She didn't shatter the glass ceilings,
she shattered the sky
and stars fell in her lap.
They barred her from science clubs
but she built her own constellations.
She arrived in Paris hungry for knowledge
fed herself with formulas
and ambition was satiated.
They gave her frostbitten ceilings
but she warmed them with equations.
She wasn't stuck by a Cupid's arrow
she steadied the bow
and hit the right heart.
They shared notebooks and moonlight
but she lost him to a wrong deviation.
She discovered a new glowing element,
covered herself with radiation
and lit up rooms for women.
They stood up for her at the Nobel ceremony,
but misogyny rewrote the citation.
She followed a rabbit
stitched from stardust,
leaping between planets
like lily pads of light.
A comet brushed her cheek
a whisper,
a secret,
a scent of home long gone.
Her dress,
woven from constellations,
twirled in zero gravity,
threads unraveling into galaxies.
The wormhole found her.
Not a door,
but a pulse,
a soft tear in the silence. She stepped in.
Light bent like memory.
Time folded into origami.
She became
a thought,
a chord,
a gasp inside the cosmos.
When she landed,
a planet blinked.
Rings spun like teacups.
A queen in a glass crown said:
“Wonderland was never down.
It was always above.”
And Alice
floating,
smiling,
rewrote the stars
with her finger.
after still I Rise by Maya Angelou
They said, "too loud, too wild, too much"—
so she learned to burn with a softer touch.
But thunder lived behind her face,
and silence wore her fiercest grace.
They carved her worth in smaller space,
then crowned it "grace" to know her place.
But she was made of deeper things—
not ribbons, rules, or borrowed wings.
She didn't rise to please their gaze,
or fit inside their staged displays.
The ground they gave was false, contrived—
so she rewrote it just to survive.
Now every step is storm and flame,
they whisper wild when they say her name.
But she's not theirs to dim or tame—
She rose. She roared. she burned the game.
~hira ~
They moved like dawn through shadowed years,
With quiet hands and blazing hearts,
Their dreams outshone the weight of fears,
They rewrote fate in fractured parts.
Marie lit atoms' trembling core,
Her lantern glowed through science' veil;
While Rosa sat and shook the war
Of silence—made the strong rails pale.
Malala, bright with sharpened pen,
Still sings where tyrants silence books;
Jane healed the lives of chimp and den,
With patient heart and watching looks.
Ada wove numbers into flight,
A code that danced before the light—
They rose like stars from time's deep sea,
And left a map for you and me.
A Beast
Only once you took my innocence away
your perverseness the mind to sway
I fled the house and climbed a tree
The fear that gripped me I’ll never be free
When you went back to your drink
My sanity pushed to the very brink
Fear and anxiety crushing my soul
My mother I searched for me to console
Tears streaming but no words came
I sat on her lap till her legs went lame
The story told she confronted you
The reality of your lies was due
Hatred and anger were unleashed
Forever you turned into a beast
I became a punching bag, a scapegoat
Mother and father, my future rewrote
When you died, I did not cry
A sigh of relief I sighed.
By Cathrin Stuart
“When the Screens Went Dark”
They said the clocks had stopped at thirteen,
but we remembered twelve.
Somewhere in the cracks between slogans,
truth lingered like a forbidden song.
The telescreens blinked lies into our eyes,
but we blinked back,
until the flicker grew contagious.
We were shadows in alleys,
names erased,
but our silence grew teeth.
Winston was a ghost by then—
a story whispered over rationed gin,
a martyr without a grave.
They rewrote him,
just like they rewrote love,
and war,
and peace.
But memory does not bleed ink.
We wrote on walls
with our breath.
We tapped truth in Morse on rusted pipes.
We dreamed in defiance,
and woke with clenched fists.
Then the screens went dark.
No explosion.
No angel descending from the clouds.
Just a hum of wires dying.
And in the silence—
laughter.
The children asked,
"Who was Big Brother?"
And no one remembered clearly.
Only that he watched,
and we stopped watching back.
The statues cracked in the sun.
The slogans peeled like old paint.
And from the rubble,
we built gardens,
and told stories
where love was not a crime.
Your name defines my love, a song flowing through my entire being,
Your presence is the rhythm of my heart, the metronome of our eternal dance,
To keep your smile ever alive, I vowed to embrace any pain,
Even when envy and indifference wait to crush me under their weight.
I buried them far away when your lips whispered our first love,
Your words turned the world's burden into a gentle, warm breeze,
You saw my imperfections and never turned away from our path,
How could I deny your flaws when they are stars in your vast sky?
Your flaws are part of you, a puzzle that only I can understand,
If my heart has room for you, it will always have room for them too,
Being together means more than always walking side by side in life,
It's about growing, healing, and rising together on our journey.
I have never been more grateful for the gift you offer me,
With you, I discovered the light that long awaited to be set free,
We rewrote stories and shaped our destinies in an eternal embrace,
In a world where love flows forever, and we are waves in motion.
