Found Poetry from Lyrics: April 3-10, 2025
For National Poetry Month, we’ll do a take on “Found Poetry.” Create a poem using some of your favorite lines from songs. Arrange those quoted lyrics to create your own poetry. You can add other words as needed to make it make sense, but the fewer extra words, the better. If you want to provide a list of where each line came from, that’s great!
The Submissions:
by Anonymous Frau Redux
Trying to make some sense of it all
But I can see, it makes no sense at all
My love has no beginning, my love has no end
No front or back and my love won’t bend
I’m in the middle, lost in a spin loving you
Well I don’t know why I came here tonight
I’ve got the feeling that something ain’t right
My love has no bottom, my love has no top
My love won’t rise, and my love won’t drop
I’m in the middle, and I can’t stop loving you
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you
Its so hard to keep this smile off my face
Losing control, yeah I’m all over the place
I wish I were a poet, so I could express
What I’d like to say, yeah
I wish I were an artist so I could paint a picture
Of how I feel today
I’m so scared in case I fall off my chair
And I’m wondering how I’ll get down the stairs
I’m in the middle, and I can’t hide loving you
My love has no walls on either side
That makes my love wider than wide
Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right here I am
Stuck in the middle loving you
And you don’t know, you don’t know, you don’t know how glad I am
(Mash up of 2 classics- see lyrics printed.)
-Anon Frau R
by Captain Quillard
(This turned out pretty weird, but I had made a list of a bunch of lyrics and was determined to get them all in there. So, it may not make a ton of sense, but I had fun!)
Good frames won’t save
bad paintings
and I didn’t mean to be so disturbing
so far from home – in a room
by myself (looks like
I’m here with the guy that I judge
worse than anyone else),
spending money
like the way it likes to rain -
I’m starting to question
my manifest destiny,
my claim to this frontier
Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not interested
in gold mines, oil wells,
shipping, or real estate
What would I like to have been?
Everything you hate -
I, myself, have found
a real rival in myself
and I am hoping for a rearrival
of my health, but here’s some news -
One thing’s for sure: in that graveyard,
I’m gonna have the shiniest
pair of shoes
See, a man needs something he can hold on to -
a nine pound hammer or
a woman like you –
either one of them things will do, but
experience robs me of hope that
you’ll ever return, and
you can’t be a pimp and a
prostitute, too – Look,
300 people living out in West Virginia
have no idea
about these thoughts that lie within ya’,
So I’m sorry the love songs
all mean different things today
And don’t you remember? You told me
in December that a man
is not a man
until he makes a stand
Well, I’m not a genius, but
maybe you’ll remember this:
I never said I ever wanted
to be a man
But you start spittin’ out
anathemas,
cross-legged on a barstool
like nobody sits anymore,
and they leave drops of blood
like foxes in the snow
and now you’ve got something to believe
in your heart of hearts -
you’ve got something to wear
on your sleeve of sleeves –
Raised in the church
Washed in the blood
And we all were saved
before we even left home
Jesus loves a sinner but the highway
loves a sin
A monument to build beneath the arbors
upon a plinth that towers toward the trees
And all they got inside is vacancy
And the church bells are ringing for those who are
easy to please
And the frost on the ground probably envies
the frost on the trees
So let every vessel pitching hard to starboard
lay its head on summer’s freckled knees
You can leave your boots by the bed -
we ain’t leavin’ this room until someone needs
medical help
or the magnolias bloom
And I ain’t sayin’ I’m innocent –
in fact, the reverse -
but when you’re headed to the grave, you don’t
blame the hearse, and besides,
I don’t believe in heaven -
I keep some heat inside
like a red brick in the summer -
warm
when the sun has died
Next Week’s Assignment:
Continuing with National Poetry Month, this week’s assignment is to write a cinquain poem about April or springtime. A cinquain is a five-line poem consisting of twenty-two syllables: two in the first line, then four, then six, then eight, and then two syllables again in the last line.