Long Misnamed Poems
Long Misnamed Poems. Below are the most popular long Misnamed by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Misnamed poems by poem length and keyword.
I speak English—
not because it is mine,
but because it was burned
into the soft clay of my childhood.
They called it brilliance
when I spoke the master's tongue,
and shame
when I whispered my grandmother’s lullaby.
But language is not just words—
it is blood,
it is soul,
it is memory coded in sound.
Africa,
how can you rise
when you dream in the syllables of strangers?
When your science wears foreign robes,
and your spirit speaks a muted voice?
You cannot build a future
on borrowed breath.
You must write your destiny
in the language that calls your ancestors by name.
Swahili sings in your bones.
Your tongues are ancient rivers—
deep, alive, and holy.
No empire stood tall
on another’s voice.
Teach your children to speak to the stars
in their own vowels.
Let them pray in the rhythm of drums,
count in the cadence of their tribes,
lead with words rooted in earth.
Africa—
your brilliance was never broken.
Only misnamed.
Return.
Speak.
Rise.
Alone within emotional wilderness
(mine) biding leisure time
January 19th, 2020
without reason nor rhyme,
yet woke with sublime
pained acute awareness,
how once prime
merrily rightful autochthonous occupants
their land stole equivalent value
not much more'n dime.
Simple man dwells admiring
mother nature's architrave
home of the free land of the brave
usurped with exacting vengeance
aboriginal happy hunting grounds,
yours truly cloistered within man cave
small medium at large eremite doth crave
indigenous tribes Europeans
did wantonly annihilate
and/or make deprave
viciously slaughtering Native Americans
nsync brutality wrecking
their idyllic enclave
foreigners forcibly corralling
subsequently did enslave
ruthlessly employing sacrilegious travesty
scattered smite stricken survivors
formidable invaders (countless
demoniacal explorers) rendered desolate
pristine unbroken woodland
deceit, guile, iniquitous
jawboning flavor flav,
whether or not ancestors (mine)
even tangentially linkedin
egregious mockery, travesty
yours truly never forgave
horrendous genocide early settlers
wrought onto indigenous peoples
hoodwinked, notoriously
thrashed "noble savage"
feigning burying hatchet until
last proud redman buried in his grave.
Similar saga countless instances played across
four corners of globe,
white man self anointed himself boss
subsequently slaying innocent lives
all in name of Christ crucified on cross
denying original rightful inhabitants
their preexisting misnamed
new found lands
invaders justified execrable massacres
on par with clearing away dross
trumpeting art of the deal (albeit) gross
and unfair, whereat decimated loss
lovely bones long since
covered over with moss.
Women —
we are the fault lines of the world.
Every shudder,
every quake,
every heartbreak —
we hold it.
We turn pain into knowing.
We carry weight like it’s woven into us.
We feel everything,
everywhere,
eternally.
We are tuning forks for feeling,
diviners of grief,
antennae tuned to ache —
drawn to the buried,
the overlooked,
the lost loves still pulsing under skin.
We are sacred dowsing rods.
We find water in the desert.
We find truth in the noise.
We wear our false face well —
polished, professional, smiling.
But underneath?
Oh, sister.
We burn like galaxies.
We are whispers of starlight
etched across the night.
We are the caretakers,
the carers,
the misunderstood,
the misnamed.
We are chaos,
wrapped in avalanche.
We are — above all — sisters.
A fiery genesis.
A storm of will.
A will to rise.
Do as I kneel beside you, sister —
look me in the eyes.
Know: you are the strong one.
Let your gentleness rise.
Let it grow like flame beneath your skin.
Let it speak.
We wield the strength of willow:
bending,
but never broken.
Quiet,
but never powerless.
We are the pulse behind history’s silence.
We are the flare
in the throat
of every silenced scream.
We are not what’s left after the storm —
we are the storm.
And we are still —
still —
rising.
We are not the ashes —
we are the match.
Strike us,
and we burn with the memory of every sister
they tried to silence.
We are love with teeth,
mercy wrapped in thunder.
We do not shatter —
we sharpen.
We carry sorrow in our marrow
and still walk like gods.
