To all the good girls

Photo by Wellington Cunha from Pexels

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We despair of you losing a good time
We despair of you being fast asleep at bedtime
and be numbed normally grey and unmoved
and stable and sane and with all troubles removed

and as expected at the wake-up chime
to wake up slowly in your own time
We despair it’ll go much faster than you think
We despair it will take but a seconds blink

©RedCat

The conflicted poet

At first it seemed like a waste of words and time
I don’t want to write about good girls being fine
But then I starten to flip (nearly) all the words
And got surprised at what I heard
A note from all the naughty girls
To all the goody two shoes that never through the night twirls

©RedCat

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Photo by Maor Attias from Pexels

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Written for tonight’s dVerse — Poetics — Flipping Meanings prompt. Tonight’s challenge, was to pick one of these three pathways to use to write a poem:

1. Choose one of your favorite poems by another poet and flip the meaning on it as shown in the video. Please include both the original poem and poet’s attribution along with your flipped poem;
2. Choose one of your OWN favorite poems and flip it. Please include your original poem along with your flipped poem;
3. Write a diamante poem as outlined above.

Bonus challenge questions: how did it feel to flip the script? Are you happy with how it turned out?

I chose path 3 and picked a poem I loved during adolescence. From A Bad Girl by Karin Boye, although I much prefer using naughty or wicked when I translate the title. I also took the bonus challenge which itself turned into another poem.

One of the few words I didn’t flip was Girl, the reason for this is that I identify both with the original poem and as a girl. So I wanted to keep an hint of the original meaning.

You can read a translation of the original below. The translation is from The Karin Boye Society.

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FROM A BAD GIRL

I hope you’re having a rotten time.
I hope you’re lying awake like I am,
and feeling strangely glad and stirred
and dizzy and anxious and very disturbed.

and suddenly you’ll hurry up
to settle down and sleep like a top.
I hope it takes you longer than you think…
I hope you don’t even get a wink!

Från en stygg flicka av Karin Boye – Translated into English by David McDuff in “Karin Boye: Complete poems”.

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