"rewording" poems
THE woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is their antique joy;
Of old the world on dreaming fed;
Grey Truth is now her painted toy;
Yet still she turns her restless head:
But O, sick children of the world,
Of all the many changing things
In dreary dancing past us whirled,
To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
Words alone are certain good.
Where are now the warring kings,
Word be-mockers? -- By the Rood,
Where are now the watring kings?
An idle word is now their glory,
By the stammering schoolboy said,
Reading some entangled story:
The kings of the old time are dead;
The wandering earth herself may be
Only a sudden flaming word,
In clanging space a moment heard,
Troubling the endless reverie.
Then nowise worship dusty deeds,
Nor seek, for this is also sooth,
To hunger fiercely after truth,
Lest all thy toiling only breeds
New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth
Saving in thine own heart. Seek, then,
No learning from the starry men,
Who follow with the optic glass
The whirling ways of stars that pass --
Seek, then, for this is also sooth,
No word of theirs -- the cold star-bane
Has cloven and rent their hearts in twain,
And dead is all their human truth.
Go gather by the humming sea
Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell.
And to its lips thy story tell,
And they thy comforters will be.
Rewording in melodious guile
Thy fretful words a little while,
Till they shall singing fade in ruth
And die a pearly brotherhood;
For words alone are certain good:
Sing, then, for this is also sooth.
I must be gone: there is a grave
Where daffodil and lily wave,
And I would please the hapless faun,
Buried under the sleepy ground,
With mirthful songs before the dawn.
His shouting days with mirth were crowned;
And still I dream he treads the lawn,
Walking ghostly in the dew,
Pierced by my glad singing through,
My songs of old earth's dreamy youth:
But ah! she dreams not now; dream thou!
For fair are poppies on the brow:
Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.
2.1k
The ouroboros of eight,
mouth full, speaks forever
of doors and portals cautiously opened
from times past when scared eyes
scoured woodlands for sacred evergreen
and feasted to last the dark,
through the missionary rewording of the same,
to now, the snaking trucks
of the cola company
Dec 8, 2020
Dec 8, 2020 at 1:32 AM UTC
i tuck in the right end
of the saree
checking for excess at the bottom,
like revising, rewording, deleting words
from a poem.
turn once,
tuck in again
make up my mind about
how i want the pallu,
like i decide the end
before writing the beginning.
then comes the folding
which i invariably get wrong
the first time
every time
much like the infinitely pressed
backspace key, followed by
almost desperate slapping of keys.
i breath a sigh of relief
as i pin the pallu, content,
before i move on
to the daunting gathers -
the middle of the poem
that looks the same for all
but i convince myself otherwise
and look in the mirror
and find a poem smiling back at me.
Apr 12, 2018
Apr 12, 2018 at 1:18 PM UTC
We’re slowly dying of thirst
In the desert of Trickle Down.
Allowing politicians to lie
And constantly fool around
With the laws, rewording them
So, they leave us all out.
Today, that’s what being a
Republican is all about
The GOP takes money
And waves it in our face.
They don’t know the meaning
Of the word disgrace.
They cater to the lobbyists
And the riches they present.
The kowtow and kiss the ***
Of the holy one percent.
If you are the kind of folks
With no millions in the bank
You don’t have a chance and
You have the GOP to thank.
They don’t like non-whites
Nor non-Christians here.
They wish you’d leave your money
Then quietly disappear.
While we’re on that Christian stuff
Don’t get so carried away
That you think Republicans
Care what you have to say
About the basic freedoms that
The Constitution gives.
They only mean it for themselves
That’s where the issue lives.
So, don’t you non-white citizens
Think you can open carry.
It’s just as sore an issue with them
As gays who want to marry.
It may be the law, but then
The police are on their side.
Those who thought otherwise
Have suffered and have died.
This is the Land of The Free okay
If you play by Republican rules.
Those who don’t believe that
Are soon proven to be fools.
This is the land of those
Who can buy a public office,
They feel the way you pray should
Be ruled by Republican caucus.
Dec 3, 2015
Dec 3, 2015 at 6:04 PM UTC
Park benches, dark autumn early breezes
underneath the sounds of crunching leaves.
Your leather jacket,
My failed attempts at charm and
being mysterious.
A smile lit up like fireworks,
September was never brighter
while swinging and wailing like a siren
lost in the backseat of my car.
Looking at you with lingering memories
of someone that I used claim to be myself.
Pulled back and ripped apart like an old scar
that is now a fresh wound.
I didn't come here to tell you to stop yourself
from falling completely into me
like a crash in the ocean,
or a match striking paper.
I come with warnings and stamps of approval
from the regrets that lay furthest on my mind,
and I still just can't stop myself
from rewording these clever bruises,
that I'll have to explain when I get home.
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 4:54 PM UTC
I have a friend whose father, though imaginary, was able to get work driving a cab in the country parts of Ohio. if I close my eyes I can see my own father lost in some wooded area naked and wearing a cape. the cape is deep red and my friend is female. when my mother reads me a book without pictures I can tell when she’s rewording the phrases she finds plain. how she reads ahead while reading aloud is something I hope to one day mimic. I do worry about the books I claim to know as perhaps there is a sadness in them that remains untouched. plain things are often sad things. I would ask which causes which but for the unlimited amount of time we have left.
Sep 1, 2012
Sep 1, 2012 at 1:08 AM UTC
To my dear poems,
Although you're close to me, I will no longer strive for perfection with you
For I believe the raw emotions and imperfections make you beautiful and I am too in love with your flaws
The scraps of paper with scribbled words
Coffee stained napkins where sudden inspiration hit
Temporary words on palms
And unlike mine, I love your scars
You let my heart speak without a filter and the more perfection I force upon you by replacing words and rewording my pain,
it becomes nothing more than a never ending game,
making me obsessed about your appearance, I end up with useless words that make not a difference.
So instead of giving you hours, I will give you each a piece of myself and I know it will remain safe with you.
From your imperfect writer
Sep 7, 2015
Sep 7, 2015 at 8:54 AM UTC
Maybe not yet
Couldn’t be the right time
If we haven’t quite met
Is it safe to define
This romantic
Semantically
Not ascertained
As rhetorically
Verbally
Just unexplained
Inundation
Of all too forgotten
Emotion
Feels more like a promise,
A vow,
But unspoken
For now
There is day in
Day out
Demonstration
You give me a reason to live
Ideation
Jul 26, 2022
Jul 26, 2022 at 1:04 AM UTC