"rephrasing" poems
A Hebrew Prayer from the Sabbath Morning Service
THESE ARE THINGS that are limitless,
of which a person enjoys the fruit of the world,
while the principal remains in the world to come.
They are:
honoring one’s father and mother,
engaging in deeds of compassion,
arriving early for study, morning and evening,
dealing graciously with guests,
visiting the sick,
providing for the wedding couple,
accompanying the dead for burial,
being devoted in prayer,
and making peace among people.
But the study of Torah^ encompasses them all.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I briefly considered editing, adding to, rephrasing this translation.
But reconsidered almost immediately, and instead wrote this down.
Among the things that are limitless perfect is this prayer.
Jun 10, 2017
Jun 10, 2017 at 8:34 PM UTC
I can't shake it--think I've been
Lost in translation.
Words aren't enough right now
Maybe they never were.
I go and try to put it down--to speak out loud--
Something's being left out.
All this rephrasing
It is so caging
That's not what I meant
You're getting in my head
I can't speak.
Stumbling over my words
Can't think.
And then they don't understand--
and that hurts
This can't be it--that's not it
The words--the terms--nothing fits.
It makes more sense when I'm silent.
Nov 9, 2017
Nov 9, 2017 at 6:54 PM UTC
o talkative listener
what do you do
always rephrasing sins on your skin
you are a devil in disguise
and I love you for that
you are ragged edged with a hint of silver
wanting to make gold with stones
you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders
and walk like it's your last time to shine
o talkative listener
what do you do
always marking your words with a metal edge
you are a devil in disguise
and I love you for that
Nov 16, 2019
Nov 16, 2019 at 1:54 PM UTC
“but you are too old for apprehension.” her
voice had sounded so, and of this one’s voice,
‘you are never too old for wariness of
an unknown.’ responded astute, drunk
on logic. returned was breathless thought
to the void, filling emptiness with irony.
(oxymoron) and weened the way thru,
concision turned derision with repetitious
definitions that found no actual meaning.
all thought without justification and no
thought with classification. words,
actions, wailing:
empty, empty, empty
then existed less and less from want
of purpose. less and less from interest of
the known; this once forged fear of life. and
with impressive derangement, grabbing at the
only sober keychain. they, with twitching vesper eyes,
their hands jit’ for a false-meeting fix. to nix
the nihilism. and:
‘People can go **** themselves.’
words of this one’s voice. of her’s, “thank
god you’re alive.” from those days, when rains
ranted down, and the trains tripped us out.
those days of our wood’s reclaimed trailer. and
each syllable was never thought to be anything
until aged eyes ached for review those epochs
of breath. but:
‘People can go **** themselves.’
voiced in response to a romanticized thought. and
all epochs lingered upon are no more than a
journal of the winds that blew while we were present.
some diary of listless lust left undated. of the woods, of
a reiterate span in once anonymized transience. and falling
back, thumbing pages for proof of experiences passed into
skewered memory. left are three lines, ill-verbed, to represent
an entirety of past lives. of time once present in yellow-lit
motel room, of apocalyphic musings, and veering prophets
of doom. they, turned sincere apocalyphites. their prayers
writ boldfaced, platitudinous, in concern of endless words
restating – in constant rephrasing:
‘People can go **** themselves.’
but they just kept goin’ on without concern for the dawn.
Feb 1, 2014
Feb 1, 2014 at 5:26 AM UTC
I held my breath just right
trying to figure out if I'm alive
until everything faded, just darkness
because your words
will only ever remain the harshest
and I'm forever reminded of you...
how you made me skip school
because I could tolerate dodgeballs
and projectile rocks...
...After all they are merely skin deep bruises
And the hatred produces
nothing but swelled bones and broken muscles
till everything was a struggle
But they are merely skin deep bruises...
It was not the dodgeballs that sent me crying
it was not the rock hurling that sent me home early
it was the poisonous ravenous tongue
that slithered on lies like it was at a skateboard rink
trying to drink the life and soul out of anything alive.
So you sent your fake condolences, your pity parties
made something 'arty' pretending that you were a friend
yet a fiend coated in a cloak of condescension
you've mentioned death by my ears enticing my every step
hoping that I fall to wreck and fail to ever stand tall, *****
to be a pawn in your hands, your master plan
just holding back the tears as my palms push away
all your damaging words pretending that they never hurt.
I spent years and years rephrasing, repeating, remembering
'talk to the hand because the man isn't listening'
but the tears glisten in my eye sockets and though I
can convince myself I wasn't listening, I guess
I couldn't convince myself just enough...
You tore at me till there was nothing to tear at,
you prayed and preyed that I bit the dust,
hoping that there was nothing of me left,
and so...
I held my breath just right
trying to figure out if I'm alive...
because in that brief moment the only way to escape
was to remind you that 'there's nothing left,
you can't **** me today, or tomorrow,
because I have been nothing but dead'.
I held my breath just right
trying to figure out if I'm alive...
Turns out I did survive
And as I finish up this write,
I'd like to remind you
that you are all beautiful,
that you can survive
in the ways that I have
because the gentle touch of a rain
never cleanses the wounds
nor numbs the aching pain,
it merely reminds you
that there's another sunny day.
