Change the Voice

Change the voice
The teacher taught
Subject and object shook hands and changed places.

Use the right preposition
She said;
In jostled with on, off and by
To accompany ‘let’ and ‘get’

Change into indirect speech she said;
‘‘I am feeling good’’ slid into
he was feeling good

Write the following in précis form she said
And a flowery paragraph shorn itself
Sheep like
Into two telling lines

Punctuate she said
And commas and colons
Full stops and exclamation marks
Took position like soldiers around a sentence.

Refer to context she said
And the connection was established
With a larger text

I wondered….
If only we taught ourselves
To punctuate life correctly
Pause when needed, to not exclaim without reason,
To question
To accept appropriately
To know that subject and object
Are only like being the dog today
And the tree tomorrow;
That by and off and in still connect to the same reality;
That ‘should’ and ‘must’ and ‘ought to’ are just empty abrasives
‘should want to’ is what counts in life.
To know that most happenings can be précis written
In the mind;
To frame people and events in contexts and yet
Know to undo the frames when the whole picture of Life is called for…

Wouldn’t it be a more worthwhile lesson in semantics?