Fun with soundy words

In the English language there are certain words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings. My word challenge for the day was to write a poem incorporating certain paired words in this category and see if I can morph them into a "sound" poem (no pun intended), rhythm dancing with text.  There is sometimes rhythm, even in life's tortured rumblings.  Life is not a game. But we play anyway.

Let's make this hard.  Write something about those who want to speak, but can't; about how some spend their lives dreaming of what will never be--pounding along, anchored to their time and place, taking life's bites, one sharp nick at a time, but who still manage to hear the music of all that is. And just to make it interesting, include a subtle reference to the mixed blessings of free trade, showing that the best marketing campaigns in the world can sometimes backfire and come back to haunt you.  (Stop laughing. It's doable.)

Here are the words:

alas/a lass          sees/seize          mourn/morn        wear/ware/where
err/'ere/air         bear/bare           piece/peace         naught/knot/not
hear/here           while/wile           brake/break         sight/site/cite   
shore/sure          road/rode          how'll/howl           soared/sword     
sum/some          heel/heal           we'll/wheel            see/sea   
mane/main        feet/fete            flour/flower          do/dew                  
week/weak        isle/aisle             by/buy                 eye/I             
fleas/flees          no/know          
   
I've decided to title the poem "Even".  (i.e., the opposite of Odd.  Why burden a new word creation with negative connotations, before it even has a chance to stand on its own?)

Here is what I came up with, after a bit of shuffling:

Even

what you hear, here waits to be confirmed

by what you see, but in the sea of time,

no word of how’ll you know in any given week
what's a howl and what's a plea
from those too weak to say.

How oft we err, and 'ere you think the air grows dense ...

well, some have soared--in sum, escaped the sword, the plow--
to wile their days while on the road
to their dreamt isle beyond the aisle of now.

They rode a piece, to get their due,
to find some peace in fields of morn's fresh dew, away.

T’is naught to mourn, just brake to break the knot that binds,
and will you ever get there?  Some say not.

Alas, a lass can wear her ware, where unaware

of worn out heel and tousled mane, she in the main

still seeks to heal..

She sees a flower in eye of sight--an "I" on site--
to seize a poem from which to cite

what comes by her small cell.

(One must not always buy and sell
on every shore, with jingling feet (no fete is sure
and one must bear the sting of fleas before one flees, all shorn and bare.)

We'll discount all this raucous shill and
grab the wheel and listen--list, then,all the ways
in which a choking jangle mends,
with balm of sound, no longer bound,

untangled, free, the sounds all whirred and morphing

    morphing

              morphing

                          into

                                 word.

--Annie Wyndham

First (and, thankfully last) publication.

What to some is music, to others is noise.
Behind every sound there is a story.
Behind every word there is a sound.
Some poems can be oiled to work better.
This one may be what one here might call, "in the moon".


But birthing  it pulled me outta my slump.  :)
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Doodle by awyn, on a piece of cardboard box, sprinkled with the word "word" in English, French, Spanish, Bulgarian, Polish, Swedish, Dutch, Serbian, German, and Greek.