. The most difficult alibi forgotten in case you cared and
nothing else at first.
It was the faintest idea to come prompted on the bare earth
(P114) followed through seriously simple explanation.
He would like to see time from just one window. Drink this
garden and assist melancholy admiration before the seal of
iron.
And the angel looked at me. A dazzling thing. The lady of
simultaneous voices rising in the dead of night without the
(P133) remotest hope to prick up their ears.
Interment, there in the dark. Unique mothers of the coming generation.
More happened if they could be drawn into the now vigorous soil.
That was plainly so much. So the giant in charge within
(P156) straightened spirits on that heart-throbbed dead weight,
His face was not her husband and children didn’t know his wife.
You can hear a very intoxicated man a mile away. You must not
ask him sometime about when the paper said you could give
me an idea.
(P174) I wish I’d known. The blind and the first people who were not a
painting gave him the details of the letters.
Burning the place down was his way to be the victim.
To be spread:
(P189) Afraid to trust silent and deserted streets.
We used to have just coffee and water beetles. The very
opposite of money before our faces of pink.
(P198) A plague that furnished nightmares with quick feeling.
Touching, I appreciate onions…
As we are shrank back into fluency. The dirty appetite too near.
Hard-cased sleeping inside the dynamo to transform
(P212) mechanical force into quiet professional clatter.
The cigar that made the alibi unconvincing and the man it might blind.
To outwit five senses of old. His eyes were open, voice ingenious.
I should advise of traffic mentally described. To get some reason in the five minutes that they had atmosphere.
His mind was an inexhaustible hunger. A dish of water to be left at night. No means of stopping the leak it seems.
(P237) And for god’s sake, don’t stop there.
(From Max Carrados Mysteries, 1964. A hole was drilled through the book and words taken consecutively from every page, next to the hole. Created by Winston Plowes)
Straight, upright.
Right, proper, correct.
Exact, standardized, just so.
Primary, chief, main.
First.
Pure, unmixed.
Pretty.
Honest.
Placed or situated in the middle.
Just now, right now.
Straightens.
Puts right, rectifies.
Regular.
Positive.
5.
1040.
Translingual definitions of the character 正 . Submitted by Daniel Galef.
Spotless Earthenware
Smiling Housewives
Clean Baths
Happy Husbands
White Marble
Contented Servants
Shining Pots and Pans
In The Parlour
Polished Stair-Rods
In The Kitchen
Bright Fire-Irons
In The Factory
Sparkling Glass-Ware
Simple!! Rapid!!
Clean!! Cheap!!
From an ad in a biography of William Lever: The King of Sunlight by Adam McQueen (Bantam Press, 2004). Submitted by Rishi Dastidar.
One of life’s greatest certainties
is that the ground is solid
beneath one’s feet
so the sudden appearance
of chasms, however small,
is unsettling.
From British sinkhole spike prompts warning, David Shukman, BBC News. Submitted by Angi Holden.
Scott v Shepherd
A lit squib
was thrown into a crowded market
by Shepherd
and landed
on the table of a gingerbread merchant.
A bystander, to protect himself
and the gingerbread,
threw the squib across the market
where it landed
in the goods of another merchant.
The merchant grabbed the squib
and tossed it away,
accidentally hitting Scott in the face,
putting out one of his eyes.
From Wikipedia’s article on squibs, retrieved 12 September 2014. Submitted by Susan Taylor.
Last year,
I woke up
in a hotel room
in Amsterdam.
There was
a woman
in my bed.
I looked
in the mirror
and saw
that my eyebrows
were gray.
I saw
that I was
forty.
Painter Alexander Melamid, quoted in Forty-One False Starts by Janet Malcolm (Granta Books, 2014). Submitted by Howie Good.
She has very delicate sparkly bright blue eyes
and a red red red red red red dress
That’s why I love her
so much
A small girl talks to her mother. Overheard on the street, 3 September 2014. Submitted by Grace Andreacchi.
I get frustrated with things in my personal life sometimes,
especially her.
I’m missing consideration, and a loved feeling.
My life is being spent in a back seat to others
whom I always take care of with little reciprocation
and even less thanks.
I spend time fantasizing about the feeling of woman,
giving a damn,
and of the random,
uninitiated touch or smile.
Why must I work so, so hard
just to get so, so little?
All I want is someone’s time and consideration
without the feeling that I owe them for it.
From Craigslist Miami, Missed Connections MfW, March 2014. Submitted by Dawn S. Davies.
1
Never sell the bones
of your father and mother.
Every damn fool thing you do
in this life you pay for.
The bastards tried to come
over me last night.
I guess they didn’t know
I was a Marine.
2
Is it not meningitis?
All right then, I’ll say it:
Dante makes me sick.
Damn it! How will I ever
get out of this labyrinth?
Useless … useless …
My vocabulary did this to me.
3
Don’t ask me how I am!
I’ve got the bows up … I’m going!
I understand nothing more.
The bastards got me,
but they won’t get everybody.
This is the fish of my dreams.
Last words from Wikiquotes. Submitted by Howie Good.
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