So kneel, or rise —
but do not look away.
We have risen.
We are flame.
And we remember
everything.
(on rhyme, and Its refusal)
Nature does not govern; she proceeds,
a rhythm older than our needs,
sufficient without plan or plea,
exact where we refuse to be.
Conditions hold while balance stays;
disturb the cadence—systems fray.
No warning rises, none is sent;
the cost arrives as consequence.
We learned to count, to name, to prove,
mistook precision for the move.
Laplace reduced the sky to parts
and mistook silence for an art.
Entropy kept faithful time,
charging loss for borrowed form.
Nothing vicious in the rate—
only patience we misnamed as fate.
Gaia tuned the seas and air
by feedback, not by thought or care.
The world endured because it flowed,
not because it could be known.
Then entered us, with finer knives,
dividing rhythm into lives,
cutting measure into rule,
calling interruption “control.”
Here the poem breaks—
not from error,
but excess.
Too much intelligence.
Too much correction.
Too many hands improving what was not broken.
The leaf retains its visible design:
vein, pigment, geometry.
The exchange is gone.
No method restores it.
No theory forgives the cut.
Animals meet limits by resistance alone.
They stop.
They yield.
They remain.
We persist.
Nature does not punish.
She withdraws coherence.
Climate keeps the account.
Chemistry enforces the terms.
Extinction enters without malice—
only completion.
What cannot rejoin
its sustaining rhythm
does not return whole.
The law does not ask
whether the cut was careful.
The law continues.
Nights of flying dream world,
who might chase a raucous laugh,
or seek indeed mirthful excitement,
the sort that has embroidered twists,
as is generally perceived by intention,
but epic hurdles formed in still frame,
city snores past midnight bell clang,
dare one ever risk a robust venture,
should I have said pursuit instead,
sleep is diversion in that steel crib,
that modern crib pillow we fostered,
an idiom that has it’s silken source,
on foot of rainbow studded home run,
as denizens of driven blissful sprint,
with that palette city life concocts,
waiting to arise from brainwave surge,
but toilers so content at last wonder,
can still find that extra zestful yen,
nocturnal misnamed down tool free time,
energizing hour filler may arouse,
around the ink drape walkways,
quite surrogate and surreptitious,
character one may mold from time,
spent as a regal rhombic chaser,
boundary scuppered plot by strolling fleet,
as creatively imagining might edge,
vast supply has penchant without dent,
zeitgeist flower of a fluorescent flag,
warning mask so deft but visible,
canopy laid beauteous black fringe,
alliance in shade infused etch front,
squeaky noising trickle eardrum muffin,
hear full dose of ripple muttering,
clued on obscurantist thin,
taut code evasive decipher ask,
float of urban mirror pool by pattern,
reflection, mirage, cocoon,
after midnight curtain draws,
to protracted claps evinced from,
squinting imp coterie on foot,
ricochet off Moroccan spice tint,
outside vivid haunt so frequented,
perchance, perforce, pertaining patois,
little seen scatter mice squeak,
analogy horizontal spurt funk,
if only these dart and dash clan,
midgets metaphorical so jubilant,
in sonic meddle near edge encounter,
it would be strictly beyond a dazzling cast,
from other daylight theater staunch queue,
when aiming for parallel experience,
performance nocturne wise deep art,
even rich fantasy has upper boundaries,
some grating gulley flake debris awash
chariot of outreach,
i do a moderate dance
in the form of a stomp
on your existence
as i gallop into the wide
unknown of your most
feeble pleasure, i recall
a windy dawn in which
you howled my name
when i chose not to respond,
you took it upon yourself to
throw a blizzard party in the sauna
i the decided to dispose the ****
seepage of your misnamed moniker
of a love unconditional
the windchimes catching the aggressive
blows of the deluge defy the reasonable
rudiments of rhythm
as a result, i become silly putty in my own
hands, and i blow out the candles knowing
now what it will take to etch the purity of love
in the eternal emission of time....
Pulled from rosy rows
rejection breeds persistence—
weeds not welcome here
pop up as lonely, unloved
sly, resilient pioneers.
