"phrasings" poems
Thorefin,
Therifen,
Theraphin,
Raven Angel.
I do not expect
you to undestand.
I am he.
He is me.
She are we.
We are thee,
And there are more.
I do not think
This is something
Ordinary men conceive.
All the paintings of darkness
Are not to impress upon the critics
The level of my shallow depth,
Nor are my phrasings for the sake of vanity.
It is the darkness that gives lessons to the light, of things that I am not afraid to learn.
Like a papillon in a season of change,
I am transformed into a dark lamp,
For I have stood in many shadows.
I have soaked up the knowledge.
In my shadow,
Illumination awaits.
Mar 30, 2015
Mar 30, 2015 at 7:12 PM UTC
Rapture, growing voice around the corner.
Crisp new diphthongs, sorry rounded vowels
unrehearsed. A twanging reverb. Certain
loosened phrasings shock the doorknob, like
'Clara...octaves...failings'. When I lift the
latch it's broken trailing consonants
streaming past the ceiling; bassy treaties,
sighing falling clothes and chord-crushed feeling.
Apr 5, 2013
Apr 5, 2013 at 11:32 AM UTC
I sat down today and began to type,
But nothing I said seemed to come out right.
The meter was all wrong,
The rhyme scheme was a mess,
The words were too simple,
The stanzas too plain,
So I decided to erase it
And start all over again.
A few backspaces later,
I started anew,
And with each keystroke,
My frustration grew.
My thoughts were garbled
And looked clumsy in print;
My words were childish
And seemed cliche.
So I tried one last time
To write something that made sense,
But instead of eloquent rhymes and articulate thoughts
I got ill-expressed musings and awkward phrasings.
Instead of a work of beauty and awe,
I had created a trite piece of junk.
And yet, I found attraction in its ungainly expression
And was fascinated by its candor.
Nothing was hidden in dreamy language,
Or couched in metaphors and vague allusions.
I was filled with a strange satisfaction
At having created such an unorthodox piece,
That evoked in me the simultaneous feelings
Of looking on a lovely, unappealing work.
Jan 12, 2010
Jan 12, 2010 at 12:10 PM UTC
Nothing's
Amazing
That phrasings
Misleading
It's meaning
Is trending
Ascending
And blending
It's bleeding
To feelings
Reseeding
All learning
Refracting
Distracting
Everlasting
And confusing
Leaching
Overreaching
Reacting
No thinking
This god things
No blessing
Keep pretending
It has meaning
©2023
Dec 28, 2023
Dec 28, 2023 at 8:16 PM UTC
Can't write a poem right now.
Can't figure out the sound,
or how the rest of this should look.
My phrasings are obvious most times,
and don't get me started on my slant rhymes.
So what do I have, as a writer, to offer the betters of my peers?
Quiet conversation,
loud argumentation,
fingertips clacking mechanics and a penchant to steer
myself across the happy, golden union.
I sometimes forget the only thing holding me down is the force
of something much larger than I.
It's the firing pistons alive in the mind behind both of my
grey-blue faltering like the autumn to the winter eyes.
Oct 20, 2018
Oct 20, 2018 at 9:54 PM UTC
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks" is a quotation from the 1602 play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. It has been used as a figure of speech, in various phrasings, to indicate that a person's overly frequent or vehement attempts to convince others of something have ironically helped to convince others that the opposite is true, by making the person look insincere and defensive.
(So transparently self absorbed. Stay trapped in the box. I've travelled to distant planets and left the waste behind. Sometimes I feel like Charlie Brown listening to all the grown ups "wah wha whaaa....")
Jun 13, 2014
Jun 13, 2014 at 2:39 PM UTC
This poem is dedicated to Steve Yocum,
author, poet, and soldier
farmer, father, grandfather,
man exemplar,
whom I honor
and honors me,
with the noblest title in all humankind,
friend.
But above all,
I honor him most,
as a tireless, truthful, harpooner
of the examined and the unexamined life
~~~
*"Be the harpooners of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhapsody, comfort caress us,
exhort the loopy to light their illusionary candles,
turn the sad eyed lowlanders into
crinkly eye-lined smilers."*
~~~
these mine words writ many years past,
dusted off phrasings,
on dusty shelf long lain,
mined from notes,
decades steadily collected by steadily diminishing ears and eyes,
gathered most from self-taught lectures
and self-deceiving dances,
garbed and wearily grabbed
by the addict-strong
observational need,
persistent and perpetual,
to pay off fresh debits,
renewables owed
to the lovely,
to the loopy,
inhabitants who excite and inspire
my so far, rebirthing, youthful,
yearling heart
who provide the special crazy that
justifies existence
just men,
connected by a bond of sonship,
kinship crowning kingship,
blood types as different as an
A is to B
both shall weep in one blood,
I, as I do now,
while midst the nascent commencement of this sonnet,
He, at its commencement,
for a good friendship has no
beginning or end,
but is a circular track,
a loop,
familial by repeated runnings,
yet never, coursed in the exact
same manner or speed
this thought,
this knowledge,
bring a smile to this crinkly eyed composer,
that the metaphysical
will always surpass the binding physics of mortal physical,
that two man,
who have
never met,
race side by side,
not in competition,
but in the mutuality of composition,
each a candle holder,
both writers,
observing the dark illusions,
re-making each into a carrier,
a shedder of light,
each a debt giver and a
debt holder to each other,
hosts to all the loopy,
comfort caressers,
to each other
and to all
who too,
are light-bathed by being in possession
of the title
friend
Mar 20, 2016
Mar 20, 2016 at 3:39 PM UTC
computer screen, computer screen,
please fill yourself with words
my brain is much too tired now
writing decent diction hurts.
computer screen, computer screen,
please let me see the light
my head cannot think of anything
but cliche phrasings this late at night.
computer screen, computer screen
I sort of wish I were dead
but perhaps I should log off Hello Poetry
and finish this so that I can go to bed.
