"rebrand" poems
You gave me the resolve that I needed
And the strength
To believe I was worth it.
Now my foundation is crumbling in the spot –
The one you once occupied.
Slowly
My rock has turned to dust
And i’m falling down
To the ground,
Back to the place where you found me.
Before you built me up,
Made me taller
Than other skyscrapers
Surrounding me.
I don’t think anyone else
Has the right tools
To make me solid again,
To rebrand me
But my belief was firm
That one day,
The Great One shall restore me.
(22/19/13 @xirlleelang)
May 27, 2014
May 27, 2014 at 10:35 PM UTC
It’s never easy
starting midstream,
when your joints squeak like old vinyl.
Worse to end just as you begin,
editing hope into bullet points,
buffing your portfolio like a coffin lid.
You kneel to metadata while the holy algorithm decides
if you're human enough to be blessed.
Better to read old Nabokov,
nap in your robe
(the good one with pockets),
wait for the mail like it’s 1998
when catalogs still mattered.
Let purpose dissolve, like the vitamin
you dropped in the sink.
You failed to fail,
which sounds noble
but feels more like
accidentally surviving.
So drift toward the grocery by the newsstand,
nod to the pretty barista with the knife-edge bangs,
pretend the papayas mean something.
You’re the median of middle-aged.
Your knees, both traitors.
Your dreams, reruns.
These lines limp
like your fifth attempt
to rebrand the layoff as a sabbatical.
"Don’t derail, just project
your better self on a screen."
Crop the hair, dim the lighting,
hide the existential dread
behind a well-placed emoji.
Let rhyme stutter
like a pull-string toy,
half-broken,
slightly too cheerful.
Feet unsure, eyes fogged
(by pollen, by memory, by news).
There’s no noir here,
no brooding detective,
no dame worth lighting a cigarette for.
Just this:
the echo of effort,
forms half-filled,
where even your name looks uncertain.
So let’s call it.
Let’s bury the draft,
archive the ambition,
delete the app.
End
where we never really
began.
Jul 28, 2025
Jul 28, 2025 at 10:03 PM UTC
I've been still,
Caught in a sweet stasis,
Buried under the same, baseless
Candied gags, slippery hags, body bags ー
But I can't go back.
Haven't moved forward either,
So I still sit silent here.
Maybe I'll someday wither ー
Like dandelions as they scatter in the wind,
I will feel no more the weight of societal sins.
Staying awake in anticipation;
That feeling you get when you see a road blocked
and a wrecked car hoping it was an accident
Eventful; excitement to see that tar black
Crimson on tarmac
and those trampled, broken-pretty shells ー
I want to be a doll.
A pretty hollow pale porcelain
you still can't hurt when I slip through your hands,
Or when you let go and drop me,
Or smash me into the ground ー
It's all the same, isn't it?
You buy, bore, break, blame, build, rebuild
Rebreak, reblame, replace...
I remake real-fake love into stanza-sized stories
Just to rebrand them as poetry;
A molded part to inspire some abstract art.
They're better off that way,
Locked in and stationary;
Sweet standstill sanctuary.
And I'll stay to watch their models fail and break,
As they too, disintegrate ー fellow ******* degenerates
This time I was at your disposal,
But we're all just glorified disposables ー
Ever-hungry, hedonistic at heart.
Feb 25, 2019
Feb 25, 2019 at 8:46 AM UTC
You know my name
Let me rebrand it
I then, am Joshua.
You are Jericho --
A Jericho in my hands
For God gave you to me
The task is mine now.
I was born to conquer
I was born for this
To utter words of triumph
And exalt and laud
The name above all names.
You are not alone
But I am to defeat you
Including your kings
And mighty men of valor
That the proud heart may lose control
Be angry then, yet not sin.
I, Joshua
The one who'll march around the city
And for six days,
That'll be my routine
A discipline for myself
An act of obedience
Of not letting words slip in
From my mouth that once cursed
Yet now, I'm redeemed.
The trumpets we'll blow
And the Lord was with us
The fame now is of the land
Oh victory! Yes, my victory!
(6/29/14 @xirlleelang)
Jun 28, 2014
Jun 28, 2014 at 12:52 PM UTC
your mind is screeching over itself
fast forward looping
stuttering to sta-finish it's own sentences
before they begin
begin again
again rephrase
in a foreign tongue
sputtering auditory train
each song sounds the same
same thought new place
pacing backwards yesterdays
yester-year's dream spawned oiled seas
see the lochness creature seeping tar from smokestack wings
cleanse the river
boil the stream
seems where the hydrogen and oxygen meet
the breath drowns
defeat
retreat to your fiery cocoon
lace your wounds with spit and delusion
dilute your medicine til it tastes like lover's skin
again begin
begging the stars to swallow you
howl til one becomes two
rebrand suffering to resume
your pleasurable consuming death
Jul 21, 2015
Jul 21, 2015 at 2:14 PM UTC
each morning it dawns on me I am not that fragment of myself I was the previous morning
rebrand and reveal, rebrand and reveal, fall in love with every character I play
I am always murdering and resurrecting every facet of myself
an endless and repetitive series of seeking the light, being the light and rejecting the light
forever I remain The Obscure And Terrifying Great Unknown
nobody recognizes me. little parts of myself keep falling away like this
in helping people forget me, I am always both safe and at risk of vanishing
now watch me materialize into everything you ever wished for, now watch me flake and disappear
this life is but a massive game of Now You See Me Now You Don’t and nobody can ever win
read about Alice in Wonderland shrinking and growing, changing and morphing
read it ten times in my childhood before I realized I am the girl called Alice
if The Looking Glass was a glass prism, I am a ray of white light
I step into the glass only to shatter into seven different people
I am not that fraction of myself you first encountered
when you first glimpsed me glowing, I was only the moon reflecting the light of something else
if anyone tells you it’s not possible to be four-and-a-half people in a day, they are wrong.
can you remember what it’s like to not be losing yourself?
please tell me
I always wonder what it would be like to observe me in a magnificent divergence.
