Poetry Camp (February)
Fox-Trot-9

Day 17: Of Chaucer, Wyatt, and Surrey

My weary brain's asleep today,
   All stuffed with words I've read
Of many a strange and ancient lay
   Clouding my mind with dead
Rhymes that read like ghostly whispers,
Like kisses shared between two sisters,
   Like ghosts of things unsaid.

The words of Chaucer, Wyatt, Surrey
   Now blend in accents rich
And rarefied within the blurry
   Change of languages that catch
And hold to tongues of different hues,
Which in our modern tongues confuse
   Words and meanings much too much.

And so I catch in Chaucer's tongue
   A drunken word that stirs
My brain to think that something's wrong,
   Words turned to drunken slurs
With little meaning past one word
(One word half-understood, half-heard)
   Now slurring into purrs.

And so I catch in Wyatt's hard
   And tumble lines uncouth
Words of passion filled with the scarred
   Remnants of love-struck youth,
Only to feel those steel-cold lies
Of scorn-filled words and scorn-filled eyes
   On tender-hearted truth.

And so I catch in Surrey's lines
   The promises of genius,
Turning rough lines to soothing wines
   To ease our minds of grievous
Remembrances of childhood joys,
Of careless fun among us boys
   When we were mischievous.

And so you three begin to shake
   New thoughts into my verse,
Breathing new life to words that make
   New roads I must traverse:
And with these lines, I breathe anew
Your long-dead voices brave and true
   For better or for worse.

(To be continued . . .)

A/N: These are the three poets I've had to read over the past week for school, and given their archaic spellings in their poems (I'm friggin' looking at you, Chaucer), reading them was tough work, but I finished. I friggin' FINISHED! ( >_< )