Best Reimagined Poems
We sat in the fallout
of last year’s gift exchange—
smashed angel centerpiece
taped back together
as good as a rogue bomb
if someone mentioned it.
Our voices dragged
like anchors through an ocean—
low, cold, summoning something
older than Kris Kringle.
I strained to recall
a time when it wasn’t like this.
The kitchen table—
a battleship, whipped tension
and potatoes. Dad’s knife slipped
once, then twice. Mammaw clutched
her rosary, counting sins like beads
of gravy on the drop-cloth. The whiskey
isn’t worth your soul, she whispered.
Our air was burned sugar—
a water pie, depression-era relic
left too long in the oven.
As they say, it’s the ingredients you have
that bake the cake.
Mom whispered, Let’s just get through it.
The corners of her mouth disappeared—
I knew better.
When my sister reached for a biscuit,
I grabbed her wrist—too hard.
Mine, I hissed. The room turned
quiet, the kind of silence snow wears
before an avalanche.
By sunset,
half of us were crying—
over the ruined pie,
or the family tree
we couldn’t stop cutting down.
When I reimagine it—
and I always do—
I don’t erase or the snowfall
or the tension.
Instead, I break the bread
without a flinch,
leave my sister’s wrist unmarked.
Dad’s carving hand steadies,
and in my version,
we get grandma drunk—
the old broad needed to lighten up.
The angel still shatters—
but this time we laugh,
our elbows knocking it over
reaching for seconds.
In the end, we huddle closer,
ash still falling, we celebrate
cold on the other side of the door.
Our hands stay sticky, glue healing
the angel’s cracked wings,
sugar crystallizing our fingerprints—
we press lightly, only to test for doneness,
we are patient,
we watch as snow smothers our wreckage—
call it DNA, an elegy.
Categories:
reimagined, christmas,
Form:
Free verse
This Is a Tanka written by Eileen Manassain and reimagined by me by
adding every other verse in order to create Lyrics we could put to music.
please visit Eileen recent page and enjoy This poem in it's original Form.
I want to Thank Eileen for the privilege of working with her on these poems
Nothing seems to last
The present now the past
flowers weep faded petals
Like flaking paint or rusty metal
A faint scent lingers
Upon the barren tips of fingers
once blooming in bright color
Now appear quite smothered
My poems have lost their appeal
No longer things seem real
emotions wither
And darkness comes hither
Wilted words whirl in the wind
Until they blow my way again
bereft of beauty
Void of duty
I strive to remain rooted
In a world so polluted
hoping for droplets of love
Droplets from above
Categories:
reimagined, anxiety, how i feel,
Form:
Lyric
Those who have lost vision seek definition.
Does purple have a taste?
Alas, grapes are not always palatable in purple.
Some things leave an aftertaste that can last a lifetime.
Bitterness is not majestic like magenta.
Some would say opium tastes plum crazy;
produced by pretty purple poppies.
Creative imagination needs no such simulation.
Fantasy and photography send my senses reeling;
reminiscent of a reimagined yesteryear,
when under the influence of a blue moon and red wine,
we crooned to the pain of Purple Rain.
Now I remember how purple passion tasted at twilight.
Purple is savory, like a cocktail of nostalgia,
and of love that never happened.
Photo credit: Chris Hanson
Categories:
reimagined, memory, purple,
Form:
Free verse
The avalanche crashed an ax from nimbus peaks
these shrouds a pall a maul splitting my shield
this smur slurs my weakened war paint
my skin my beat my breath my breast
gray matter clouds —a pock-marked-psyche wears the ruse of ceruse
cosmos charity clouds once white like daylight once light as sea foam
blown and flown to the expanse of ether airy spirits afloat
now a iron-heart-anvil I’m horizontal
..an empty fossil-frame pressed into earth
these clouds these shrouds upon me
around me about me they cry
my lantern dampened they know why
cataract-clouds dimmed my gaze
they’ve simmered and condensed
they’ve become incensed
they drape me a caterwaul shawl
oh mamma sky your cirrus streams my suckle sweet
nourish my flourish rock me frock me your cumulus crib and fleece
from nest on high fledge me bluebird spry
freckle me starling’s starlight speckle
myself the Milky Way instead of ash-of-flame remains
constellated skin depicts our myth and marrow sagas
my mouth alive with words of the winds
iambic tranquilize of zephyrs sweeping wheat
and lyric wrath of gales aggrieved stripping leaves from trees
with barnstormer speech
cleanse my lens with see-through-rain till wet with reflection
that upends the blur and burr of clouds crashing down
— keep them mamma sky beyond where they belong
so I may return and re-emerge — reimagined
Categories:
reimagined, angst, beauty, conflict, freedom,
Form:
Free verse
You want to take things
Off the grid
Disappear
Into the woods
Build a house
Turn the earth
Grow your food
Natural birth
I want to take things
To the edge
Reimagined
From a pledge
Create a home
Stop the world
Enjoy a meal
Graffiti mural
Categories:
reimagined, boy, feelings, girl, happiness,
Form:
Free verse
OF THE NEW FLESH
A returned to open channels
Open to the unknown the beyond
Burning humming like angry hornets
Bottled in electric light and shadows
The whispers come through the void
Humming in the open channel
Of an ancient television set
Like a cryptic monolith, alive
The noise to signals, burning voices
Scream and chant arcane rights
That pushes n pulls the soul of things
Never dreamt of before, unseen
There in the dark the halogen arc light, bright
Blares its pure hot hollow holy light
Laying before me was a stark image of chrome
Of gears springs and electric circuitry.
