Digital found poem

Digital found poem is a random poetry generator that randomly combines thousands of pieces of language into an infinite variety of five-stanza poems you can use as an aid to create poems of your own.

Unlike most other online random poetry generators, which avoid all the hard work of seeding the app by simply grabbing the language, unfiltered, from existing web sources, the words/phrases/clauses in digital found poem are added, one by one, by hand. It’s this herculean task of seeding the program with carefully chosen language and then programmatically controlling the flow of that language that makes these randomly generated e-poems not always grammatical–not always logical–but almost always readable and perhaps even enjoyable. To see some examples of poems generated by digital found poem, see Twenty-five examples of digital found poems. To see how the text of digital foundpoem is generated, see How text of digital found poem is generated.

Digital found poem is an extremely simple, single-file text editor (think Windows Notepad) that won’t add cookies, mess with your registry, or collect any personal information. If you download it and it’s not to your liking, you can delete it in one second with a single click.

Important: To run digital found poem, your computer must be able to run Windows. Digital found poem doesn’t work on cell phones. And it works on Mac and other operating system devices only if they can also run Windows.

For download info, see the Download digital found poem section later on this page.

Using digital found poem in the classroom

Note: Although digital found poem doesn’t contain “four-letter” words, it’s intended for a mature audience. Its dark and adult themes make it inappropriate for those too young for all that misery.

If you’re a poetry teacher and are looking for a way to spice up your poetry writing class or workshop, digital found poem may be of help. Let students play with digital found poem, shaping and molding words and lines that they see poetic potential in and discarding the rest. (Think cut ups, erasure poems, blackout/redacted poems, found poems, and so on.)* For a beginning poet, a few minutes of tinkering with text provided may be a more enjoyable and productive way to start each writing day than to have to stare at that proverbial blank page and hope that, somehow, the words will come.

* For an interesting take on the value of cut ups, erasures, etc, see the @heteroglossia blog entry for February 17, 2019, which (in part) says:

Cut up, erasure, projectivist, free verse — many of these forms and schools, by taking verse, lines, conceits from past works, force us to see the intertextual nature that constitutes all writing. When, say, one “cuts,” rearranges, or erases a poem to bring to light another, possible poem, one illuminates the infinite possibility of language, the infinity of language. The poem lying in wait behind (or above, or to the left or right of) the poem.

Digital found poem is essentially just a gigantic “cut up.” But instead of cutting up a single existing work, it cuts up a huge chunk of the dictionary and of the spoken/written English language. It then rearranges the “cut up” pieces programmatically into an infinite variety of never-before-seen stanzaic text that students (or anyone else) can peruse to find/fashion new poems that may be “lying in wait behind (or above, or to the left or right of” the digitally generated text. And what they find or fashion, they may, of course, keep and call their own.

Download digital found poem

To see digital found poem in action, download it by clicking the link below:

download digital foundpoem

Last updated October 1, 2022 (zipped size: 920 KB. Unzipped size: 3.65 MB.)

Download Note 1: When you try to download digital found poem, your browser may give you a message that says that the file may be dangerous and asks if you want to scan it. For example, on Google Chrome, you may see the following message:

You can click Send to have Google scan the file, or you can click the arrow next to Send and then select one of the following: Scan, Discard, Open now, Show in folder, or Cancel.

Download Note 2: When you run digital foundpoem for the first time, you may get a message that says:

Microsoft Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting.
Running this app might put your PC at risk.
More info

Click More Info and then click Run anyway.

Digital found poem has been downloaded by thousands of people for many years with no reported problems. So I’m fairly certain you won’t experience any nasty consequences by downloading this app.

Note: I update digital found poem at least once a month, usually on the 1st. Each update adds hundreds of new pieces of language, removes piece of languages that aren’t working very well, and corrects textual errors. So if you use digital found poem regularly, don’t forget to update it every few months or so, so you get the full benefit of what digital found poem has to offer.

Contact me

If you have a question or suggestion about digital found poem, please feel free to email me at rio_jansen@hotmail.com.

How text of digital found poem is generated

Digital found poem has grown into a very large random poetry generator over the years that I’ve been working on it. The code of the app is simple, but the task of seeding it with language that can be combined randomly to create “poetically possible” and interesting text has been a real headache. In fact, it’s probably nuts to think that you can pull tens of thousands of random words, phrases, and clauses into a computer program and combine them willy-nilly into anything resembling coherent poetic text.

