The Found Poetry Project

     not intended to provide investment advice

The value of all your assets
minus liabilities

negative net worth       estimates
current market value
undeveloped total of all you own

gems, precious metals, gold, goods
may have appreciated in price     do not
include your Whole Life

this is true, on the other hand,
no cash value        enter the total here

if any  

A cassock among cassocks. Shorn, your dead
hair woven into haircloth. You are a eunuch

against your heart, born to celibacy.
Anoint with oil, comfort the sick,

wearing the vestments of charity;
you are consecrated to the nerveless

idol of compassion. You are fleshly
not like a woman but like a root,

whiling your days in small increments
of devotion, fastidious denials

of ego, which your base soul finds
unbearable without an attentive god.

You are unfortunately an atheist.
You exist to love and will never

be loved. You are divorced, castrated,
exiled from passions. You do not know lust.

The city is your boyfriend;
the pavement is a long grey shoulder.

__________

Written by Alexandra Clark
Private Blog
“Don’t look at me,” 1/26/09

Found by Timothy Green
Los Angeles, CA

Why bother? Seurat’s
besotted with color.
He’s spent two

whole years drawing
in black and white,
just trying to

understand it.
What he calls
“Lines of Emotion.”

The idea that lines
going in certain directions
can make you happy.

His paintings carry
this idea to the limit.
“A blind alley.”

Sure, Seurat’s work
is impressive, but
while you’re reflecting

on heat, light, shade
and sphinx—reconsider.
Ask yourself whether

such intense stylization
was a real development,
or a determined

escape attempt
by Seurat
from the self-imposed

treadmill of dots.

__________

Written by Julian Freeman
Art: A Crash Course
Watson-Guptill Publications, 1998, p.66

Found by Timothy Green
Los Angeles, CA

I wish I could be there
to be miserable with you
but I’m in the land of storms,
sweaters, pubs that serve only Guinness.

I’ll be home in 11 days.
It’s too soon.
I’m used to it here now.
I’m starting to sort of learn Irish
and talk to people.

Everything at home is so
much more permanent,
so much heavier.
Every little thing I do there
feels it will echo through eternity.

Here, I have less complicity,
less responsibility
for the fate of everyone.
At home I feel like
if I don’t recycle a can
one thousand babies
will die in Zimbabwe.

We watched this movie
in class tonight,
The Wind that Shakes the Barley.
It was violent and harsh.

I bought a cute sweater
at the sweater factory today.
I think you would like it.

__________

Written by Emma Keener
Personal Letter, April 2007

Found by Megan O’Reilly Green
Los Angeles, CA

the deep sea is full of surprises
and four-eyed spookfish
whose eyes use thousands
of crystals like mirrors
to focus light
                    other tubular
fish look sideways and
downwards but the spookfish
is the only fish with eyes
looking both up and down
the first demonstration
that vertebrates are not
boring as we thought
                                mike
thinks the eye is intriguing
and could be unique
                              I doubt
we’ll see this in others surely
we would have discovered
it by now

__________

Written by Jessica Griggs
New Scientist, 3 January 2009, p.11
“You can’t hide from a four-eyed spookfish”

Found by Timothy Green
Los Angeles, CA