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Jim Davis  Apr 2017
Touching
Jim Davis Apr 2017
In the last
three decades,
after we became one,
I touched
amazingly beautiful things,
horribly ugly things,  
unbelievably wondrous things

I touched nature's majesty;
hued walls of the Grand Canyon,              
crusty bark of the
Redwoods and Sequoias,
live corals of the
Great Barrier Reef,
dreamlike sandstone of the Wave

I touched magical and strange;
platypus, koalas and
kangaroos Down Under,
underwater alkali flies and
lacustrine tufa at Mono Lake,
astral glowing worms
in the Kawiti caves

I touched holy places;
Christianity's oldest churches,
the Pope's home in the Vatican,
Hindu and Sikh temples and
Moslem mosques in India,
Anasazi's kivas of Chaco canyon,
Aboriginal rocks of Uluru and Kata Tjuta

I touched glimmers of civilization;
uncovered roads of Pompeii,
fighting arenas of Rome,
terra cotta armies of Xian,
sharp stone points of the Apache,
pottery shards from the Navajo,
petroglyphs by the Jornada Mogollon

I touched fantastical things;
winds blowing on the
steppes of Patagonia,,
playas and craters of Death Valley,  
high peaks of the Continental Divide,
blazing white sands of the  
Land of Enchantment

I touched icons of liberty
and freedom;
the defended Alamo,
a fissured Liberty Bell,
an embracing Statue of Liberty,
the harbor of Checkpoints
Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie

I touched glorious things
made by man;
the monstrous Hoover Dam,
an exquisite Eiffel tower,
a soaring St Louis Arch,
an Art deco Empire State Building,
the sublime Golden Gate Bridge

I touched sparks from history;
the running path of an
Olympic flame just off Bourbon,
the last steps of Mohandas Ghandi
at Birla House before Godse,
******'s Eagle's nest and the
grounds over Der Führerbunker

I touched walls of power;
enclosed rings of the Pentagon,
steep steps of the
Great Wall of China,
untried bastions of
Peter and Paul's fortress,
fitted boulders of Machu Picchu

I touched strong hands;
of those conquering
Rommel's and ******'s hordes,
of cold warriors of
Chosin Reservoir,  
of forgotten soldiers of Vietnam,
of terrorist killers of today

I touched memories of war;
the somber Vietnam memorial,
the glorious Iwo Jima statue,
the cold slabs at Arlington,
the buried tomb of USS Arizonians,
Volgograd's Mother Russia  

I touched ugly things;
shreds of light in
Port Arthur's prison,
horrible smelly dust
in the streets from 9/11,
ash impregnated dirt
in the pits at Auschwitz

I touched oppressed freedom;
open ****** plazas
of Tiananmen Square,
smooth pipe and concrete
of the Berlin Wall,  
tall red brick walls
of the Moscow Kremlin

I touched constrained freedom;
heavy ankle and
wrist slave chains
in the South,
little windows
in Berlin's Stasi prison,
haunted cells in Alcatraz  

I touched remnants of madness;
wire and ovens of Auschwitz,
stacked chimneys and
wooden bunks of Birkenau,        
Ravensbruck, and Dachau,
the tomb of Lenin,
toppled Stalins

I touched hands of survivors;
of Leningrad's siege,
of German POWs and
of Russian fighters
of Stalingrad's battle,
of Cancer's scourges  

I touched grand things;
deep waters of the Pacific and Atlantic,
blue hills of Appalachia,
towering peaks of the Rockies,
high falls of Yosemite Valley,
bursting geysers of Yellowstone,
crashing glaciers of Antarctica and Alaska    

I touched times of adventure;
abseiling and zipping in Costa Rica,
packing Pecos wilds and Padre isles,
flying nap of earth Hueys to Meridian,
breaking arms in JRTC's box,
fighting Abu Sayyaf, and Jemaah
Islami in Zamboanga City

I touched through you;
wet sand beaches of  Mexico and Jamaica,
mysterious energy of the monoliths of Stonehenge,
rarefied air in front of the
Louvre's Mona Lisa,
ancient wonders of Giza,
Egypt's tombs and pyramids

We shared soft touches;
drifting in Bora Bora's
surreal waters,
joining hands camel trekking the
Outback's dry sands,
strolling along Tasmania's
eucalyptus forest trails

basking in swinging hammocks
under Fiji's bright sun,
scrambling in
Las Vegas' glittering and
red rock canyons,
kissing under the
Taj Mahal's symphony of arches

We shared touching deep waters;
propelled in gondolas
through the city of canals,
Drifting atop Uru cat boats on Lake Titticaca,
Swooping in jet boats
up a wild river in Talkeetna

Racing in speed boats
around Sydney's great harbour,
skimming in pangas in Puerto Ayora,
paddling the Kennebec for
East's best petroglyphs,
cruising Salzbergwerk's underwater lake

We touched scrumptious things;
Beignets and chicory coffee at DuMonde's in the Big Easy,
Hot *** with sesame sauce
in the walled city of Xian,
Peking duck, dimsum, scorpions,
snake and starfish on Wangfujing Snack Street

We touched delicious things
Crawfish heads and tails at JuJu's shack
and ten years at Jeanette's,
Langoustine at Poinciana's, Fjöruborðinus and Galapagos,
Cream cheese and loch bagels
at Ess-a' s in the Big Apple

I touched your hand riding;
hang loose waves of Waikiki,
a big green bus in Denali's awesomeness,
clip clopping carriages of Vienna, Paris,
Prague, New Orleans, Krakow,
Quebec City, and Zakopane,
the acapella sugar train of St Kitts

We shared touching on paths;
the highway 1 of Big Sur,
the Road of the Great Ocean,
the bahn to Buda and Pest,
the path to the North of Maine,
the trail of the Hoh rainforest,
and time after time, the way home

Yet,
I could spend
the next three decades,
in simple bliss,
having need for
touching nothing,
other than you!

