I’ve occasionally played around with found poetry, that genre that refashions existing texts to present them as poems.  Poets.org describes found poetry as a literary collage and notes that it usually comes from newspaper articles, speeches, letters, etc.

But I recently discovered another rich source for found poetry: musical titles from the SXM station I most often listen to while in the car. In turning these titles into short poems, I’ve almost always left the titles just as they are, making only the rarest addition of a pronoun or preposition and even more rarely omitting a word from the original.

To offer the greatest possible freedom of interpretation, my SXM found poems are short, generally untitled, and mostly lacking punctuation, choices that seem to offer the best opportunities for individual interpretation. Just the way I like it.

Here are a few. I’ll drop in more in future posts. Because each one is so short but distinct from the others, I think they’re best experienced in small doses. If something particularly strikes you, one way or the other, I hope you’ll comment. I’d like to hear what you think as I keep working on this intriguing poetry style.

I.

all dreams
are made within
looking through
voices of the past

II.

the wind
whispers visions
stretching my wings
as the story unfolds

III.

desert afternoon
bright sky
dark dreams
in a long lonely light

IV.

Swimming with stones
in a dark and silent space
as a clearness of light
beams out of the silence;
now I let it go.

V.

miles from nowhere
wind whispers
on a lazy afternoon
I could live here
at one with you