This realization almost made me abandon the program. But then I thought, “What if I let go of the idea that the program has to be completely random and try to create some rules that get the words to go where I want them to? What if I add in some literary devices such as pattern repetition, allusions, personification, etc.? Could that make the text more attractive for others to interact with? And that’s what I finally decided to try. So today, digital found poem still puts pieces of text together randomly like a good old-fashioned random poetry generator. But the text also shows the “heavy hand” of the author.

For a poetry generator to work, the first thing you have to do, of course, is fill it with language–the words, phrases, and clauses that the program will use to generate the poems. So for years I’ve been adding text that I encounter in my daily reading, that I hear in speech or on the radio, that I see on tv or on the internet, and so on. I also add lots of phrases and clauses that just pop into my mind, in addition to literary allusions that can spice things up.

The list of word that I might add on any given day might look as follows:

drudgery
there are laws to obey
unearned
conditioned by
at the closing of the curtain
the pain on firstname’s face
emerge(s/ing/d)
contending with
you could’ve loved me
when i look in the mirror
as the sea level rises
the difference between…and
pluralsubject refuses to see
i’ve tried to measure up
etc.

Note that on a scale from “happy to sad,” this list consists mainly of neutral or unhappy words. You don’t see words like “deeply in love,” or “happy faces,” or “i can’t wait to see you.” And this should be a hint that the poems generated by digital found poem will be pretty dark. And the reason for this is simply that if you try to mix the happy with the sad in a random way, it just doesn’t work. You’d get something like

what anguish is here

what ruthlessness

as the sky erupts

we smile at each other

overjoyed at the beauty all around

Now, digital found poem does use words like “love” and “friendship” and “beauty.” But only in the context that they are over, gone, and done with. So yes, the poems are dark. And now you know why.

The first thing I do any day I have time to work on digital found poem is to add the latest new language I’ve selected from outside sources or that I’ve thought up. Then I test whether the new additions seem to work coherently with what’s already in the program or whether they immediately clash. If they mainly work, I keep them. If not, I discard. And so “the world” of digital found poem keeps growing and growing.

Digital found poem works by having two types of lists. One type is the “data” lists that contain different categories of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, phrases, and clauses. (This includes many lists found on the Internet, such as lists of common first names, common last names, names of trees, flowers, colors, birds, rivers, cities, musical groups, etc.)

The other type is the “pattern” lists, which use the variables from the data lists to create larger chunks of language. So if a data list named paindadj contains the adjectives “lonely,” “miserable,” and “desperate” and another data list named i_feel contains the subject/verb structures “i feel,” “i am,” and “i’ve become,” a pattern list named i_linking_verb could have the following code: i_linking_verb = i_feel + painadj. And any of the following combinations of text could be printed to the screen by using line = i_linking_verb:

i feel lonely
i feel miserable
i feel desperate
i am lonely
i am miserable
i am desperate
i’ve become lonely
i’ve become miserable
i’ve become desperate

Simplistically stated, the way that digital found poem generates its text is as follows. The code first goes to what I call the master pattern list and randomly selects one of the currently 464 variable items on this list. Items on this list might look as follows:

line = loc_prep & c & spacer3 & subjectnoun & c & spacer3 & verb_singular

In this pattern, loc_prep is a word list that contains prepositions of location, c and spacer3 will cause a line break and variable spacing, subjectnoun is a word list that contains all types of singular people or singular personified nouns, verb_singular is a word list that contains tons of singular verbs and verb phrases, and line is the variable that is a collection of all the words, line breaks, and spacing in this pattern that will ultimately be printed to the screen. (The ampersand sign (&) just concatenates all the items in the line of code.) When line is printed to the screen, this pattern can create any of the following variations plus an untold number more:

near the abandoned house/a mystic/sits at the table
by the grocery store/a single mom/leaves empty handed
on o road/a wise man/equivocates
across the street from the women’s shelter/angeline/is walking away
between the flowers/this day/can never heal

As the code picks up an item from the master pattern list (or any other pattern list), it also picks up a flag that I’ve added which tells digital found poem which pattern list to go to next. Note that the items in the list above are all independent clauses with either a gender-neutral subject (“a mystic” for example) or a gender-specific subject (“a single mom” for example). So with flags, I can choose to sent the code to go pick up a phrase from a phrase list, then to another subject list that includes “he” or “she,” depending on what gender is required (or “it”) and then to another phrase list or two. Here’s what a full stanza based on the pattern above might look like:

in this little town/ignazio/has taken the plunge/this lousy tuesday/he’s waiting for the script to change/all at once/for ever and ever
across the street from the candy store/an old man/pays no attention/crazy with the time ticking away/he speaks through forgotten history/made with malignant deeds/at the edge of madness
near the funeral parlor/a lost soul/has come too late/without direction/she carries on with her gains and losses/bound by the workings of loneliness/wondering about everything/here of all places

With stanza one done, the code returns to the master pattern list and goes through this same process again to create stanza two, three, four, and five. Then the code stops with the completed poem printed to the screen.