©  2016 Jim Davis
A poem I wrote last year for my wife!  Posted now since it matches the HP' theme for today - "Places"
A J Ward Nov 2010
I enter Auschwitz 1.
Apprehensive crunches with every step.

I stand in a gas chamber.
Fully clothed.
With oxygen flowing freely.

I stand on a spot where thousands have stood before me.
But I'm able to make an exit,
Yet I'm rooted to the floor,
Transfixed with horror.
I feel like the last remaining tree,
surrounded by a forest of death.

Deforestation makes me sick.

*

Birkenau has a secret
that it doesn't want to tell.
A broken ending stood still.

The arches.
The ruins.
The tracks.
Thuds of reality slapping my face.

Stood inside the bleak barracks,
our guide asks us
"Imagine what it would like to be here -
What you'd see,
smell,
hear."

My eyes widen open in a scream,
they sting, fighting back at the image conjured within my mind.
I take a sharp breath
and close my eyes.

I am scared.
Saul Makabim  Jun 2012
Birkenau
Saul Makabim Jun 2012
Petting the clouds till they part
The ****** red skies bleed their light
down upon the mountain of corpses below
Children, skulls smashed in, babies on bayonets
Hanged men spinning pirouettes
Timelapse footage of X-ray sterilization
The laughing macemen
all smoke and elbows
Herding humans into faux showers
Grins and rattling grease-guns
It is as plain as pain this must be a dream
But I do not want to wake up
Not until the end
When the corpses rise up
to consume the exterminators
and the screaming begins
Then the blood shall flow anew.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS Jul 2020
Most people don't know this, but as a boy, Criminal Trump worked at the
Auschwictz-Birkenau death camp where from 1940 to 1945 the Nazis murdered 1,100,000, mostly Jews, the largest number of murders committed  
in any of the other 15,000 death camps spread over Europe in World War II.
Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was locacated in the province of Upper Silesia in Poland. The camp used Zyklon B to ****** these men, women, and children in their gas chambers. Criminal Trump had multiple duties. He would help the **** guards force the Jews out of the railroad cars, enduring somehow the yelling and screams of the Jews who, for the most part, had already heard the fate awaiting them. Criminal Trump laughed with the **** guards. Criminal Trump, even though he was just a boy, was allowed to carry a club to beat any recalcitrant Jew who would resist getting into line. One of Criminal Trump's most favorite tasks was to watch the women and their female children be forced to take off all their clothing. Criminal Trump enjoyed staring at these naked females, choosing for himself those who were the most beautiful to him. He would wait longer than most of the **** guards before turning on the Zyklon B gas. One of his least favorite jobs was carrying the corpses covered with human excrement to the ovens where they were to be burnt. The smell was almost too fetid for him to do his job. Though Criminal Trump showered after each of these horrid, but necessary, tasks, he never could get rid of either of the smell or the memory of what he had to do hours each day in the gas chambers. In fact, as a man, he would awaken with a start from recurring nightmares of these atrocities he had participated in as a boy.
What Criminal Trump did as a boy at Auschwitz-Birkenenau death camp shaped how he would treat virtually every human being he encountered later
in life--with lack of any empathy at best, with sociopathic cruelty at worst.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet, a novelist, and a human-right advocate his entire adult life.
Gary Brocks Aug 2018
He lifted his hand, it shook,
he leaned towards speech, halting,
a stroke confined his feet
to shuffled, prayerful, praises,
the day pushed dusk through blinds,

“How you buh, beautiful?” (a rasp).
“You take your meds?” the nurse said.
“How you… to… today?”, finger pointing
(reminded of it's hook).
She smiled and smoothed his bed
"You flirtin’, you bad man?”

Once he'd made a vow, an oath
in Auschwitz-Birkenau;
forced to pick gold from charred teeth,
he pledged to sidestep death, to live!
And, walk in love, to the Sabbath.


Copyright © 2003 Gary Brocks
180828F
John F McCullagh Oct 2012
The old man’s skin was parchment thin,
his eyes a watery blue.
On his left arm he bore the mark;
his Birkenau tattoo.

The letter “B” and six numbers
would be with him to the grave.
A permanent reminder
of his time as ******’s slave.

Two winters spent in Auschwitz-
What God would so design?
It left him gaunt and starving
with no faith in the Divine.

Yet he survived the worst and lived
when all his bunk  mates died.
His first wife was dust on the wind
as was their little child.

Now his grandson bears that mark,
the one and  very same.
To remind the world Of ******’s crimes,
He has skin in the game.
Based on  a web story about a grandson of a holocaust survivor who had his grandfather's tattoo put on his own arm as a remembrance

— The End —