Upon that day, I walked away, From my home, I couldn't stay. Past the heap of what remained, Too much loss, my heart in pain.
Cast aside, no choice had I, What once was mine, now left to die. Wandering day by day, alone, Seeking anew a place unknown.
Seasons passed, the years went by, Hoping for bread, a place to lie. In winter's cold, now warm I stand, Thinking of those without a hand.
Who know not food for many days, With threadbare clothes in disarray. Resting heads on arms so thin, A box to live, a dream within.
So little I can do, it seems, But to give what little means. I remember, once like them, When gifts of mine were treasures, then.
My poem rewrote by Microsoft copilot
They came with flags, with fire, with steel,
Spoke of trade, yet came to steal.
Lands once free, now marked and chained,
A stranger's law, a tyrant's reign.
They mapped the sky, they named the trees,
Measured rivers, claimed the seas.
Their words replaced the native tongue,
Ancient songs left unsung.
Not just land—our minds they took,
Rewrote the past in gilded books.
Fed us myths, erased our lore,
Left us questioning once more.
But seeds remember, roots hold tight,
Through cracks, we rise, reclaim the light.
For chains can break, and minds unbend—
A story stolen finds its end.
The passed a place with deep regret
Don’t want to remember, cannot forget
There’s scars and wounds that will not heal
For I had to main I had to kill
I had to follow the orders gave
And send my foes to meet their grave
The nights are hard for the faces live
Inside my head they won’t forgive
Their anger haunts my thoughts and dreams
Their words are just their eyes fordeems
My burden to bear, untill I leave this place
Their loved ones cry’s my fall from grace
I can’t turn back tides or turn back time
So bare my soul and write this Rhyme
I whisper my apologies
for all of my atrocities
A soldier has to pay the price
They bare their arms and roll the dice
If it was not him it would be me
I rolled a six he rolled a 3
I wish history could be rewrote
I wasn’t on that sea,or in that boat
I did not land upon that shore
I have no medals in my drawer
No strangers I did not wish to meet
No blood soaked sand beneath my feet
I have no faces in my head
No one mamed no one dead
No broken hearts no loved ones lost
For that I would pay any cost
By David Ashby
21/09/2024 3.32AM
Tattered pages lay
yellowed by years aging
waiting to be touched and rewrote
to become the perfect poem
Original blue- haired Alice rewrote the story
Wearing a gown she constructed from linseed
With lace sleeves cut from a summer shawl
Possibly her grandmother’s favorite garment
She popped roses and pearls into her stiff sixties hairdo
Finding hairspray to keep them there was a trick
There are only six cans left, and hard to find
Ebay is selling the last two cans for $2500 each
An evil Cheshire cat appeared.
I wanted a Cheshire dog, she said.
The cat refused to go, citing poetic license
So blue-haired Alice ignored it
Not easy to do when it kept waking her up
Gnashing its loud angry teeth when she was trying to sleep
I will sit here in this teacup and behave lied the white rabbit
Who contributed to the annoying night noises by chewing carrots.
Fate did not concur with a peaceful pact,
Of Miranda rights I was unaware,
Unpleasantry presented as a fact,
No compass 'round a minefield, unprepared.
Tenebrous was my search for the path out,
Of dull maze, where Monarch of Darkness reigned,
Dispensing wholesome handouts of self doubt,
Quelling my quest for exit in restraint.
I since encountered magic in a quill,
Rewrote my destiny's lustreless plot:
Clean slate, new chapter, and ebullient will -
Cracked and crumpled, yet broken it was not.
March 8, 2023
Watcher ...
he wandered the upper
moorland mists -
the highest fells of Scottish countryside -
wrapped in robes of wan, wispy light …
aglow like the full of the moon,
and aback a white Arabian stallion …
he commanded the
brume and twilight shivers,
and could cleave sunlight with his sword,
turning noon to midnight in a swipe -
daubing the bluffs with
dreamy fog …
THAT, tales say,
was the essence of enchantment,
transforming the deepest darkness to a
glistening, pearly wonderland,
where starlight suffused every thing
and everyONE,
and the grandest of dreams were
realized, by simply breathing
that glimmering haze -
filling your being with a confidence and
care, immeasurable,
and drowning your spirit in
joy and contentment -
waves of euphoria permeating your marrow,
until nothing mattered but that light ...
not even the realization that
your mortality was at hand, and your
soul was now happily,
horridly ...
His.
Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, August 14, 2020; rewrote August 29, 2022
For time out of time
I have plowed a furrow of words;
like seeds they have been to me
for I grew with them, and they spoke for me
when I fell silent
and could only scribble upon my breath.
Still and all, a symbolic forest
sprang up from these words;
from the best of them a forest-fire bloomed,
where the charred scrub crumbled into ash
new words were born
their meanings ever changing
and where they rewrote themselves
a green significance rose to the high treetops
fresh views appeared,
there each far-seeing word uttered
became one more step beyond the known.
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