Retell Poems | Examples

List of Member Poems

As entropy prevails

Flat on a slab
The coroner pauses
To cut the flab
To find death's causes 

Born to live
Mature and die
Our tale to give
Tell the truth, don't lie

Did virtue grow?
Compassion as well?
Did forbearance flow?
As of trials, we retell

T'is well they say
As entropy prevails
Reformed if you may 
A new life in your sails

Premium Member 'Twas A Pickle Saved The Queen

Royalty can be no match
                Sometimes, for a plan to hatch
From the minds of angry men
                  When they have an angry yen

To overthrow what they don’t like
     and make a move to shoot and strike
Rather then make their appeal
          They would rather maim and steal

But

In this saga to retell
                   As his rage he could not quell
It is true as it was seen
               ’Twas a pickle saved the queen
 
Had she not reached for that Dill
                         Her assassin’s plot to kill
Might have gotten very far
              Had she not reached for that jar


Thank God for that pick, pick, pickle
            Saved her life, it’s just that simple
Sometimes, she is just so fickle
  Thank God, she reached for that pickle


Now forever in this land
                 There will be a PICKLE Stand  
With a sign for all to see
         Saved  the queen, HEY, look at me

That assassin’s  been arrested
                  And his punishment attested
He will labor many years
        Canning pickles, chips and spears!

Premium Member Pacific Ocean

Paradise is realized in the Pacific, excitement is found in her waters,
but never forget she can muster mighty storms, along her shores
there is a ring of fire - I retell her stories to my children,
their memories are out to sea.
—by Poet

The Cliffhanger castled above the waves.
The scorch of ring of fire, the club headed due South.
In darkness, the sea was disturbed.
Would our workplace be preserved - open mouth.
Hoping the Pacific behaves.

Aloha, we’ve flown over her; here’s paradise.
Exploring the North shore is exhilarating.
Unlike coast of California,
Oahu waters surround us, enticing, nice;
vainglorious waves, pulsating.

We play for three years, with three kids,
in Pacific sands and gliding on boogie boards.
We watch islanders leaping from the cliffs.
My twenties, spent in bathing suit, with its rewards.
Opening and closing eyelids -

the makings of a poet who never forgets.
I remember the eye of Hurricane Iwa -
holding my infant son; the breeze,
then weighty winds coming from the ocean diva;
a performer with majestic outlets.


Premium Member Go Back To The Beginning

That song sounds so good,
Go back to the beginning,
Reminisce moments of childhood
All while rhythymically dancing.

That story sounds so good,
Go back to the beginning,
Retell how you done all you could
All while laughing while crying.

That speech sounds so good,
Go back to the beginning,
Reenact every word you should
All while proudly standing.

That story sounded so good,
Go back to the beginning,
Recollect all the ways you would
Once again relive everything.

A Life Unrolled Upon an Empty Screen

I have played the coward and the brave,
both the strong and the weak.
A man must be a man, and forget nothing,
keeping close to him
those times of disgrace and honor,
drink both the gall and the nectar
of a far too tell-tale life.

I review, and examine myself
without any escape-hatch excuses.
Clap my hands together loudly
praising this searchlight mind,
that is a ray of infinite power
directed from
the very heart of love.

Are we not all things,
the bold and gentle,
we the lamb and lions
interpreting the patois
of all our incoming angels.
strange they are,
yet we know them,
are them.

I have lived for the wild calls,
and the gentling murmurs,
shared my bread,
gorged from the manger.

This helter-skelter life
will be upheld
in that wordless court
where a life is scrolled out
to retell
its make-believe tales,
and the Light will not judge me,
nor I regret.

Premium Member Yesterday's Wishes

There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday. - Robert Nathan

Folded in hope, singing light over the fading melody, wind’s song,
Soaring on wings of mesmeric peace,
Glorious freedom, rising to retell the story of a dream, wishful thinking…

Blessings poured out in me, overflowing
Descending from the music, rhythms
Stirred to life by the seas of lasting faith,
Grace rising, struggling with trembling grief,
Erasing the marks of the past,
Where my soul bleeds urgently,
Need, shadowed by the memories, colored
In hues of melancholy, words glowing,
Like the trees who awake to saintly spring…

Seeds splitting through the dirt and the leaves,
Stirring the newfound urge to believe, to see,
Beyond the darkest dread, into eternal longings,
Just before the dewlike web of yesterday,
Frees my soul from its wounds and reminds me,
Even the sound of the song is an echo,
Lost in the music who blesses yesterday’s wishes.


SPOKEN MOMENT

SPOKEN MOMENT
Thanks for your stories, my dearest
They are precious richest,
Resources of present pain
But tomorrow’s gain.
I cannot afford but yen 
Upon to retell them
When your heart rates
Matches mines
As we breathe alive
With rhythm of sea awaken 
In a recounting imagination
Of fair journeys
And calendared miseries 
From daily bread
To ever said.

Bodhi Tree

and I hunger for you, like a moth
longing for one last flicker of flame 
nestled deep inside my heart

the memory of my childhood worship sits deep 
as an innocent deer panting by the riverside 
and I need you now, ... like I need the air I breathe
for I feel lame as a joke I can't retell,  
perhaps I am the joke itself;

inside this narrow minded insulated world of reality,  
you don't exist anymore for me   
at least not in the way you did when I was young 
for I have given you so many different gowns and shapes 
that I am no longer able to envision you 
the way I did before, what do you look like now? 

