Re-write Another Members Poem

My version of Cthonian's Today I Climbed A Mountain:

I scrambled and I faltered,
urged on by the echoes
of “pansy” and “faggot”,
old fashioned truths which rose
from the mass of shawled heads
and spurred boots, the Marilyn
Monroes and the Marlon Brandos,
and me, more Truman Capote,
in “ma britches” and “ma scarf”,
jiving up the rocks with whiskey
on ice the way a socialite moves
to Chubby Checker. The stove
despises me. The kettle thinks
I’m soft. The schoolhouse will not
speak my name. The church regards
me with mere shame. The villages scorn.

Wrenching myself free of their grasp,
like an elephant in a desert sinkhole,
I collapsed many times beneath my
own weight, grasping for the oxygen,
needily, like a courtesan does a Sheikh’s
manhood, but soon the climax came in
sight. Like a westerner’s mirage whilst
lost in the desert, it smiled and promised
free sodas. I arrived. I arrived. I arrived
and looked below at the villages like
tadpoles on a slide of steel, beneath a
sharp scalpel. The wind whipped my face
and I fell, fell down onto hospital stretchers,
inside medicine bottles, and abreast strange
office chairs. I picked myself up each time,
however, and left with a tougher resolve than before.

The winds were strong, though, and they
whipped me rawer than a landowner’s slave,
and simply to escape the roundabout of
defeat and scars and cure I found myself
decreasing, lowering my body down
from the summit, the uncovered ground,
empty as a priest’s conscience,
naked as a thick whore’s soul.
And when I reached the bottom,
the skirt of rocks which surrounds this
bleak grey peak, I saw the truth in an
image of a dive hotel, filled ashtrays
and bare wallets, reflected on the surface of a puddle.

[quote]le rayon du biscuit said:



My interpretation of Jack's 'Why Are You Still Reading This Poem?':


< like a hammer >

thoughts come from the outside
but once they're in
they can't get out

our senses
our mind
serve only the intestines
which take what they want and turn the rest to shit
while poets starve
with nothing to sell
not even their words
(composed as music)
made only to be read
made only to be said

poems are a tool
like a hammer
like a person
and at first
the words seem simple
but
when repeated they become the circles that we're in and can't get out

this poem is a thief
taking anything it wants

this poem is a sculpture
made of the page it's viewed on

this poem is dead
and cannot live until you speak it

this poem is a cover
that hides your beauty

here
let me pass it to you

undress it
hold it
speak it
see?
you speak it differently

you can't help but make it into yours
(it's not possible)

just as a child speaks
this poem speaks

there is no action
without learning

there is no movement
without danger

first sound
then silence

first light
then dark

 - - -


I like your re-interpretation Ray. Like Cthonian, you've seemingly torn down my twee insinuations to create a much starker, more aggressive verse. Thanks for taking the time to translate my language into yours.

You just had to go and bring "Run, run as fast as you can, I'll catch you I'm a Madman" back down to earth with a bump, with "All day at the dump" didn't cha Ray? You've made it more understandable and decayed, but thats a good thing not a criticism, although it does now sound like a hobo's idle chatter!

On a different topic, when did I/Viddax become a lord huh? Absent from his/my own coronation thingy.

Does anyone feel like re-writing this verse of mine, substituting my own daddy issues for theirs? I should point that I wrote it when I was sixteen and irrational, so please ignore some of the more obvious and slightly pathetic aspects of this piece.

Dad

take a remover from the chest of your daughter,
the make-up one sprinkled with glitter, and remove
the paste you’ve used to soak your face, show us
all, the boys and girls in the audience, who you really

are. menace. deceiver. deceptor. liar. shitbag. cunt
and hateful fuckrag. come out. release the feminine
bodice. one day, when people know that I am gay, I’ll
have to do it. so you should too. screw the disguise,

do you think I’ve forgotten the hickory stick?
the cries from upstairs, the plate on the head
of my brother, the latter to defend some lunatic
lover? and the emotional battery you bestowed

upon me, delivered to my door like unwelcome
roses. and a card in that bouquet scrawled with
profanity. thus telling all of your furious tendency.
must you deny those Ha’penny flowers? wasn’t it

your name on the mailman’s clipboard? coward.
you are ten times the faggot that I’ll ever be. you
with your two wives and their respective insanities.
at least my mother escaped the glare of your gaslight

syndrome*, packed all into a suitcase and fled to the
asylum, before you could send her there yourself.
throwing her over the threshold like a shot-put into
the sand. if only she’d taken me with her. I’d have

been no fuss, cutting cards alongside the nutters,
swilling their tea and sharing their sandwiches. I
think you’re unbalanced instead. at least she was
honest. at least she had a smile on her face when

she clutched the pill bottle, and embraced the bathroom
porcelain (come close, sweet cold cheeked friend). but
you, you lie and deceive and make nurses believe that
you’re God’s gift to the female insane. I see it behind

those rough brown eyes, the stubble on the chin and
the blue overalls, black from the afternoon’s work.
the essence of the hard-grafting father figure. but I’ve
glimpsed what hurries and dances beneath the white

skull, like kiddies playing hide and seek (behind this
bone, Julie and Harry, he’ll never see us here!) when mother
broke free, barely, surviving the claws at the hem of her
marital gown, you moved on, chased another through

the forest, latched onto her red-hooded shadow and
forced a wet nose inside her wicker basket. her name
was Samantha. poor bitch. I think she’s dead now.
drowned. were yours the hands that made her do it?

the gentle chidings, the insinuations, the prodding,
the corruption of her only son (he agrees with me,
Sam, he agrees that your scum). when I am older,
I’ll forget you, and in that forgetting forgive you.

but for now release the bodice and the paste on
the face, allow yourself one last arrow in the
archery game of redemption. pierce the target.
smile. be happy. or at least please say that you’re sorry.