Gracing suicidal insight
wickedly sharp blade
Mad for flesh and bone,
blood baptize in its righteous
fury for the masses to cut the cancer, away
Of the new flesh
this covenant of mechanical arts
And malice
A calculus of angels and insane
The insane idle smiles hide the dark shame
covered in a thin facade of normalcy
They hide lies that drip from those smiles
The hate so deep it blinds the eyes of tranquility
The secret lives of the damned
Burn, blares the new blade of silver
Bone n gears; the product of death
As the mechanical heart reimagined
ruminates and redefines
In heaven hollow facade
Silence of the holy realm
The static of Valhallas Halls
Sits a cathode ray tube
Full of angry hornets, fiery angels…
Humming into the sacred night
a blade flickers in delicate light
Dancing into shadows
from burning sacraments
A holocaustic humanity
Mad for flesh and bone
Baptize in blood
Born of righteous fury for the masses
To cut away the cancer
voices whisper
scream
call and demand:
“Long live the new flesh!”
Categories:
reimagined, allegory, allusion, analogy, anger,
Form:
Free verse
VIRTUAL RARITIES
techniques
transformed
to
explore
the potentials &
possibilities
of
modelling
the
initiative&
generatively
appropriated &
reimagined
renditions
surrounded
by
iterative complexity
extracted
&
merged
with the
visual
expressing
a mood
static
tangible
& prominent
inn
alternatives
stylised imagery
symbolised
by
the
serene
introspective
distilled
with
uncertainty
marginalised
in
precedents by
conceptual
stereotypes
expressed
in token
proponents
so finely
tuned
NOTE:THIS IS AN OPEN(organic) FORM VERSE using spaces&breaks without grammatical symbols ,the ' open' relies upon 'the one breath limitation' & so inherently requires the 'reader' (reciter) to input and responds thus making this enigmatic form a two way interplay & interpretatIon unique to the moment& changing according to mood is inherently variable.
Copyright © Brian Strand
Categories:
reimagined, poetry,
Form:
Other
Lend me your insight,
your light,
left a yonder breath, done right.
Not a prayer, but wisdom from your eye sight;
let me in to your mind, let me in.
Lend me a piece, lend me a puzzle,
lend me a breath to cease the muzzle;
let me reimagine mother earth,
*The earth reimagined?*
Commence rebirth!
Categories:
reimagined, beautiful, earth, friendship, hope,
Form:
Free verse
Another typical insipid day
the sweet, crimson glowing ember
falling revealing the lustrous serenity
of kaleidoscopic skies
Elysian whispers around
my remaining canvas of arid
Gossamer and prosaic filled voids
replaces citrine, saffron nirvana
Bodies surrounding shimmer effulgent colors
I'm yet to remain in my dull ashen-sparked cave
A sudden delirious shriek
gleeful, exuberant faces
twisted into pale onyx terror
An apocalyptic doomsday guaranteed
Terminal of mankind ; destruction of
of earth prophesied
Everyone's glistening resplendent canvases
splattered grim trepidation
Painted with oblivion; like mine
with included kneaded dollops of overwrought
Perhaps the revolutionary, prodigious hysteria
sparked fluorescent inspiration
My ebony pedestrian now being sparkled
in an euphoric nostalgic feeling
A persistent voice echoing;
"
TO PAINT a lively sapphire world from the somber depths of a grisaille realm
Is up to you.
TO FIND iridescent lilies blooming amidst the mournful hues of an apocalyptic landscape
Is up to you.
"
An exploded erosion of scarlet filled emotions
I clutch my brush and become the creator I once was;
Amongst the cacophonic abyss
painting an ephemeral, nebulous word
into my perennial realms of cerulean hopes
Brushstrokes of light touched canary among daffodil fields
Turning into shapes of radiant marigold inspiration
painted over leftovers of monotonous drab
In the end's haunting echo of emptiness
I found my exuberant-buttercup passions of a sunlit meadow
My bolstering voice of ivory whispered inspirations
I am an azure propelling star among cobalt filled echoes
of forgotten melodies
I've reimagined my painted chiaroscuro perspectives,
crafting a bold artistic masterpiece
Categories:
reimagined, beautiful, creation, imagery, light,
Form:
Lyric
An apt gift of presence empowers
as an unanticipated
unearned warning misfortune
enlightens apt rapt resilient fortune,
Delighted with discovering,
perhaps rediscovering?
healthy passions I would never have been wise enough
to look up for
nor hunt down.