Sep 22, 2016
Sep 22, 2016 at 2:00 AM UTC
On a cold November morning
She awakens
Her eyes
Sunken and unaware
Of the beauty
That lies ahead
All she sees
Are the fears
The weights,
Dragging
Pulling
Gnawing away
At her frail, fragile bones
She is lost
She is broken
She is gone
Sitting
In a ***** room
Picking up a pen
And trying
Desperate and futile
To take back
What she believes has died
She stops
The naked scars taunting
Watching from her forearms
She grins
In that eternal moment
She is perfection
Her scars smudge
Her flesh smooth
Those vicious weights
Nowhere to be found
She is free
Untouchable
She is the words
That she has written down
She is the future
Which she had feared
She is the reality
Which she can believe in
Mar 29, 2013
Mar 29, 2013 at 12:57 PM UTC
My mind, it sings
my ears, they ring
and this is true
because of you.
No simple thing,
no mild fling
the times we spent;
I felt content.
These phrases set
lest you forget.
Here's some rephrasing:
you're amazing!
My only source of some disgust is,
the words I write don't do you justice!
Dec 30, 2019
Dec 30, 2019 at 7:41 PM UTC
Every time those three words left my mouth, I knew I'd hear them come straight back.
I liked the way those words sounded rolling off the tongues of others all so effortlessly.
I collected those words, said each time by new people, hoping someday maybe I could mean it but I never did.
Person after person, all I heard were those three words ringing through my mind.
The first time you said my name, I realized I could never let those words into my mind without a great deal of feelings behind them.
I thought about those three words millions of times, rephrasing them, placing them in different orders, hiding them between other words, but they never seemed to sound right to be said to you.
Suddenly those three meaningless words, didn't seem to cover all my feelings, though I still say them to you repeatedly, hoping maybe someday I will find stronger words to use, but for now,
I love you.
Mar 24, 2015
Mar 24, 2015 at 2:49 AM UTC
painful urge to write
spifflicates want of reading --
words rephrasing world
Oct 26, 2012
Oct 26, 2012 at 4:20 PM UTC
a truism, an overused, abused entrée to the first poem of the day,
they always are night-born, from a slow passage of dark to a light-triggering recording event, a 6 hr. poem period, gestation, incantation
and a sort of relief, temporary
*many the miles voyeured, a mentaller feasting sated,
simple rhymes to covet, rephrasing the complexities of
our other lives, where our sub-selfs exclaim, out loud!
this is me unchained, this is me chained, this is...someone*
*besotted by the rottenness of honesty, once air-exposed,
eyes fixed, no away-turntable, all that well hidden spoilage
in dreams reverent, forsaken, my ashamed-ness, is willing
taken to the scaffold, and by daylight first, perceived, conceived*
*we may examine the half of me, nay, the all of me, open-face
secrets secreted in my nighttime travelogue, of crimes, revelations,
insects, drownings, strawberry moons, all the fraying edges of a
linen covering, my cadaver pouch of well used words*
inscribed thus:
”human born from a sac, and to earth returned, in sackcloth
Jun 4, 2020
Jun 4, 2020 at 9:05 AM UTC
a great absurdity of life
comes in no lesser
form than...
as it comes...
when using
a knife and fork...
to eat a chicken thigh...
or a chicken drum-stick...
without
the joy of using the hands...
of the two households...
where a chicken was eaten
with a knife and fork...
and where a chicken was
eaten with bare hands...
profanity: when enough
meat remains on the bone
that a dog will gladly bite...
otherwise a household...
where even the ends of the bones
are bitten off for the livery
marrow...
or that grand delicacy of
a chicken's neck: you cannot find
more tender meat anywhere:
even if it is poached...
esp. if it is poached...
and sometimes a noun
is used as a verb...
to chicken out...
no alternatives:
but a rephrasing... of...
comfortably numb can
become: comforted by numbness -
comforted by a numbing...
-ing: herr gerund!
alternatively:
the chicken story...
apathy: is it truly to be devoid
of all pathology?
or... quiet simply:
to sweep under the rug...
i.e. that there are too many
pathologies to mind...
that apathy is
a σ of pathology?
May 28, 2020
May 28, 2020 at 5:43 PM UTC
Rephrasing Ex President Ronald Reagan.
Mr. President, Barack Obama, TEAR DOWN
Your wall's of payola!
Apr 5, 2016
Apr 5, 2016 at 7:22 AM UTC
"I don't have feelings"
He told me
Rephrasing what the doctors named his demons.
The shadows lurking behind every corner of our precious moments.
Lashing their whips to control this lion of a man.
"I'll be good"
He tells me
Bending down to his knee as a sacrifice a soldier makes to protect his Lady.
I do not know of any woman less worthy than I
Nov 3, 2017
Nov 3, 2017 at 11:40 PM UTC
A poetess sleep is non-existent without
Analyzing
Decoding
Rephrasing
Ticking
My mind is poetically undisturbed
Until the morning dawn breaks the surface of a midnight blue
A pen turns into a harpoon
And a poem forms from the gloom
Mar 15, 2018
Mar 15, 2018 at 2:37 PM UTC