"anaphora" poems
Each day with so much ceremony
begins, with birds, with bells,
with whistles from a factory;
such white-gold skies our eyes
first open on, such brilliant walls
that for a moment we wonder
"Where is the music coming from, the energy?
The day was meant for what ineffable creature
we must have missed?" Oh promptly he
appears and takes his earthly nature
instantly, instantly falls
victim of long intrigue,
assuming memory and mortal
mortal fatigue.
More slowly falling into sight
and showering into stippled faces,
darkening, condensing all his light;
in spite of all the dreaming
squandered upon him with that look,
suffers our uses and abuses,
sinks through the drift of bodies,
sinks through the drift of vlasses
to evening to the beggar in the park
who, weary, without lamp or book
prepares stupendous studies:
the fiery event
of every day in endless
endless assent.
11.1k
So...there's this girl who's rather smart
that, when her lips begin to part,
drives me up the wall in a good way.
I sort of want to see her everyday.
She's usually busy though,
so I occupy
time with one constant sigh
until she calls and then I go.
I don't really know too much about her ---
she's Aphrodite's caricature! ---
no,no, that's a bit rash and inflated,
but in my stomach butterflies've congregated
each time her face comes to mind.
Severely interesting,
her hands are often clean
and she's never proved less than kind.
I think it might be good to write her a song
(I should've been writing this all along)
so that she'll feel sublimely delighted
and is happy, though consistently derided
by the upkeep of her garden's flora.
She could use a lot
of things uncommonly wrought,
like poems stuffed with anaphora.
*In time all the snowflakes will evaporate.
In time the sun will sleep under an iron leaf.
In time acetylene darkens human hate.
In time all time will seem quite brief.*
So, in honor of her I have created
this mediocre song so dominated
by use of the Yeats-stanza's rhythmic-rhyme,
offering it to her as ends to the crime
of my deplorable mannerisms.
I hope it's well-received,
being arduously conceived,
but I'll openly accept criticisms.
Coral, though you must (and do) work a lot,
work harder at those things which can't be bought
(i.e. relationships, love, and empathy)
for even the natural workaholic bee
requires mutual love.
Even while working
find a small moment to sing
this song. I hope it's enough.
Oct 5, 2012
Oct 5, 2012 at 2:54 PM UTC
I love the girl who is too young to smoke cigarettes but lights them anyway. She sits on the high school bleachers at 9 on a Sunday night, gets tired of the smoke in her eyes, and tosses eventual death in the trash can.
I love the girl who has never enjoyed the taste of alcohol but feels like Holly Golightly when she holds a glass of Cabernet so she drinks it anyway. She sits in her grandfather’s lounge chair on a Monday night, plays the songs he taught her on the ***** neglects her English essay, and leaves the red remains in the bottle.
I love the girl who cannot stand the sound of my guitar, but pretends to like acoustics because she knows the music brings out the best in me, and that even if she asks me to stop, I will play anyway. She lies on the floor on a Tuesday night, wishing she were in another town too small to be called a city, listens to melodies that remind her of where she is, ignores my creations and leaves my heart in her hands as she finally falls asleep.
Jun 30, 2013
Jun 30, 2013 at 1:39 AM UTC
Dear Myself,
I stood atop a hill far from glory,
Wasted away with an everlasting story
I sat and pondered about the meaning of life,
Been through endless pain, anxiety and strife.
I stood atop a hill in my own struggles,
Falling over deeply, in my own puddles.
So I stood atop a hill baffled and afraid,
Of a complicated life I have so beautifully changed.
May 11, 2014
May 11, 2014 at 3:18 PM UTC
I can spit out words in a matter of seconds
I can twist my thoughts into metaphors and anaphora and all this rhetoric they taught me,
they said it would make my argument stronger,
that it would make me a better writer
well
here I am,
am I?
I can do it all
I can make pain taste like sugar, granulate it so finely to where it melts on the tongue
I can cope my problems into understanding, make feeling alone no longer a possibility
I can even create something similar to hope with the way I form these phrases together
I can almost do it all, but
I cannot write you into my arms
I cannot place you in this bed next to me
I often wring passion into language, this pouring out becomes exhausting and
It doesn't matter how many times I rewrite this poem
Poems don't make people fall in love
People make people fall in love
I wish
I could make you fall in love but
I am not one of those who can
I've learned it doesn't matter how nice these titles are,
the stanzas, the formatting, the content is not important
Whether or not I bury my soul into the center is irrelevant when
you are currently the only thing living inside of it
Every time I pick up a pen or
a pencil or a page I hear you
My head has become a blank thesaurus, everything sounds like your arms holding
I search for inspiration and your name is all I can find
I want to say the same goes for you with mine but
that would be a lie more than
anything else
I guess that's what writing is more than anything else
deceit, fabrication, myth, romanticization
a reflection of everything we know to be false drawn into something it's not
I have been trying to scribe my way into your heart but
it's clear that I cannot let myself in without invitation
the welcome mat means nothing if it goes unread and
as much as I would like to get a call from you tonight,
it would be silly to wait up for fiction
I thought the rhetoric I've learned would help me feel better
I thought writing this might take away the aching, make me happier
well
here I am,
am I?