I ask while sitting quietly, beneath a   
Bodhi tree.

Premium Member Strange and Complex Creatures

People are a paradox,
They really are a puzzle.
While one can be so nice and kind,
His mate might need a muzzle.

You can never expect from one man,
The same thing you get from another.
No two people are alike,
Though raised by the same mother.

Your habits and your manner,
Formed by environment o'er time,
Can be different in your brother,
Though raised in the same clime.

The way I understand a thing,
And the way it affects you,
Can be entirely different,
And we retell it different too.

I say I like fish and chips,
You say you like fries.
No matter how you say it,
It's fish and potatoes, fried.

I say the sky is clear and blue,
You see azure skies.
We're looking at the self same thing,
But see through different eyes.

We all are different,
Yes it's true,
But the difference is simply,
Twixt me and you.

Learn to accept it.
Learn to agree,
There's beauty in the difference,
Twixt you and me.

Premium Member Grieving the Loss

Solemn newscasters retell
Accounts filled with sorrow.
More children lost
where they should have been safe.

Seven lives cut short by 
the careful planning of one.

We see Rachel’s tears
falling again. They’re gone.
Parents, communities cry out
“How can such evil be addressed?”

Empty arms ache with excruciating pain.
We remember Michelangelo’s “La Pieta”,
She neither blamed her Creator,
nor held back her expression of sorrow.

As we see yet another example of innocent slaughter,
And wonder how we address this culture of death.
Such pervasive life-destroying demands provoke us
to join the saints below the altar and cry, “How long Lord…?

Premium Member Eulogy

Eulogy 

There was a time I said farewell
To my dear father on that sad day
My beaten path I choose not to retell
I connived of how our lives were at bay

I spoke of his how his ship had passed
And that his family rode his decks in sync 
And were saddened that our ride didn’t last
I spoke like how the Titanic didn't sink

My eyes caught my family members 
I could see the exchanges of knowing looks
Because they, too, remember the embers
Of how father burned the pages of their books

I sang like there were songbirds in my heart
That his sunny shores brought us up nice
And we're honored to be of his upstart
Because I wanted the farewell to end in peace

2/13/23

Writing Challenge - E Words Poetry Contest
Sponsor-Constance La France
1st

On Christmas Day

"Travel light" Santa said to me as I grappled for all my most   
treasured belongings. I stuffed them all in a duffle bag, then with the silliest 
of grin on my face I said, " Ready"  
The ride up was exhilarating to say the least, and the landing well 
lets just say I don't recall getting there...
It felt like I was placed in a big glass bauble filled with tinsel,
joyful elves and little miniscule hourglasses containing reflective 
light particles that flew out into the atmosphere through 
smokescreen windows, tinted with pink magic glass.  
I was tired from the trip so Santa led me to this little room made of logwood, 
then he handing me a peppermint hot chocolate and said, " good good dreams, my girl " 
What did I dream you ask ? Well, its much too long to retell today, 
you will just have to wait until tomorrow,  when its Christmas day !

Premium Member Starlit Memories

Starlit Memories

“…recently scenes of early life have stolen into my mind like breezes blown…”
Samuel Coleridge 

Midnight reveries tickle my memories
When I see bright asterisms ascend
Through rivers of stars summers past I see

Constellations retell their starry legends,
Storied tales of fantasy in starlight,
I search the sky for my celestial friends

Lying in grassy fields on warm summer nights
Spellbound eyes saw the sparkling stars at play
My imagination soared with the eagle’s flight

Upon the evening star a wish I prayed,
A plea for peace on fiery comet tails,
Dreams star dusted in the Milky Way  

In childhood innocence, wonder prevailed
On astral magic winds like hidden grails

10-11-22
Contest: Writing Challenge – “T” Past Memories
Sponsor: Constance La France

“T” form chosen – Terza Rima
Rhymes checked with www.rhymezone

Aquila, or the Eagle, is a constellation seen in the summer sky.

August Legends

The sky is news-worthy
the day brightly published,
up-town where the trees live
sunshine plays in the streets.

Later, in the wild-walking cities
there will be donuts;
racers will twirl while they hurl
rubber into smoking halo's,
but here in suburbia
only recycled and ritual sins
are dumped decorously
into well-kept trash bins.

The air is clear in God's manicured acres
where all the long dead Shaker's
had the decorum and foresight
to propagate no more of their brightness,
nor publish simple gifts to the unheeding.

A community grills hotdogs and burgers
through a late summer day,
dullsville simmers away 
long into the evening crawlies,
where the glaring stars retell 
bygone bedtime stories.

Premium Member I Like Dreaming

Are you one who's adept at dream creation?
Or, do you play a role in the dream's formation?
Can you switch tracks at any given station?
When you dream, are you able to retell the theme?
I like dreaming and believe that they have real meaning*.
But the older I get, I recall less in dreams, it seems.
Some themes I can piece together, but only occasionally.
There's a great disconnect with noted inconsistency.
Can you create, delete, or dismiss your own content?
If deemed uninteresting, can you avoid certain events?
I don't let it bother me, because it beats having nightmares.

080522PSCtest, As I Dream Poetry Contest, Mystic Rose Rose
*Job 33:14,15

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