Found Poems

The LFLA Poetry has scoured their favorite books, movies, and video games for poems, finding prose unique to their interpretations of the words and phrases that they encountered. However, important questions remain: did these poems exist somewhere before our poets found them? Or did they rather create new poetry out of existent prose in their tedious excavations? We’ll let you, dear reader, be the judge of that.

Found in “The Fisherman and his Soul” by Oscar Wilde

Upon the sand, her body was as white as ivory, fairer than a morning star

Her lips were like sea-coral, her cold breasts of a pink almond in spring

"Is that which is pleasant to eat not made for the eater?”

Sweeter to his ears, as sweet as honey and wet amber

As one snared in a spell, as one in a dream,

He touched the thin reed of the throat, ever did his Soul tempt him with evil

At night-time, he held her, hung the moon in the honey-coloured air

Hidden from them, a black viper, soft serpent-skin

Green-grass eyes reflecteth all things that are in heaven and earth

She led him through a garden of pomegranates

From the hollows of the Judas tree, a nightingale was singing the harsh wine of his tale

The fires cannot destroy it. 

Accursed they shall be in some secret place 

So great was his love, round and round they whirled in more storms than the wind has

The love of the body is vile– it is a sin that cannot be forgiven

They are lost, I tell thee, they are lost

We cannot tell the God whose name is Love.

Found in East of Eden by John Steinbeck

I will tell you about

The solemn courts of love in Salinas. 

A bird song 

Falls into panic desolation 

A kind of sinking in the heart 

—I’ve never been so goddam lonesome 

—Why? 

—I don’t know

Splashes of California poppies 

Tear you to pieces 

—I love you better 

—I don’t understand

In the sun-warmed sand 

The sagebrush struggled to exist 

—I always have

It took me by the throat 

Crept on a corroding world 

—What’s it good for? 

The soft rains continued 

From nothing to nothing  

I don’t think anyone can help me.

—Do you remember? 

The glory of the choice—  

You don’t have to be perfect. 

After a while, a long while, it will be true

It’s an aching kind of growing

The world 

Never quite whole again 

I was not afraid anymore

Counting the 

Wandering men, lonely men, literate men and ignorant men, clean men and dirty men 

They crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck

It was always that way.

Found in Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar

LOOK THROUGH THE PEEPHOLE AND YOU’LL SEE PATTERNS PRETTY AS CAN BE

That partial vision

Nothing but disagreeable and painful.

How tiring it gets being the same person all the time

Walking on the thick air without the fear of falling into the street

I am obliged to bear the daily rising of the sun. It's monstrous. It’s inhuman.

The best trait my ancestors have is that of being dead

Pity would not destroy.

Pity is being auctioned off.

“There’s nothing needed so much as an open window"

He agreed that maybe peut-etre and who could say

What good is a writer if he can’t destroy literature?

He was a spectator on the edge of a spectacle

The scorpion stabbing itself in the neck

The pigeon looked like a revolver

“To think I shall die,

Drunk on metaphors and analogies,

Without having read the headlines: TOWER OF PISA FALLS.

Ah merde, c’est la tour de Babel”

The woman who played hopscotch had pity on him, 

The prodigal son,

The fierce enemy of Kant.

But all he could do was look at 

The phoenix

So beautiful beside the hopscotch 

it was so obvious that it burned

You’re stupidly crazy, because it suits you

We really could have been friends 

If you had had something human about you

“Blessed be the silly”

“Father”

Found in Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders

I used to make up long speeches to you after you left.

It was easier when I just imagined you.

Everything has changed between us so fast,

Ever since

You came.

“I'm asking you a question.”

OK, all right.

“How long have I been gone, do you know?”

Half a boy's life.

“What am I gonna do?”

Stay on the line.

“What am I supposed to tell him?”

I guess you'd better tell him the truth.

His arms were burning.

Can you see me?

“Yeah.”

He wants to see you.

“Oh.”

Now, I don't know what to say.

It was easier

when I just imagined you.

You are not sorry you came, are you?

Found in Pathologic by Nikolay Dybwoski

Who are you, my long awaited guest?

Your heavy hand will crush us all,

Our past is immutable, the future, unavoidable.

But I'll be alright, I'm made of wood.

The best means of transportation in the world,

It's not a trap, it's a grave.

"I've heard." - Worse, I checked,

It can get you to unimaginable places.

It's become so acute lately,

Too soon to measure for a coffin then,

And Yes, It is spacious-

And bad, as usual.

"Well- I think you aren’t doomed." 

Three coffin bearers, two mice and a bat.

Found in Bee Movie by Jerry Seinfield

I wonder what it’s going to be like?

‘I heard a sound, and next thing I knew…’

On the road to nowhere 

Soothing, sweet syrup 

That just kills you twice

Its distinctive golden glow

This time, this time, this time

Deny the heart that’s yearning

Like any other emotion

Didn’t I?

There’s a lot of choices

It’s a beautiful thing

I don’t know what you’re talking about, 

You only get one

No, that’s no good

I love it! I love it!

Open your eyes!

You’re too late

I can’t see anything

Let it all go

Found in The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Out of the Tuileries into the light 

—I’m sick of Paris 

—Why don’t you go somewhere else? 

—Oh go to hell 

It smelt of incense 

Pamplona rising out of the plain

It would be a fine fiesta 

I knelt and started to pray

For everybody I thought of 

Everybody’s sick. 

Standing on the bridge 

The great brown cathedral 

The broken skyline of the other churches 

God help you. 

God, what a rotten dream 

Chased, sputtering and cracking 

—Isn’t there anything we can do about it? 

—Kiss me just once more

The next two days in Pamplona were quiet

Floating I saw only the sky

Oh, darling, I’ve been so miserable