Another thing I should mention (because you see it constantly in digital found poem) is that the master pattern list contains many “fill in the blank” items. All of these are expressions that people use daily in discourse and that you see used also in a million other poems–but with the great benefit in digital found poem that these patterns are filled in in a zillion different ways. Here are some examples:

today again …
yesterday you said …
this morning began with …
when i look in you eyes i see …
since you’ve been gone i have …

With flags, these can also be extended to repeat the “fill in the blank” parts as follows:

today again … today again …
yesterday you said … today you say …
this morning began with … and it ended with …

Here’s are three examples of what stanzas created with the “today again…” “fill in the blank” pattern might look like:

today again/we’re condemned to this hour’s deadly concessions/today again/we’re broken in two/drifting off/in one breath
today again/we’re ripped by a mad negativity/today again/we cease to care/wandering in an artless reverie/after a long silence
today again/we’re swallowed up by the messed-up filth of longing/today again/we’re drifting apart/on our uneasy battleground/in the arms of another

This is definitely not random, of course, but including these patterns does bring a level of coherence to digital found poem that you would never get if you left everything up to chance.

So that’s in brief how the text in digital found poem is created. Pretty simple, right? And I continually play with digital found poem by adding new patterns to the master list, searching for new language to add to the data lists, modifying or deleting language that doesn’t seem to work well, correcting spelling errors, fixing grammar elements, etc., all in the hope of making the app a little better with each update and perhaps of more interest or use to others.

Do note that this app works only on PCs/tablets and not on mobile phones. And it works on a Mac or other operating systems only if they can run Windows.

Should you want to know more about digital found poem or if you have suggestions about how to improve it, please email me. And any other comments such as “love it,” “hate it,” “fun,” “stupid,” etc. are, of course, also welcome.

25 digital found poem examples

Here are 25 examples of poems created with digital found poem. I did not create these poems 1-2-3 by clicking the “generate new text” button and then copying the text from 25 successive runs. Instead, I took what looked good to me in one run and then combined it with what looked good in subsequent runs until I had a five-stanza poem I thought looked pretty good. Then I went on to collect five more stanzas for the next poem, and so on, until I had 25.

Although I took liberties by selecting stanzas from multiple runs, I did not take liberties with the text. The text is 99% (or more) what digital found poem actually generated. (I just tweaked it ever so slightly to change a pronoun here, a conjunction there, and so on). I could’ve tried to make the poems better with more extensive revisions, of course–but that I did not do. I wanted these examples to faithfully show the text that digital found poem generates.

But what I did in these examples does show how I envision that digital found poem can be used for poetry creation — take what looks good from one or more runs, revise it as needed, and discard the rest. Or take an idea that a digital found poem suggests and run with it. And the hope is that digital found poem contains enough good text or suggests enough good ideas to get you to write some really good stuff.

If you are intrigued by these examples, and want to generate digital found poems on your own, click download digital found poem.

