"say a prayer backwards" - poetry

[be_themoon]

you guys I am in love with college and erasures and poetry and language and such things. I did an erasure and now have to wait for the original author's permission to post it. and I'm finally posting a poem I wrote about a month ago and wasn't sure about posting.

say a prayer backwards

words are important
“yes”
“no”
“I don’t know”
and you know that it’s all just
syntax
context
how you can say the same thing a hundred
different
ways
and mean the same thing every time

you can mean to slip
not fall
not mean to fall
and slip
cut yourself jagged on words you didn’t even know you had
like saying a prayer
backwards

you can become your own antithesis
you can sing your own breakaway song
you can build your own mercy from the ground
into the sky

you can look away and you
can find the strength to break
and build again
you can fall in love and you can find
magic and you can
touch the stars
and most people don’t
but you need to remember

and look
listen
you just have to put it into context
how the earth spins contrary
to the motion of the sun
widdershins
counterclockwise
singing mercy to the skies
singing “just let go”

you’ve created your own gravity
built your own lies
tied yourself down with words that don’t mean a thing
not without the right –
but you don’t know anymore
you’ve forgotten the rhythm
you’re praying backwards and

you can still sing mercy from the ground to the sky

look
listen
remember
even these words need the right

Comments

[katakokk.livejournal.com]

BETSY. YOU ARE SO AMAZING.

I love this poem!

and mean the same thing every time

you can mean to slip
not fall
not mean to fall
and slip

I love the paradox created by it, because the words are NOT the same. And, just, GAH. I love the contrast. :)

And the echo of the title throughout the poem, along with the singing mercy echo.

This is just so beautiful and I feel like it's meta in poetry form (which is doubly awesome, because meta alone is awesome), so yeah, this is AWESOME. ♥

[be-themoon.livejournal.com]

Awwww, thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. It is a kind of really meta poem, because I've been doing a lot of philosophy thinking recently and that tends to result in meta-poetry. O.o Thanks again! <3333

[zempasuchil.livejournal.com]

ohhh, lovely. I can feel the vigor you're putting into this.

cut yourself jagged on words you didn’t even know you had
like saying a prayer
backwards
<3333

and

you can become your own antithesis
you can sing your own breakaway song
you can build your own mercy from the ground
The sound of those lines is great - parallel as well as the vowels in song/ground.

I like being your own antithesis too. It makes me think of, um, marx. but yeah.

<333333333 you

[be-themoon.livejournal.com]

MAAARX. um. hee. thank you! it was partially a working out of stuff I was thinking about, so I guess you could say it's meta-poetry? I don't know. I <333333 you too! thank you!

[zempasuchil.livejournal.com]

MAAARX INDEED <3 talk dialectics to me, baby XD
Meta poetry is good! it is very useful. My poetry teacher would talk about a poem as a machine, where you put an idea in and write about it and process it and at the end of the poem it resolves! or something like resolution.