Timing
is everything.
Time regenerates everywhere,
erupts every when
disrupts every what
corrupts every why
every how;
and merely every thing
somehow?
Nature trained
senses engrained
spirit deep and wide neuro-systemic brained
Transforming change in forbidding appearance
forms strange
grotesquely disempowering
transmogrified degenerative monocultures
Transubstantiating change of inside communion substance
elements
figments
as invisible as unpresented polyculturing presents
not light yet
not still
not quite actively accessible to sense-powered
cognize-able felt reception,
Unformed except for past internal images
body reimagined
rememories
not yet memed,
polyculturally represented
Polypathically etched,
but not yet iconically written
integral sacred secularizing social senses
nonsenses
unsenses
resenses
presensing
Apt presents empower
as yet unlearned warnings enlighten
coincidental apt light
empowering presence
enraptured bright.
Categories:
reimagined, giving, integrity, light, love
Form:
Political Verse
Caught up in broke and broken
operating on what we can;
Ready to rise by your own bootstraps?
Or fall, never to be reimagined;
No answers with a diagnosis
ask if humanity is worth saving;
Vitamins flood a prescription we should know ;
It’s a dangerous money making machine;
Redefining lifestyles can change everything;
Understand you have a choice to stand up;
Stop feeding pharmacies instead of yourself.
Categories:
reimagined, fate, health, humanity, inspiration,
Form:
Acrostic
reimagined
conventions
from multiple
angles
complemented
repeatedly
rich&individual
yearning
fora sense
of difference
dramatic
changes so
revelatory
in exhilarating
richness
liberated
&
in personal
way
a conflated
pervasiveness
baffling &
perverse
in an
atmosphere
so tantalising
&beautifully
in
simplified
allusions
NOTE:THIS IS AN OPEN(organic) FORM VERSE using spaces&breaks without grammatical symbols ,the ' open' relies upon 'the one breath limitation' & so inherently requires the 'reader' (reciter) to input and responds thus making this enigmatic form a two way interplay & interpretatIon unique to the moment& changing according to mood is inherently variable.
Categories:
reimagined, poetry,
Form:
Other
The moon risen high, over
the burial vault of the sun
to the accompaniment of fireworks
from competing constellations
~ All this, before suppertime
Categories:
reimagined, december, light, moon, stars,
Form:
Free verse
Rapturousness wrought Unitarian
transformational spiritual rapport
traversing thru space/time
continuum appending increasing
chronological orbitz as an Earthling,
frivolously did cavort,
who (with ever more energy)
required exhaustively to sport
fretfully clinging to each moment
after downing a quart of port
poured by Norwegian bachelor
farmers of Lake Woebegone amort
admirable administrators in
conjunction with last rites opport,
who knit tee necessitates
intercession of a Holy Vintner import
tint so ill fated mortal, (who met
their demise) gets special escort
delivered with utmost diligence as
if destined to Mar-Lago resort
accompanied with trumpeting
"NON FAKE" grim reaper cohort,
the grateful dead black hooded
bone a fied scythe swinging bro
cracking gallows humor comport
to perk spirits of deceased, a
generic, nondescript, uber fort
tuff hide will never need a passport
after coursing into the afterlife
way beyond the outer limits of fort
hit who'd, yup even light years from
twilight zone, this dimension in short
to require an eternity to reach,
hence body stiffened by rigor mortis
securely strapped into davenport
essentially a coffin tricked out by Norte
American latest technological gizmos,
an eclectic assortment recycled, reimagined,
repurposed, paraphernalia to Voldemort,
thus one cold body helping contribute to MAGA!
Categories:
reimagined, 10th grade, 11th grade,
Form:
Enclosed Rhyme
ENCOUNTERS
Impressionistic
reflections
in the moving light
fields
that emerge
so composed
intuitive
&unshowy
& reimagined
in unsettled fluidity
illuminated
subtly
&different
a wonder
manifested
&most recognisable
with a
shimmering effect
audacity itself
in a
bittersweet
experience
to offer some
consolation
though
untenable
vys for attention
NOTE:THIS IS AN OPEN(organic) FORM VERSE using spaces&breaks without grammatical symbols ,the ' open' relies upon 'the one breath limitation' & so inherently requires the 'reader' (reciter) to input and responds thus making this enigmatic form a two way interplay & interpretatIon unique to the moment& changing according to mood is inherently variable.
Categories:
reimagined, poetry,
Form:
Other