Examples

these destructive demons preparing for the sum of the horrible chaos

this is a poem

at the hour of leaving

a poem about our creation and our fall

risking it all

at the next address

what now

now that i’ve invented facts

i’ve trembled all over

in the way

i’ve remarked on the sum of this silence

puzzling over a hellish defeat

iii

it’s all here

the fallout of a few words

trying to work things out

we’re bound by

these unfortunate motives

the phony explanations

this may not mean anything

frailties were never like this

these awful ultimatums

to what good

this epic meanness

blind to what was going on

…

raging at the sky in the center of the universe

you ask

can it get any lonelier

what do you want me to say

what was it all good for

i’ve calculated a gloom

that returns

as we trade cold words

our chaos is reliving the past

iii

if everything’s amiss

what’s left over

if there’s nothing left to build upon

why did i let it all unravel

being was never more hurtful

than with the house for sale

with the useless asking for the heartache to stop

love you said

love is

i don’t know

a display of life’s lifelessness

on the list of who’s next

…

senseless encounters as i take the reeking garbage out

what do i know of

yesterday’s hurt

the writer’s wicked hopes

with love come to nothing

our love was this inescapable suffering

our love was cheaper emotions

you and i were creating this fiction

on 538th way

in this country town

iii

who was it that withdrew

reaching beyond the way of the dead

who endured

facing the wages of every day

the same as ever

while others are going to work

i’m exposed to this script

i’ve been cursed by my feeling broken

trapped in time

i’ve focused on eyes full of tears

pointing out a biblical nonsense

afterwards too

as always

it’s

the parts of us

we failed to fix

as always

it’s

these unfortunate artifices

most revealingly

having lost control of the situation

…

trying to survive the appalling isolation of an ancient emptiness

there are evenings when

a callous sky has closed in

and

agony pervades

with no poetry

no music

from things so delicious

to this irrevocable pain

from evening kisses

to this worthless unhappiness

how did we get here

iii

we’re walking on j highway

in carlisle in the evening

where drunkards are mistreating everyone they encounter

and junkies have no shame

why did everything go so wrong you ask

and i say who isn’t tired of the bickering

we’re misjudging everything

still pretending

getting back to the same old madness

truth be told

maybe i am waiting to be seen

maybe i am battling

as i’m eyed by the incorrigible characters on this stage

this isn’t me

how it will be

is moment by moment

standing six feet apart

…

forging ahead with these ungentle deaths

of what use

these ready-made impulses

the dark possibilities

living like this

a sunflower in a vase

these desperate excuses

more twisted figures

as a bus leaves for san gabriel

the enemy can’t be seen

iii

who is it that’s trying to earn a living

who is it that disagrees with everything

in the crucial passage

you are missing something

again

imagining the hurt of twilight

on a day just like this

chagall might’ve stressed a dark aching

as the sun slipped behind the mountains

he might’ve faltered

as of old

getting back to the relics of a horrible humor

in strange basements

we teach each other

thursday’s gloominess

trying to live with the anguish of heaven

near the docks

crossing new london square northwest

running against the clock

on the way to the grave

…

in light of the disruptive anxiety of a newspaper misery

______

so be alone at a table for two if you want

and be that woman on the bus

you are yearning for oblivion

at a loss about us

look how entirely irritable we are

we who’ve spoiled everything

repeating the same things over and over

we who’ve felt sorry

as predictable as this obscene chaos

iii

a piece of a worthless misconception

has continued

a surplus of absence

touches me

that’s the nature of things

there’s always hell to pay

it’s not a question of waging war on all fronts

nor a question of trying to measure up

a rotten equivocation doesn’t care

i’m hurting myself

as clouds drift to the north

fear is all that’s left

…

after having spread lies as we argue endlessly

______

so what if hades gasps

so what if the shops close

the craziness lies in wait

taking up space

down in the underworld

who knows the truth of

these unfortunate epiphanies

a god-awful doom

the weight of the inescapable suffering

doesn’t matter much

iii

mine is an intense melancholy

going through the motions

in my emerald imagination

i’m finding myself screwing things up

provoked by this savage gloom

i’m seeking what will suffice

this madness

does what it can

in any case

to the sound of a closing door

…

the repetition of broken pleasure

anyway

the ending never mattered

anyway

it’s all happened a million times before

i’ve stood in a doorway

in a big way

i’ve been unsure of what should’ve gone where

out of necessity

in a rabbit hole

just like us

the dead have screwed up

mentioning rehashed neuroses

seeing past iciest propositions

as the crimson leaves begin to fall

they consider their rehashed provocations

faced with the facts of what went wrong

iii

everything i’ve dealt with

begs to differ

as words stream by

fear is cruel

why am i understanding nothing

why am i living on empty

what it’s worth

has gone on forever

grappling with a catalogue of a painful isolation

