Mine, said the stone,
mine is the hour.
I crush the scissors,
such is my power,
stronger than wishes,
my power, alone.
Mine, said the paper,
mine are the words
that smother the stone
with imagined birds,
reams with them, flown
from the mind of the shaper.
Mine, said the scissors,
mine all the knives
gashing through paper's
ethereal lives;
nothing's so proper
as tattering wishes.
As stone crushes scissors,
as paper snuffs stone
and scissors cut paper,
all end alone.
So heap up your paper
and scissors your wishes
and uproot the stone
from the top of the hill.
They all end alone.
As you will, you will.
I really liked this poem. I thought that the poet symbolized power through the game rock paper scissors. I think that the rock was strength, paper was words and imagination, and scissors represent mental abuse.
The diction that the poet uses really makes the objects come alive and seem very powerful. "crush" "smother" "gashing". With the structure of the poem I saw that there is four stanzas and the last one is longer than the first three. It could be that the first three are talking about the powers individually and the last one all three comes together. This is significant because the poem talks about how having one power is bad. But combinding all three would be better.