Verbatim found poetry is an intriguing collection of found poems. Poems found in ordinary, and not so ordinary places. Submit yours.
heaps of fibered glass and twisted steel
to send a DM to that cute French boy
from your year abroad.
And it takes
thousands of miles of laid cable,
traveling at impossible speeds
through the depths of our oceans,
for him to leave you on read.
From Any Technology Indistinguishable From Magic is Hiding Something, March 2024.
England is by many
objective measures
a terrible country
ruled by terrible people
with a terrible past
and a terrifying future,
and I support England.
None of my forebears
were born in England,
and I support England.
When I watch the news
or follow England games abroad
or read about politics
I often feel utterly
disconnected from this country,
and I support England.
It was an Englishman
who snarled at me
on the street last month
while I was taking
my daughter to nursery:
Fuck off Chinaman,
take your Covid patient with you.
Nevertheless, I support England.
The supermarket is selling
something called “meatless burgers”.
There are women on Match of the Day.
You hear vague noises about “defunding the police”.
You suspect, on some sinister level,
that something you love is being taken away
And so amid this landscape
of shifting plates and cultural norms,
you have a choice: you can get with the programme
or you can stand your ground and fight.
I am not one of you
and you are not one of us.
But for this month,
for these 90 minutes,
for these sunlit days in June and July,
let’s pretend we are.
Let’s build a house together
and watch it fall.
Let’s pick apart Southgate’s 3-4-3
and debate the merits of Jack Grealish.
Let’s elate and commiserate together.
The past is the past
and the future is the future.
From My cross to bear, June 2021.
Making sense of crazy people interactions,
thinking about your life like a movie,
expecting people to follow written instructions.
Picking stocks, tree-based knowledge organization,
communism, acupuncture, counting calories.
Making sense of crazy people interactions.
AI methods that don’t leverage computation.
Jokes, pulling out, quality over quantity,
expecting people to follow written instructions.
Explaining board games, books (non-fiction),
fixing relationship problems by having a baby.
Making sense of crazy people interactions.
Waiting. Arguing. Without the G word – religion.
Solving supply shortages with consumption subsidies.
Expecting people to follow written instructions.
Tearing your hair out because people don’t follow written instructions.
Wanting to be liked; as pets – chimpanzees.
Making sense of crazy people interactions;
expecting people to follow written instructions.
(From Things that don’t work)
Consume the show.
Gobble it up.
Glean whatever little meaning you can
and move on.
Clear the backlog.
The new season of Stranger Things.
Binge it in a day.
Forget it a week later.
The new Taylor Swift just dropped.
Listen to it until the new Beyoncé.
Listen to that until the new Kendrick.
Listen to that until the new…
Listen to this audiobook at 2x.
Watch this LinkedIn Learning video.
Queue up that thing on YouTube.
What’s happening on Twitter?
Scroll
scroll
scroll
scroll
scroll
scroll
scroll.
Look at this Reddit post.
Read what’s on Apple News.
Check your RSS feeds.
Watch that new show on Netflix.
Watch that new show on Hulu.
Watch that new show on Peacock.
Watch that new show on Max.
Watch that new show on Paramount+.
Watch that new show on Disney+.
Watch that new show on Apple TV+.
Wait what’s that actor’s name?
Yeah, they were in that thing.
No, no, the other thing.
We just watched it.
Yeah, we did.
Yes, I swear you and I watched that.
Yes, you have, you said you liked it, I remember.
Anyway, can you believe what they said
about Israel and Palestine?
You need this promotion.
You need more money.
You need to upskill.
You need a better manager.
You need to network.
You need to market yourself.
You need to monetize your hobbies.
You need to sell your art.
You need to hustle.
You need to count calories.
You need to check out this story on Insta.
You need to hook them in the first five seconds
before they scroll past.
No one wants to put in the time to listen
to someone who can’t capture their attention.
Trick them.
Make them mad.
Get them hooked.
Make them crave more.
Here’s another fucking Star Wars movie.
Here’s why it’s fucking terrible.
Here’s why it’s the best fucking thing
Disney has ever done since it invented Star Wars.
Here’s the first in an anthology series
you’ll watch over 20 fucking years.
Don’t miss it.
Oh, you didn’t watch Ms. Marvel?
You’ll never understand why Reed Richards
fucked this ox in the post-mid-credits sequence
of Quantumania.
Get ready for the multiverse.