surrounded by red forget-me-nots

…

the sharpness of what is called for

here we are

roaming the streets alone

turn after turn

in any case

we’re pointing out matters of religion

asking a thousand questions

you may think

i’m kind of blue

awake to this endless trouble

without all the pleasures of the evening

without the sweetness of love

and that’s okay

but know i’m just taking aim

connecting the dots

in unsettling basements

iii

who doesn’t make do with this looking-glass oblivion

who doesn’t underscore these worn out odds and ends

did we expect to be this sad

is this really what we expected

nobody’s here anymore

it is agony that is raising hell

everybody knows it

at intervals

i don’t recognize myself anymore

as black holes feed on distant stars

it’s all happened a million times before

…

it’s revealing j. q. bonnet

it’s always like this

it’s all a blur

this is nothing

that hasn’t been said before

the failure laughs at us

asking nothing anymore

sure enough

isn’t it always like this

who’s to blame

the absurdity is urged on

iii

this is about the hell we live in

this is about a broken belief

i’ve been cursed by what we did and did not do

unsure of what’s about to happen

so it never ends

friendship by itself is seldom enough

life will go on

it all seems so crazy

remnants of everything

at a table for three

your ifs and buts

waiting for better days

…

the making do with the afterwards of a trickle-down disillusionment

when the wounded die

it’s unbelievable

the world we knew is gone

maybe i’m in danger

maybe i’m entangled in dead ends

going beyond this new-made loneliness

by trial and error

iii

someone’s phone is ringing

who knows what’ll happen

did i say that i loved you

where’s the little girl with her american doll

i’m hiding away

i’m losing everybody

what was it you said

a car backfires

the graceless gypsy kings laugh at us

it’s no lie

running off

by the old church

in this discernable grief

the sequence of things

as it continues to rain

…

blind to what was going on page after page

i tell myself not to care

as everything becomes more pointless

sicklier performances

as the sun sets over the violet sea

i am myself

faced with nothing but uncertainty

i am rethinking the stop signs

second-guessing everything

iii

by stir crazy

i see you talking to francisco

are we the fools who did this

who knows what i am dreaming

repeat after me

there is no second chance

with a worthless accent

before the whole world

reality has gotten the better of me

navigating these biblical hang-ups

as people come home from work

botching life up

living like this

there’s always failure to account for

no one seems to understand

…

“how to address what lies were told

there might have been too

for no particular purpose

in the company of the snowman

these childish vices

these dual identities

as i’m forced to take vicodin for tmj

they swear that it’s so

what it all meant

who knows

the entrepreneur of intent sits down to dinner

burdened with all those little white lies

iii

you’re the amorist they say

and i’m

the dimensions of loneliness

lying awake

the making of grief

perchance

won’t let it lie

for no cause

in a house full of

beggars

the melancholy

of living

for the most part

it wasn’t supposed to come to this

…

these predictable numbers

i longed for you again today

i found myself at war with myself

imagining the infinite excesses

i was

discouraged by what happened yesterday

far from the limelight

in this tiresome stillness

here i am

a world apart

here i am

just scraping by

as time stands still

i am charting these patterns repeating themselves

iii

how exhausting it all is

this violent agony

these nasty details

so never-ending

why didn’t i see this coming

and

how did i end up here again

…

admitting our collective denials

i’ve learn to see through

the whole of being

the despair

of all that is

in fragments

the anatomy of the craziness of the night

it doesn’t matter

it is often so

between the art of misery

and the grief of these ill winds

frustration is dreadful

twisting and turning

like so many other things

iii

tonight i too can write the saddest lines

i too have detailed the failure of existence

aging poorly

as the radio plays starsailor

i’ve served my time

an uncensored fiction

on the heels of these sadder headlines

i gather

lavender

and slow

the disappointment slips in unseen

mixing water with the wine

falling into the gutter

…

tragic ultimatums past conceiving

there will be someone

starring in barefoot in the park

and there will be someone

stepping on toes

making do with darker messages

taking measure of these unkind suggestions

in the ghostly light

i’m stuck in the past

i’m beyond understanding

struck by the narrative of what’s left to come

iii

these ghostly imaginings

the way you’re supposed to be

giving voice to the chaos of the night

with this cosmic crying

under this yellowish light

the whole world is in trouble

i think of each of our days together

dearie

i’ve survived things beyond my understanding

i am with half a heart

acting on imperfect evidence

dearie

confirming these unfortunate choices

is it always this confusing

what story should i tell

…

after a night of gin

it’s the darkness of the sky

it’s the child inside

as the agony resumes

time sits quite still

i’ve been dragged along by the dissolution of a deadly jealousy

the unfathomable

without self-worth

in the last light

iii

out on the town with friends