Boots crush tender shoots,
hands rip out plants by their roots—
mother-of-millions
so fiercely fecund, unbowed,
endless their will to survive.
Weeds misnamed, misjudged,
grow through cracks in wasted ground—
jilted intruders
yearning simply to be seen,
impatience at the margins.
Lonely wily weeds
await unseen for any
opportunity
out on the periphery
to be, to see, and be seen.
The lonely weed—
a wallflower in the scene
a wallflower in the scene.
Standing here in the mind of mine
passing through and over time
pulling out thoughts sublime:
sorrow, hate, pain, joy, love, sanity--
all the mould character of my humanity;
On the outside, my African character is evident
despite the imprinted middle passage incident,
and on the inside, I'm American born and bred...
child of the black bent backs of the ancestral dead...
still here in the land of the other misnamed: called red;
Memories are like a flowing meadow's storied river;
meandering, undulating, and splashing out to sea,
seeking to reunite with and become one with the Giver
who moulded us all...making you and creating me.
N*****, slave, coloured, *****, African-American,
is what they chose then and now to call mine and me
but like the river flowing to the sea, I'll decide who to be
here in the land of the Brave, I'll be an Ameri-African man;
not your beast of burden slave—sweat and blood for the land.
Africa is...America is...and I am of no need
of an explanation;
standing in the life-long memories of the nature
of my exploitation,
and realizing I no longer need to be a footnote*
in his story
but a complete sentence in the boldface truth
of our story!
*Imagine this for me: if I was them and they were us and I did to them what they did to us, would that not be reciprocity from the tinted true tribe of the exodus?
Alone and hungry
left leg aches like a broken peg
in the mugginess of its left slipper.
Not a good day for fixing anything
but the sealed and over salted,
the quickly warmed and spooned
that can be mixed into a taste-less medley
with other sundry comestibles.
The pantry,
(a recessed place with shelf-space),
is a dimly lit store for long kept canned products,
a once carelessly gathered and undated harvest,,
a compulsive cartload
that should never have been bought
opened, and cooked
in any company but strictly my own.
In that larder molders a canned fodder;
here anemic asparagus stalks wrapped in tin
are jammed together with diced jalapenos,
or glossily illustrated kidney beans.
Tomato and noodle soups are haphazardly piled
atop of various loosely defined
stewed meat offerings, including canned Spam
naturally.
After the so-called cooking
(more a revealing of a much mushed-up
mixture of misnamed contents),
I sit down with the steaming plate
allowing the metallic aroma to entice
peckish yet suspicious taste buds.
Fed now with the quickly chewed-over
I’m both glad and grateful
that this ten minute feast
can be wolfed down in so much less time.
The jars were meant to confuse even me —
labels scrawled backward,
dates falsified,
contents misnamed to keep them harmless.
I stacked them like decoys —
rows of false feelings,
the real ones buried deeper,
sealed in wax no hand could open.
Years I have walked these shelves blind,
touching glass like a stranger in my own skin;
aware of the weight,
but never sure what it held.
Then you came —
not breaking, not judging —
turning the right ones over in silence,
as if you always knew
where I’d hidden the truest rot.
I want to shout liar,
fraud,
to call your kindness a trick —
because what sense can there be
in understanding what is senseless?
But you lift a jar I thought unopenable,
hold it to the light;
and even I can see through it.
A clarity I never asked for,
yet cannot deny —
painful, precise,
like waking from sleep in a burning room.
I built these shelves crooked on purpose,
so even I would lose my way,
so even I could not find the one jar
with my true name scrawled under the lid.
Years, I walked these tunnels blind —
aware of the weight of glass,
but never knowing its contents.
I am foreign even to myself:
the way I think bends like warped wood,
splintering under every step.
A painful clarity —
like waking to sunlight on burned skin,
like discovering the wound
was always mine to tend.
Now the jars sing at night —
not mournful, but bright,
a low hum rising through floorboards.
The shelves tremble with it;
the dust learns joy.
I am afraid to join them —
afraid this understanding is borrowed,
that one day she will set the jars down
and leave the cellar quiet again.