Get ready for the metaverse.
Get ready for Spatial Computing!
Get ready for the new iPhone.
Write a review.
Make a video.
Smash that bell.
Like that subscribe button.
Kiss your dad square on the lips.
I wish my dad saw me as a person.
Get 5% off your first purchase
by using code COCKSWADDLE.
Thanks to our sponsors.
Support us on Patreon.
Visit the shop.
Rate us on iTunes.
Follow us on Threads.
Enable notifications
so you never miss a thing.
Help, please, I am drowning
and there’s only so much time left
before I am completely forgotten,
and I haven’t been able to do anything
I thought I was supposed to do,
and all I want is for people to see me
and appreciate me,
and I just want to make things that say
something meaningful to someone, anyone.
Are you reading this?
I want to be done with this blog post,
but I am so worried that if I stop,
it won’t mean a single goddamned thing,
I won’t mean anything.
I am no one.
I am nothing.
I am so excited for the new Call of Duty.
I played 2,000 hours of Diablo IV,
and here’s why it’s total garbage.
The new Zelda is literally the best game ever created.
There is nothing more bae than swag, no cap.
You will never believe how many licks it takes
to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.
Breathe.
There is no point in time where we have had more access to information than we do now. You could cut out every single possible nanosecond of silence and never make it through. You will never be efficient enough to see it all before you’re gone.
Breathe.
And that’s okay. Maybe it’s better if you just sit and listen and enjoy the art. Someone worked hard to create it. It deserves your full attention.
Breathe.
When was the last time you truly, deeply, unabashedly connected with something and you didn’t say a single word about it?
Breathe.
What is the most important thing to you?
Breathe.
Why?
Breathe.
Why?
Breathe.
Why?
Breathe.
Breathe.
(From Hot take: it’s okay if we don’t consume all of the world’s information before we die)
the perfect people to love
if you claim you love Jesus
but dislike people who breathe
They never make demands of you
unlike the poor
they don’t resent your condescension
unlike widows
they don’t ask you to question patriarchy
unlike orphans
they don’t need money, education, or childcare
unlike aliens
they don’t bring all that racial, cultural
and religious baggage that you dislike
they allow you to feel good about yourself
without any work
and when they are born
you can forget about them.
It’s almost as if by being born
they have died
to you.
(From Dave Barnhart on Facebook, June 2018)
But to-night I’ve been polite to a friend—
have guzzled vin ordinaire
+ puffed a Villar y Villar
and opened my dusty tobacco-jar—
and my nerves, as a consequence,
are a bit uneasy;
the thought of that soft star
comes on me most benignly.
To-morrow, however, I shall reassume
the scrutiny of things as they are.
(From Wallace Steven’s journal, October 1903)
A huge vista of life and suffering humankind
Siegfried Sassoon
which makes the present troubles easier to endure,
and the loneliness of death a little thing.
Clouds came down and blotted the landscape
and we squatted in a vineyard and smoked
our pipes by the blaze of dry olive-branches.
In the cloudy weather after rain
the clearness of the hills and glens
shifted from shadow to gleams of watery light
and the skylines were clean-cut
and delicate-edged. The hills looked green—
there was a look of Ireland about it.
And when we got home to camp
I found a letter from Dorothea,
the good soul, full of Limerick hunting,
and hounds flying over the big green banks.
Our padré rather drunk to-night
after all the communion wine he’d blessed
and been obliged to ‘finish up’.
And the news from remote France
grows more ominous every day.
(From Siegfried Sassoon’s diary, 1918)
cats
tendtoexist in your
per
iph
eral
(vis)
(ion
and
after (a while
you move)
around the house
in a manner that
accommodates
the expectation of their
PRESENCE
waiting
to trip
you
up
on the stairs
or suddenlyemerge
from no!where
andstart s l o w w a l k i n g
in
fro
/nt
of
you
as you try
to get
from room
to
room
(Remix of Like Ghosts)
She is
with us,
she is
of us—
the eternal
stillness
is
but a form
of her love.
1.
Nearly two out of every three
American soldiers is a Negro.
They seem to be everywhere.
2.
In the small town of Isigny
I saw a funeral parlor
displaying a coffin with a baby.
3.
I caught a glimpse of a 12-year old boy
in a barber shop shaving
a man five times his age.
4.
Castles of old Norman lords.
(Roi Ottley’s diary, 1944)
Verbatim Poetry 
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