we are the cause of this drama

we sit without speaking

in this part of the play

you are lights out

and i’m wishing not to hurt anymore

tell me

what led us to this point my sweets

what led us to this point

i’m trying to keep from breaking

on the drive back to brunswick

pondering the specifics of what this all adds up to

evidence of human existence

outlined in chalk

the relics of the moon

in a whisper

as you turn up scouting for girls

on the radio

…

the puzzle of what will be gone tomorrow

tell me

did i say that i loved you my pretty boy

did i say that i loved you

i’m crossing a line

i’m saying goodbye

without conclusion

by the light of day

oh to be the best at breaking down

to harp on

the despair

of nothing

the stinging of longing

for other people

iii

that detached wanderer deceit

did laugh at amour through doors not meant for us

i’ve disclosed the way there

in no small measure

i’ve described our creation and our fall

the same as ever

bit by bit

what it feels like is

these old-world improprieties

stuck here

crying and carrying on

the dailiness of our disintegration

on an altered course

earlier nightmares

in every act

as jackhammers shake the earth around us

…

out of the blue

is this what you wanted

the earth’s mad existence

the misery

of this place

slouching against a wall

in an insane drama

on the plains of waterloo

i’ve been confronted by these awful complications

the ingredients of meaning

carlisle’s wicked necessities

in a catalogue of bedeviling impossibility

exactly as before

iii

i’m in jeopardy

in light of substantial intrigues

the making of afternoon

sounding out these ongoing inconsistencies

these are the days of

blowing up

the days of all-consuming fear

as a shrill siren wails

the destitute poets laugh at us

the parts of the alternatives

in this plot

these strange choices

without fail

as the actors take their places

…

hidden behind the opposite of this cosmic crying

why do we do this

turning away from the goings-on of world

we are all asleep

on i-48

good grief

i’m not sure of what the point is

puzzling over these iciest fears

panicking about everything

iii

what caused

these defective parts

in one way or another

it’s best not to think about this too much

as the audience looks on

as forests are burning all around us

nobody cares

just another word

for the time being

ugliest emotions

with no one understanding

as a guy decides to drop dead

across the street from the doctor’s office

…

obsessed by what used to matter

inbox full of

these shameful decrees

the gloomiest outcome

as we forget how it was

everything is as it was

poets in search of anguish

review separation

musing about the randomness of every day

iii

these outworn digressions

maybe

the moody dialogues

with a new storm brewing

as uncertainty waits and watches

cold shoulders

line after line

a thought of what’s about to happen

the toxic flaws

now and then

a colorless chaos

in shady backrooms

it’s not lost on anyone

…

after so many days

i know how it feels to be

itemized

know what it’s like to be

sold short

i’ve been dispirited by a lonely routine

i’ve been forever null and void

all day

a rehash of what life didn’t offer

unceasing sentences

a little at a time

iii

in the dead of autumn

the memory of what awaits

the outlines of this day

at midnight in the garden

with nothing more that could be done

it was raining again today

i was grappling with the otherness of this absurdity

and you

you were running for cover

under a moon so fatal

and am i darker than this seraph

am i unprepared for the disappointment of sunrise

heartache

in a primrose hat

can’t be bothered

hiding under a stone bridge

where doom perpetuates itself

…

waiting here in the middle of nowhere

these careless quarrels

blow by blow

these useless limitations

on cue

everything judged

everything jerked around

hereabouts

everything at intervals

everything never the same

just as before

as the flood waters refuse to recede

there is no certainty

iii

how painful everything is

hurt has gotten no easier

and

it’s all just because

this is the frustration

that has set in

unflaggingly

with impunity

the grief of the dark

out of the blue

nastier provocations

across so many distances

it never made sense

…

the complexity of what all was lost

stepping on toes

with a craftsman’s care

taking off the mask

at the wrong time of day

it’s a woman’s lonely heart

it’s the perpetual misunderstanding

as history repeats itself

this is what it’s like

iii

i’m not sure of

what will happen

i’m not sure of

how i imagined it

each day is the same

this grief has spoiled the game

as our love slips away

the world’s gone crazy

that’s what we get

you get tired of it

the madness the world over

the nasty goodbyes

in the company of swallows and foxes

reciting fatal nursery rhymes

…

these darker grumblings most definitely

if i were to be treading carefully in this gaping emptiness

if i were to be unsure of how all this happened

would it matter

i am drawing wrong conclusions

trapped in deeper differences

what ails us

who knows

as the sunrise sneaks up on people sleeping in the alley

we’re pierced by the very thing that hurt so much

iii

it all comes down to this

the pretense

the failure of everything

as i carry the groceries inside

you see how people suffer

why am i telling you this

how did we get here

the anguish of the morning sun

on this parched earth

too many things at once

have come undone

…

Digital found poem Posts