Apr 9, 2015
Apr 9, 2015 at 2:21 PM UTC
I thought you said you'd never forget me,
I thought you said you'd always love me.
You told me that night
I was yours forever.
I thought you promised to be there,
To hold me when I'm down.
I thought you said you cared.
You said you would never leave me,
I thought you told me the truth,
But as things come to surface,
I was stupid to believe in you.
Feb 22, 2013
Feb 22, 2013 at 7:33 PM UTC
When I was fourteen I learned to write
I learned to pour out my sorrow onto the pages
of an old notebook
When I was fourteen I learned to write for myself
Without stupid prompts
asking me what I was proud of
When I was fourteen I learned to write the truth
Never again did a meaningless sentence spill out of my pen
saying things that were opposite of what I felt
When I was fourteen I learned to write for everyone else
I said to those silent pages what I could not say to their faces
for fear of losing everything
When I was fourteen, I learned to write
May 28, 2013
May 28, 2013 at 12:17 AM UTC
Everything rises
Smile
Everything that lives
Reina
All that is lily
Smells
All Laca
interweaves
All who love
Bed
All rejoices
It's love
Everything hurts
It is loneliness
All that remains
ache
All that was
Heat
All away
Aphelion.
Sep 15, 2016
Sep 15, 2016 at 7:02 PM UTC
I
I’m not playing here
this is real
like looking up and wondering a little
about nothing really
clipping thought coupons
into a phone
on the backs of Denny’s’ receipts
that’ll be worth while on sale
maybe a cradle
a rocking chair for an aching back
or a shovel
'cause that's all that really matters
II
but I cannot bring myself to
do what we (brothers) have done
videotapes donutting for unblinking eyes
blurry words, maybe
faster than (the) sea
mathematical and black
reflecting (truth)
what really matters
the violence of things that mean something
that pump the kroovy
that crumple old
inky receipts
thrown
III
they warp the desk
spinning the world into the anaphora of a pale blue dot
a period
a full stop
IV
Apr 15, 2014
Apr 15, 2014 at 3:02 AM UTC
Anaphora I feel for you
Anaphora I like you
Anaphora I met you at a party
Anaphora I didn't think you'd remember me but
Anaphora I found out you did when you asked about
Anaphora I had told you about
Anaphora I remember you wanted to know
Anaphora I think there may have been something
Anaphora I something deeper at play but
Anaphora I'm not quite sure
Anaphora I may look like I have it all, but a large part of me remains underdeveloped, I'm not sure how to map out the chart of my feelings, if you remember me now, please
Anaphora I say something, please reach out again over
Anaphora I over that black void and find me, alive, waiting patiently by the phone for your ring,
Anaphora I or your words to save from doubt
Anna Foura, I feel trapped, like some protagonist from an old Russian book, probably approved by Chekhov, I lie in wait playing dissonant jazz and idle daydreaming, I miss you ana
Foura I feel for you anaphora.
Aug 4, 2022
Aug 4, 2022 at 1:23 PM UTC
he creates music
in the way he plays
and the way his body awkwardly jerks away at contact.
the small frame moves away as if it is to be played marcato
and the piece (his body, that is) returns to maestoso
and she creates lyrics
in her notebook
and in her life.
everything has anaphora.
she writes lyrics that always begin him.
(everything in her life begins with him, she'd like to think.)
and everything is an example of apostrophe.
everything she does is directed at someone who won't care about her.
and when these two meet up,
when their bodies collide,
the most beautiful composition is created.
his moves alter between marcato (louder, forceful)
and maestoso (majestic, smooth)
and her lyrics are very anaphoric (oh, ****
and everything is all for him.
Mar 2, 2014
Mar 2, 2014 at 1:12 AM UTC
He makes me want to write my sentences properly.
He makes me want to type my 'I's correctly.
Because of him, I shall capitalise the letter because to him, I am big and I am important.
I am worthy of being an 'I' in comparison to an 'i'.
Because of him, I want to write poetry that rhymes.
For he fits into my ink and it pulses through his veins, I can see through the surface of his skin and he belongs to me.
I want my sentences to accurately show
the rhythm and life that he inflicts on my own.