Apr 1, 2013
Apr 1, 2013 at 1:40 AM UTC
Perhaps 't was a fah-tah mawr-gah-nah]
from nord; why your barret leaned out
of the dome's open window; moi mani
Tapping the Sir maine above whiskers.
Years ago I said to a bright boy: I'm
totally broken...and he laughed at
my phrasings; whilst his brother
skateddressed up in brits posh
uniform up hill, with frozen
knees, jaggy at downhill
Awaiting toasts, tea and
A headful of read of delightful SF
Nov 3, 2015
Nov 3, 2015 at 1:19 PM UTC
as i and my red pen,
climb and clamber,
about in the latest,
offerings,
of inked thoughts
and dead trees.
i think of,
junglegym minds
and elegant phrasings.
of eagle eyed ids
and nuanced persuasions.
i think of,
words and worlds, aged
and then discovered
and since and again, interpreted anew.
and i wonder ......
mr shakespeare,
if you lived today.
what would be,
your world view?
Jul 20, 2014
Jul 20, 2014 at 8:23 PM UTC
since i've met you, the content of my writing has declined. you would think you'd inspire rhythmic phrasings of every lovey-dovey, cliche feeling you give me. but when i'm with you i can barely compose a sentence, let alone a poem. so i'm sorry if i'm no hemingway; you just take my breath away.
Sep 11, 2015
Sep 11, 2015 at 1:29 AM UTC
that moves from its mooring: it was from interstice
to intersection somewhere in Poblacion.
I was once there, looking for loose change beside
the market. Quickly I began as though an impression
was made past the kiosks dense with the matrimony
of the tabloids and print: its dearth on the streets
of Plaridel. Mud caked at the grey backs of gutters,
a spectacle
of leaves on the ground like deft
hands place them there for empires.
the first that I touched: wind,
last: your face, wind was it only that you and I were
never off-tangent, always, minus the blindfold,
seeking endlessly as though things refuse to be found,
pulsing in the heat of hiding grace.
and goes back to its source: something too splayed for science,
only too easy with a child’s fancy – chauffeurs playing checkers,
crossing each other out within conjunctions – much you or I,
our weights syndetic and our weightlessness, imagined – as if phrasings
loose like waters from the spigot left open: mother arrives, haranguing.
like how it was simple for the wind to remind us fit to this
meet constantly receiving your incidence, and my place stilled
to familiar topographies.
a window is left open, with its hands in the terminal of silence
holding light like obdurate stone; the surrender registers
with grievous art, you curved like a bent question mark,
or a swollen oblation borrowing its sheen from the ****
of bobbing beacons – the candid Manilascape you kept on
fevering for like an open sentence
only to find its birth.
Mar 2, 2016
Mar 2, 2016 at 11:11 PM UTC
Complicated words, drawn out phrasings.
Lines that flow like water and perfect pacing.
Truth from the heart, no more, no less.
Converted into art, forged without rest.
Your tongue is a hammer, nailing bars into place.
Ornate articulations to fill out all the space.
Between every line is a moment of awe.
Study it well and remember it all.
Maybe some day you'll take center stage.
You skipped the last step, so now you read off the page.
They applaud you in dim light, you make your exit.
Raise your head high, now you're in orbit.
Sep 28, 2018
Sep 28, 2018 at 9:50 AM UTC
I wanna say I lost,
lost them all in a white girls bag,
filled with peppermint gum wrappers
and made of Micheal Kors.
Let them go like candy
when it’s too old.
Gave no reason
but at least I tried.
They said I had too much pride, or maybe
it’s because it’s about being slutty,
I do like too many guys
and girls,
but maybe that’s why.
I’m not a mystery, nothing here to solve,
I’m nice,
I like myself
and you
but I like me
better than any of you all.
I think I got nasty,
maybe it was when I took a fall,
sticky with blood and word phrasings.
Drunk and disorderly,
but I promise, I took pictures of it all!
They might call me crazy but
I’ve already called them all.
I’ll always be late to breakfast
but never mistake me for being
flaky
like your breakfast biscuit,
topped with gravy-
fake tasting excuses,
its like you wrote the lyrics-
“drive me crazy.”
May 26, 2016
May 26, 2016 at 9:21 PM UTC
Ella sent the invitation
Louis worked the door
to celebrate between the lines
inflection served du jour
My heart was given freely
their phrasings lined my soul
beyond the words and melody
goodbye to rock and roll
The Saints Were Marching In
as Satch blew his horn with glee
(and Ella said)
No, No They Can’t Take That
— Away From Me
(Dreamsleep: June, 2025)
Jun 15, 2025
Jun 15, 2025 at 3:13 PM UTC