*a scenario in which one partner of a conjugal unit attempts to have the other labelled insane and institutionalized.

"You're a matching Tiger pattern gambler
She sits and wipes her whiskers clean
not savouring the taste
But to preserve her glossy sheen

Upon this chance to steal her breath
And repay the lovely danger of death
Realization dawns with a pounding heart
You strike there first as a violent start
Ripping and tearing at the topaz eyes
Biting clawing at the black stripes
The grace and raw power were lies

It is you who has the Tiger for tea
Surrounded by a flowing blood sea
While the black flank lies still
Enjoy the blood fuelled thrill
A new Tiger stalks its territory
In a pink skin with stipy thighs
Grinning with beast gory glory

And here is the moral of this weird story:
What desire wants, desire gets
And never stop killing to sate on glory"

Viddax, I can't stop reading this part!.  I love how you made the victim the victor in the end!  You should post this as yours so that I may return the favor of favoring it.

Jack, I want to get back to your last entry and I will give it my attention asap.

To Jack,
Here's my version (more an alteration I guess.. I didn't like to change it too much!) of your poem "Why are you still reading this poem?"
I tried to put a more positive spin on it, just the way I am
Never done this so please don't take offence if you hate it!! x

Why Are You Still Reading This Poem?

When he died,
some people cried,
I don’t deny that.
Does he think
that things will change?
That children
passing by his grave
Will stop and shudder?

Did he really think that they would say:
“there lies a man who once was great"?
Did he think they'd remember the man
Once pressed between the pages
Of the books in their hands?
Would this acknowledgement,
loosely compressed (like those pages
Upon which he felt only a guest)
Into unstructured verse...

Would this have been his finest achievement?
The jewel in his sceptre?
The glint of his buckle?
The shine on his shoes?
The ones on the feet that lie
Cold beneath the ground
Which these schoolchildren run around on now.

Would it have been worthy of reverence
To paint in ink his forgotten self,
With a life of less meaning
Than a stripper's wardrobe?
To imagine himself a speck of dust drifting
Down from the night sky?
To replace hysterical despair with warm
morbidity?
...To die?
Surely you would think not...
But then why are you still reading this poem?
What is gone but leaves a mark
Is not so easily forgot.

[quote]PierreTheMad said:

"Viddax, I can't stop reading this part!.  I love how you made the victim the victor in the end!  You should post this as yours so that I may return the favor of favoring it."

Why thanken you Mesirs Pierre, nothing like turning the tables when least expected; thats when the psycopath in the box springs out.

Tiger, tiger burning bright, some careless smoker set it alight!

[quote]Sslowcheetahh said:
To Jack,
Here's my version (more an alteration I guess.. I didn't like to change it too much!) of your poem "Why are you still reading this poem?"
I tried to put a more positive spin on it, just the way I am
Never done this so please don't take offence if you hate it!! x

Why Are You Still Reading This Poem?

When he died,
some people cried,
I don’t deny that.
Does he think
that things will change?
That children
passing by his grave
Will stop and shudder?

Did he really think that they would say:
“there lies a man who once was great"?
Did he think they'd remember the man
Once pressed between the pages
Of the books in their hands?
Would this acknowledgement,
loosely compressed (like those pages
Upon which he felt only a guest)
Into unstructured verse...

Would this have been his finest achievement?
The jewel in his sceptre?
The glint of his buckle?
The shine on his shoes?
The ones on the feet that lie
Cold beneath the ground
Which these schoolchildren run around on now.

Would it have been worthy of reverence
To paint in ink his forgotten self,
With a life of less meaning
Than a stripper's wardrobe?
To imagine himself a speck of dust drifting
Down from the night sky?
To replace hysterical despair with warm
morbidity?
...To die?
Surely you would think not...
But then why are you still reading this poem?
What is gone but leaves a mark
Is not so easily forgot.

Offended? I love it! The idea of re-composing it from a third-person perspective was inspired, and the metaphors you devise yourself easily rival my own. The image of those shoes beneath the grave which the school children dance around haunts me. This is neither better nor worse than my original; it's like a companion piece, I think. The other side of the coin. As though my poem were a suicide note and yours a eulogy read at the subsequent funeral.

Thanks Meli, I'm glad you like it. I wasn't so sure if it was up to you'r standard. Possibly with your premission do you think i could post my re-write of your poem?

My apologies for prying this long-dead and buried thread out of the cyber-dirt, but I just wanted to say I thought Jack did a great job on the re-interpretation of my poem. I don't think I've ever read it before, and it was posted over two years ago!

The reason I'm resurrecting this thread is that I had a quick look through it and it seemed like this was a very useful and interesting thread - everyone was working with each other and we as a community did actually produce some good posts and great poems. I don't know if we should have this thread around as a place for people to post their poems to have them re-interpreted, or start a new thread (since this was a contest after all). Any thoughts?

i think we should have an endless competition. this one was good as a comp, but you should start one with intention to have it live on. [:

this was before i joined! brilliant ideas.

Endless competitions die slowly and people aren't motivated enough. I'd recommend a normal competition with the same rules.