Misnamed Poems | Examples

Tongue of the Forgotten

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.

Growing Old Ain’t For Sissies

Growing Old “Ain’t” For Sissies
Miracle Man
1/28/2025

Advanced age took from me my aspirations,
often health matters top my list of concerns.
I’ve spent time recovering from ablations,
and relive my past expecting no returns.

My remaining years are misnamed as gilded,
While in many cases they resemble rust.
Things I once accomplished I wish I still did,
but it's in God’s hands that I still place my trust.

if I had a lemon clock

Sugar was misnamed for she was perpetually unhappy.
If I had a pony, I could cheer up.
She got a pony and was more dour now.

If I had a fire truck, I would smile from sunup to sundown.
We went into debt buying her one.
She was happy for eighteen minutes tops.

If I had a lemon clock, I could die happy.
We got her one.
But it did not work.

Where the Cans Are

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.

Future Medicine Man

The medicine man looked into Little Eagle’s eyes.
You were misnamed, he told him.
You have the spirit of a cougar.
You should have been Little Cougar.

Little Eagle instantly understood.
For cougar was his totem, he related to her.
She came to him in his dreams.
She will teach you ferocity, the medicine man told him.

She also helps me navigate psychic realms, Little Eagle said.
Medicine Man was astounded at the child’s insight.
You may possibly have more than one spirit animal, he told him.
Future medicine men often do.

The Misnamed Would Quarrel

They began to quarrel,
After he heard ‘Squirrel!’
Instead of Stan Scammel
And he called him ‘Rommel’:
“The Not-Strong Enamel”
Who could Hitler blackmail 
While it was ‘Same Barrel!’

Then, they stopped The Quarrel,
When he heard ‘Becquerel’
A Laureate with a Laurel …

Quarrels from Nicknaming:
A Purposed Misnaming!
Who would such start claiming:
A hateful Misnomer;
KGB’s Informer
For OGB Omar …

Sugar and Candy

S is for Sugar, once a sweet medicine (it still is, in places)
U do know it was medicine in India in the tenth century -
G God knows why it is so addictive these days (money?)
(As is tobacco, another medicine from the Other Indians Columbus misnamed)
R Refined, white as snow, and like it AVALANCHES of sugar keep on killing

CANDY Crunch is a game that exposes itself and Murderous Sugar
A anyone who wins. game by game, sees the pancreatic explosions
N named SUGAR CRUNCH and SUGAR STARS (awesome; super, delightful)
D Do you recall seeing stars at breakfast when the pre-diabetes hit you?
Y can't we see "refinement" was a put-on job, fake as WHITE sugar, and half pregnant?

A Solar System Is Watching

I study eyes, eye's only mind sees.
Inside those orbs a little
protogenic me crawls away.
The tiny creature is going back to God,
he remains cohesive in a residual way.

A solar system is watching;
its dying sun is a question mark.
Jupiter and Planet X
are returning to cosmic whale sperm.
Earth has got too big;
that old brass and leather engine
that once made frames for mirrors
is now smoke.

Not at the beginning or the end,
I am doing 'mind' somewhere else.
I am limping along toward a Gas Giant
some have perhaps misnamed.

The Mind Forgets

The heart expects promise 
 Disappointment awaits the frail  
 The mind forgets 
 
Born to learn love, quick to forget that others feel the same 
Internal battles, unseen desires wishing to be unveiled 
The heart expects promise 
 
Childlike envisioning of a possible flame 
In another world that prevails 
The mind forgets 
 
Unnoticed help, unfixed blame 
Friends, friends, friendship run off the rails 
The heart expects promise 
 
Unanswered, awaited, sought after, misnamed 
No one listens to the dreams of the young 
The mind forgets 
 
Who remembers my name 
You, her, over there, pale 
The heart expects promise 
The mind forgets

Organic Brain

O  BRAIN
R
G
A
N
I
C


Reality how you cover
because you can my lover!
Taking truth and color
your paintings of others!

And sleepers we are all
enjoying false glee 
and moumental parties
within the emptiness 
of things misnamed!

Between thoughts from 
'there' and sights 
and sounds of 'here'
the infernal blocker 
called organic brain!

And at times i find 
it appropriate
 to respond to reality
with complete and total 
insanity!

Who can blame!?!

:: 07-21-2018 ::

When Progress Regresses

Matters little when life like a lifeless leaf in the wind trembles
Surging forth, seeking serenity, summoning common sense
In quarters cut off from conversation and creative communication mumbles
As couples lost in the mendacity miasma boast and coast in notoriety nonsense.

Matters less when fickle fantasy like a nightmare numbs
Reason imprisoned in a zone unzipped from progress
In circumstances and instances that indifference hums
As couples cooped and hooked on catastrophe create chaos and retrogress.

Matters more when sense and its essence like transformers matrimony transfigure
Sanity, supporting insanity and inanity as egos soar to the fore
In debates fed on acrimony and the prospect of an alimony figure
Lures and miscues clues that hurt the matrimony core on its floor.

Matters little when fuss like spittle fumbles and grumbles 
Assuming pantagruelian proportions and portions in misnamed missions
Built on the back of vanity whose futility fumbles and crumbles
When prospects of separation and alienation fuel and fly freak, frenzy frictions.

A Haiku Dedicated To Jan Allison and the Amazing Moorland Bird, the Ptarmigan

Inspired by and dedicated to Jan Allison and the amazing moorland bird, the Ptarmigan.

nights... no clouds... moonlit
shadows race over moorland
double silhouettes 

~~

deemed monsters... shadows
the ancients misnamed... fauna...
double silhouettes

The Sun Will Rise Tomorrow Despite the Rain

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....

Not Quite a Rainbow

Fire rainbow, misnamed.
Circumhorizontal arc
Is an optical

Phenomenon, an
Ice halo formed by plate shaped
Ice crystals in high

Level cirrus clouds.
Circumhorizon arc is 
It's other cool name
 
 
 
  http://www.thehighlanderspoems.com/nature-5.php

Deconstruction

This sea's end on a misnamed shore
Is not the terminus of your sin
Nor my beginning in the dusky yore
But we can in false time begin
To ridirect the world from the whim
And caprice of self-lost to love
The best in us again. Trust is slim
Now, but surrender can prove
More worth than paper documents
And words that never stand so
To mean exactly all desire's intents
Leaving you in thin chiaroscuro

So let us not praise Columbus still
Nor Sea dogs' conquistadores
Mentality, I like Wilberforce's bill
But we new Crispus and Torrez
Were not impotent dole getters, since
We fired sugarcane and barracks
And by death and waste also convinced
The Great House to retire its racks
Since we salt of the earth accept it
That our coming was no accident
But from the convenant to pave and grit
A redemption for gentiles and truant.

• Short Misnamed Poems
• Famous Misnamed Poems
• Best Misnamed Poems
• Read Misnamed Poems
• Long Misnamed Poems
• Misnamed Quotes