Because of him, I want my words to bounce with my heartbeat.
I am, I am, I am.
Because of him, I am no longer on borrowed time.
Because of him, I want write poems with anaphora.
Because he is the beginning of every thought, every line. Every second, every time.
His lines are repeated but he is fresh and new.
Because of him, I do not cower
*it is only when I am singing in the shower
that I remember the times
I would idly sit in the greying water
and imagine them walking in on my body
which would be as cold and lifeless as it was in the inside for so long*
But now, I see light
and no, it's not that light that you reach for because i - no I, am no longer longing for that desperate release of death.
Because of him, I no longer scratch my fingernails along the walls of the day
grasping onto it
and scared of the one to come.
Because of him, I eagerly await the sunrise counting down the amount of sleeps until I am sleeping in his security.
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 8:12 PM UTC
am i solidly so-so sane
am i slightly in-all insane
a sweet and sour, salty, bitter stanza
anaphora, alliteration, rhyme and meter
spiced-up with macerated metaphors
slant rhymes stirred in a one cup measure
chopped, cut, creamed or cored
i guess i am...
a tablespoon of solidly so-so sane
a teaspoon of slightly in-all insane
a roast with a zest of relished craziness
a marinating mustard mix of uniqueness
i guess i am only simply me
an originally homemade recipe
Jun 24, 2016
Jun 24, 2016 at 11:58 AM UTC
“**Poetry seems to perform hypnosis, the found rhymes and assonance and anaphora enacting an enchantment, a bewitchery; it seems to be giving subconscious advice. Get ready! You must change your life.”
Elisa Gabbert is the author of five collections of poetry, essays and criticism, most recently “The Unreality of Memory & Other Essays.**”
~~~
Tue Jan 2024, 2023 8:33am
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*Or it may not,
but know, core know, say it out loud,
write down by hand in pen,
this poetry thing
is addicting
and dangerous*
*Sadly,
I am an addict,
Not a recovering one,
for the infection
has no cure,
no vaccine,
and amputation
does not help*
*Sometimes, for a time,
it goes deep,
it is living while you believing,
and disbelieving
sometimes, for a time,
it got bored and travelled on*
Not how it works
*almost every sub surfaces,
the innocuous are not innocent,
a quick retort, an unfocused hazed memory
trips you up
and down on the sidewalk
a familiplace,
you return/go*
and back on Boogie Street,
no need to find a dealer,
they find you
and the new curse word of modern times,
“use your words!”
fates but does not sate,
and you think to yourself,
the quieter time was fine,
but this pleasuring release,
the bewilderment
the urging and the purging
of poem after poem after poem
is the hell you love.*
Jan 28, 2023
Jan 28, 2023 at 10:37 PM UTC
A shot.
Better yet, several — well-aimed and carefully chosen to hit me
when I least expect it. I don’t know how many.
They come from every which where
and strike me dumb.
My reaction time is pitiful.
First
the gradual realisation that I am indeed injured,
Then
the quick spiral, the panic, the ***** —
the blood never ceases to shock me
— and twitching legs, light dimming, eyes
robbed of character,
the gates shut.
I am but ruins, an anaphora
an empty, broken-down bookcase.
Half an eternity later,
I am returned.
I always am;
To the same battlefield, the same blood spattered wall,
the same cruel game where I am little more than a target.
Or
perhaps I am the idiot who runs
Oblivious
Into the crossfire — Who knows?
Pain is the only certainty.
Oct 23, 2017
Oct 23, 2017 at 6:12 PM UTC
I am poetry;
Sonata composed in fourteen lines;
Woven in a dilating sonnet.
I am poetry,
Anaphora riding on iamb's saddle
Echoing free verses n
From line to line
And singing metaphor's
ever-living hymns;
Of then and now,
Dawn and rise.
I walked in rhymes
Till my feet strikes the gleaming Volta
And sends me back
To gloomy Arden.
I am poetry.
Sep 18, 2020
Sep 18, 2020 at 11:54 AM UTC
it was an anaphora. repeated with repent over and over again. my skin blistered when you thought that heating a metal rod was the way to smoke insomnia away. im stained with regrets, stained with your thoughts, stained with you. red wasn't my color and i wasn't yours. seeing you peel my skin away with a broken bottle set my matches volatile. you made me feel intolerable. looking at a compressed chest and empty lower half wasn't anyone's ideal. seeing you in the mirror was sickening but my throat was burned with the taste of mercury and my hands were covered in biocide. you chopped my head off and let me loose in the tennis courts and i ate braille for breakfast. i became malleable and slitting my throat was to the answer c as was my tongue growing a mouth to the dead bird in the drain. my room was stripped, skin diminished, a phase so to speak dispersed along with my security. forgotten like the gum on a shoe, i scraped my ears clean with barbed wire and drowned everyone's mind with a plate of malaise - i was gone but here at the same time.