Nov 22, 2015
Nov 22, 2015 at 11:04 PM UTC
Thy heart let her grace succour
Thus still thy wandering sight
All thy promises to her honour
Adoring her with thy main and might
Bring her misdeeds to a loving light
To her ears alone such acts reveal
Let rumours and rancours take flight
Rebrand not your angel a devil
Though thou art the head and above
Yet give thine Missis respect due
Daily, dude, many an alluring dove
Thou wilt often see, but none is new
So *** in the dark alley eschew
Your body from immorality refrain
For thine lady thy love ever renew
Every day her affection warmly retain
In thy choice work and woman exult
Glory to God give for every blessing
And him praise for thy labour's result
Sated be with your couch and calling
Oct 9, 2012
Oct 9, 2012 at 11:07 AM UTC
I am frustrated with myself
Y won't I change myself?
I do all the work on myself
But I still am not getting the results I want from myself
Who I am now is not enough to be self
I need more of myself
To expand into more of myself
but still I can't bring change through myself
I am age deaf
Deaf to the inevitable success brewing in myself,
Something mischievous is working against my self
Maybe an elf
That doesn't want to be a shelf
Holding onto parts that remind me of the inadequacies of my knife
I can't cut through to release myself
I desperately want to rebrand myself
So I can differentiate from my past self
I am tired of proving this new self
Her existence stranger to her own self
All she wants to be is high on life it self
Which always reflects back her divinity in herself
Ooo the pains of being so focused on myself
I can't get enough of all this attention on myself
From myself
All my problems a delight to marinate on oneself
Isolated from the world's problems watching from the topself
I have to solve my own problems before I can focus on your self
Ooo but my lonesome can't stand figuring all this out by myself
I guess that's y we split up and branched out to explore our self
So we can share different possibilities to free my self
And your self
So we can remember the freedom of being non self.
So goodbye not self
I tried but I can't bring myself
To act in your behalf
With you I can't laugh
I'd rather be the staff of my higher self
My lowerself is betting on the neck of this giraffe,
You don't give an F,
But you will when you realize you're nomore 12.
These cycles won't break themselves.
So let's rev
And meet our best self
It's OK to lean into help
You don't need to pay for this soul hotel
Drink up from this well
So confusion you expell
Clarity your gut smells
Your present self is perf
You just gotta remember your true self
God herself within you dwells
So give up the struggle, time to rebel
No need to repel
What is true in this melt
Your soul awakens to help your human compell
You already have the wealth
Like the clothes you've been dealt
Mar 12, 2025
Mar 12, 2025 at 3:01 PM UTC
The way to reinvent is to rebrand
To create oneself requires real ambition
To try discovering your true self
You need no one's permission
Nov 13, 2020
Nov 13, 2020 at 5:40 AM UTC
It was immaterial who had fired the first proverbial shot in the great Schenectady logomachy.
What was immediately clear, however, after the proverbial dust had proverbially settled
was that the battle had left no survivors.
Proverbially.
And what had begun as a simple ballot measure to rebrand the municipal mascot
had ended in the annihilation of every intellect in Schenectady County.
And much of the East, West, and No Coast regions of the United States.
The grass roots campaign to replace the Schenectady Patriot with the Schenectady Concientious Objector
(a figure no less devoted to country, but more "free thinking," its proponents would argue)
had gathered unexpected steam when introduced to the public at large
in a tweet by the nation's commander in chief.
The inevitable result being a relentless and fast paced evolution of the story
by all-day-all-night-all-the-time news producers.
All using the same words with different tone and inflection.
And the relitigation of every detail
by 37% of American households.
Including 6% that didn't actually give a **** but enjoyed participating.
So what had been good natured
and modestly ambitioned
civic badinage
progressed through all the stages of twenty-first century newspeak
familiar to the politically observant of the time.
With any nuanced or genuine debate
relegated to micro-audienced podcasts
and IRC channels scattered about the internet.
And when the measure passed.
As part of a pendulum swing greater than itself.
The victors
taken by surprise
and frayed at all edges
by the death threats and vitriol visited upon them in the preceding weeks
felt sure
that everything would be better off simply left alone.
While their detractors
apoplectic
foretold the end of civilization.
And prepared accordingly.
May 7, 2018
May 7, 2018 at 6:02 AM UTC
If I ever feel
too fine just to pass
the time I fly and
get saucy most nights
a little will do
queezy rush sublime
hit my vein hid crime
seeping weeping will
of mine wavers hot
rebrand refresh re:
May 7, 2018
May 7, 2018 at 8:36 PM UTC
Rebrand love as promiscuity
Rebrand fantasy as reality
Rebrand slavery as liberty
Rebrand greed as morality
Mar 15, 2020
Mar 15, 2020 at 7:57 AM UTC