Verbatim found poetry is an intriguing collection of found poems. Poems found in ordinary, and not so ordinary places. Submit yours.
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.
Kandinsky, quoted in ‘Music and Jugendstil’, Critical Enquiry, Autumn 1990. By Kate Guthrie.
Many of them are neither
in the army nor in war work.
Many have found this a golden
opportunity to make money
during a war boom—by writing,
by commercial photography,
through the movies, or by other
worthless activities—worthless
when compared with what
your brother Alden was doing.
These bastards let your brother die, Forry,
and did not lift a hand to help him.
I mean that literally. The war
in Europe would have been over
if all the slackers in this country
had been trying to help out—
would have been over before
the date your brother died.
The slackers are collectively
and personally responsible
for the death of Alden.
And a large percent of fans
are among those slackers.
Alden’s blood is on their hands.
A letter from sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein to a fan, 28 January 1945.
An aurora, shining high above
the northern part of Saturn, moves
from the night side to the day side;
tall auroral curtains, rapidly
changing over time when viewed at the limb
of the planet’s northern hemisphere.
Irregularly shaped Calypso is one
of two Trojan moons that travel in
the same orbit of the larger moon Tethys;
Appearing like eyes on a potato,
craters cover the dimly lit surface
of the moon Prometheus.
Saturn’s moon Dione passes in front;
Enceladus continues to spew ice
into space; A closer view of Baghdad
Sulcus, one of four tiger stripes
that cross Enceladus’ south pole.
Cassini is on the night side
of the moon, viewing brightly-lit plumes
of ice being ejected from fissures
at Enceladus’ south pole. Rhea
looms near its sibling Epimetheus.
Cassini looks down on the clouds
just over the shoulder of the moon
Helene; Saturn’s rings, made dark
in part as the planet casts its shadow
across them, cut a striking figure
before Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.
The shadow darkens a huge portion
of the gas giant planet. Titan’s
golden, smog-like atmosphere
and complex layered hazes appear
to Cassini as a luminous ring
around the planet-sized moon.
From NASA’s notes on spacecraft Cassini’s photographs of Saturn, published in The Big Picture 21 May 2010.
If you and I meet up
and have a fabulous evening,
I will try and match you,
for the rest of our relationship,
with my image of
that fabulous evening.
But you are all sorts of other things.
And when I find that I then
can’t match up the magic
of that fabulous bubbly first night
to our second night I become
depressed and disgruntled
and I start hating you.
From an interview with Rupert Everett in The Metro. By Rishi Dastidar.
Honduras, Algeria,
Germany, Nigeria,
USA, Slovenia,
Ivory Coast.
Denmark, Spain, Slovakia,
Ghana, France, South Africa,
Chile, Greece, Australia,
Japan, Mexico.
Cameroon and Uruguay,
Portugal and Paraguay,
Serbia and Italy,
Switzerland.
England and North Korea,
Holland and Argentina,
Brazil and South Korea,
New Zealand.
The 32 teams in the FIFA 2010 World Cup.
Why’ve you got so many pictures of Maria –
she your girlfriend or summat?
Yes, she is.
So have you had sex with her?
No.
Have you felt her bazookas?
No.
Well obviously, it being your girlfriend
you’ve kissed her, yeah?
Not yet.
Well mate, in England
it’s sorta like a tradition
for, like, a girlfriend to kiss her boyfriend
so it sounds to me like you’re not actually with her
you just like her.
In Poland you mustn’t kiss to be together
and to think only about one thing.
But mate, we’re not in Poland:
this is England.
Dialogue from Somers Town (2008). Submitted by Marika Rose.
We can get anything we want,
from anywhere in the world,
whenever we want it.
That’s how it is
and that’s how we want it to be.
Still, our lives aren’t any different
than other generations before us.
Our time is.
We want spiritual direction,
but it has to be real for us
and available when we need it.
We want a new format
for getting Christian perspectives.
NOOMA is the new format.
It’s short films with communicators
that really speak to us.
Compact, portable, and concise.
Each NOOMA touches on issues
that we care about,
that we want to talk about,
and it comes in a way
that fits our world.
It’s a format that’s there for us
when we need it,
as we need it,
how we need it.
The blurb on the NOOMA series of films. Submitted by Marika Rose.
Blue with a hint of your mother.
Jesus Christ, what is with you and green?
What I’m sure was once nice wallpaper
before you stained it with your nicotine.
My dentist’s office orange. I still remember
his dandruff slowly wafting into my gaping jaw.
It’s pink, but not totally pink. It’s purple,
but not totally purple. Sorry for
spazzing earlier, I had a seizure.
White if it had a wine spill on itself and let it dry.
Maybe a half hour before the first stars
start showing up in the night sky.
Red as the cute boy to my right’s hoodie.
I’m sorry for polluting your stats.
That awful color, that forever remains a reminder
grandma needs to be cut off after the third glass.
Dark red. Velociraptor cloaca.
Shark invested water blue. Unsure-
whether-boy-or-girl baby room color.
Nothing looks like a proper color any more.
Comments in the xkcd survey about identifying colours.
For every child who instead of being cooped up in a small flat
is playing in a brand new children’s centre
—that is Gordon’s legacy.
For every patient who is treated in a brand new hospital,
instead of suffering on a waiting list
—that is Gordon’s legacy.
And for every person in an African village
whose life has been transformed by the cancellation of world debt
—that is Gordon’s legacy
and it is our legacy too.
We can be proud of what Gordon has done
and thank him from the bottom of our hearts.
From a Labour party email, 12th May 2010. Submitted by Marika Rose.
On days one to two: Wees –
two or more per day; Poos –
one or more per day;
Poo at this stage is called meconium
or mec for short. It’s very dark
brown green black and sticky
and it’s already in the bowel
at the time of birth.
On days three to four: Wees –
three or more per day; The
amount of wee increases,
and the nappies feel heavier than before.
Poos – two or more per day;
The colour changes and looks more green.
These poos are called ‘changing stools’
and they change because your baby
is taking in more milk and digesting it.
On days five to six: Wees –
five or more heavy nappies per day;
(see what heavy means overleaf).
Poos – At least two soft, yellow poos
per day; They’re yellow, because there is
no more mec in the bowel.
Day seven onwards: Wees –
six or more heavy nappies per day;
Poos – at least two soft, yellow poos
per day; greater than the size of a two pound coin
– not just skid marks. You might notice
little seedy particles in it – that’s fine.
From the National Childbirth Trust notes ‘What’s in a nappy’. 16 May 2010.
Verbatim Poetry 
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