Feb 8, 2018
Feb 8, 2018 at 9:28 PM UTC
“My heart is already accustomed to processing violet blood with poisons that are more deadly; Make you live again after a long sleep.
“It’s hard for me to cry, my demons advise me to follow... the letters tell me to stop, but my body says: And the Brain is treacherous for you to lie when doing a not true in front of the Bible?
“I don’t know why GOD loves me, I don’t even apply anaphora. I don’t even know the rules of a poem, I stop in this verse to go and have a glass of water.
**** the rhyme! Leave me alone with the metric! The quotation marks will die with me!!! I hope I don’t go to hell!!
“It hurts me to cry, I have cried too much; therefore, I smile not to cry.
“I help without asking for anything in return, in return I ask for help; But I have no help. Only GOD is the Giver of life, when I sin: my days are subtracted.
“I don’t want rhymes; this comes out of my skull, without complex meanings so that they understand it.
“I’m not who you think, I think who I am. You think differently from me; I don’t understand as you do.
“I settled on the bed, and I keep typing. I don’t have respiratory valves, nor the cough of despair comes to me: my tracheas are full of pleasure.
“I’m done, I’m tired, but of myself”.
Jul 13, 2018
Jul 13, 2018 at 1:01 PM UTC
Why?
Was it something they said? Was it something I did?
Telling signs let flowers die, flowers bloom; to mask the dead.
Like you can't realize you're already beautiful.
Please, tell me why.
Three years.
Straight, no arguments. No fighting.
Sometimes tears,
following laughter.
The quiet moments you break down; like I would never understand. Like I'm a puppet in a house; blindly famous and largely small.
Why. Why. Why. Again? This is a feeling.
Will I ever get you back?
I hate it.
The covering, the hiding, the sadness I can only see but
can't imagine; yet am so cursed to understand.
My only hope is fake friendliness, when I'm worried,
and God I'm worried.
God. It is you. It is you who I see, you who I care so deeply for,
you who I have spent three years knowing. And it is you still that
I can see, read, when you're falling apart.
little moments in your words-
where you cut yourself off.
like what you said was dull,
when it was anything but.
little moments in your writing-
I can read between the letters,
to see to the very bottom of
you, the very core. the horror.
and in those places, where I
love to sit, where I'm neither seen
nor heard, I watch the ocean slowly
drain from you; watch you give up.
but for what i will never know
was it a combination of your pretty friends, and isolation; or a feeling that drives you to that point. Why can't you see you're pretty?
Why can't you see you're pretty?
Why can't you see you're pretty?
Why can't you see you're pretty?
Why can't you see you're pretty?
Why can't you see you're pretty?
Why can't you see you're pretty?
Why can't you see you're pretty?
Why can't you see you're pretty?
You are beautiful.
You are beautiful.
You are beautiful.
You are beautiful.
look in a mirror.
But this pain is anaphoric,
I know it so well,
sadness repeating.
Woman (reading).
it repeats, and repeats, and repeats, and repeats,
you wake up and it repeats, and sings in your head.
Today is the day!
You've finally met fate,
so why are you so low?
Succumb to the pains!
Today is a felling tree!
It was never meant to be.
Anaphoric. Woman reading.
Collapsing. Repeating.
and days will turn into years,
years to a decade,
a decade to two.
And you will never even see it leave.
get it out,
please.
May 25, 2020
May 25, 2020 at 9:57 AM UTC
He talks so smooth, **** and sophisticated
He amplifies and exhilarates my dreams
Debonair dreadhead attraction
Heavenly fresh locs locked to my heart
Dazzling black diamond eyes
He is my wild
My smooth sensational high
I crave to dance in his sea of waves
Harbor his hot sauce in my heart
Marvel at his swirling chocolate thunder
How I hunger for his fragrant fluid flesh
To fuse to mine, enliven my mind
Bright bold trailblazer
He is a sultry sweet simile
Shimmering in my mouth
A spectacular amorous anaphora
Sliding along the walls of my throat
I want to feel his vibrant valiant masculineness
Lingering in my digestive system
Charm me with his hot starry wonderment
Change my world with his magical jazzy attractiveness
His flaming electric gregariousness
I yearn to venture to vivid thrilling sights
Within his scrumptious dimension
Melt into the steamy memories we make
The teasing wet, and long kisses we engage in
His invigorating fragrance flowing in my marvelous midst
Mar 26, 2022
Mar 26, 2022 at 8:15 PM UTC