I’ve been helping teach an after-school poetry class for teens, and one of the assignments was a “found” poem (more of a cento though) composed of song lyrics from artists each student chose (we came up with quite a variety of styles, genres and subjects!). Students were also tasked with choosing from a long list of provided themes to focus their writing, and to come up with a picture (drawn or nabbed from the internet) to accompany their poems.
What I wrote turned out better than I expected, so I debated whether to try and publish it in a magazine or just post it here, but obviously the latter won out. (Mostly, I wanted to share the 2-hour drawing I made after not drawing for months, if not years, but not without the poem, so…here we are.)
Note that my own words inserted among the song lyrics are in parentheses (as per the assignment), and [/] are used to indicate lines from different songs spliced together.
See if you can tell which songs we listened to (and what this poem could possibly be about — believe it or not, I did have some real experiences in mind)!
Survival
Hollow, (I)
drag my feet
looking for a new fool
(to) fill that void,
find my / warm, safe place
if I stare too long,
nothing to think about
except thoughts (and)
the hidden truth —
the very hurt you sold —
send me on my way;
(my) beating heart,
hard to ignore,
must go on,
mockingbird
against the world…
I survived
killing fields,
roses up my sleeve,
clinging to / my darkest hour.
Copyright © Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum, 2020
Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum 