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AJ Jul 2016
Granite washed in gray day's light
From fresh yellow hills to shrouded night
The wings of an angel stretch far and high
Atop each, a bird has time to bide.

Greens of white and black and blue
Keep still in the winds which sing so true
Plump summer leaves fall out of air
And tumble onto a fox's silky hair.

A lute strikes hidden melodies
Like hummingbirds sing, mellow and free
In a castle made of washed gray stone
A king yearns for his long-lost home.

Fountains of youth spout looking glasses
Into which priests shout to the masses
Words of love and hypocrisy
That cage sick cherubs who've never once dreamed.

Pillars of stone and lush green patches
And cigarettes lit by inch-long matches
Time bends far and tastes so sweet
For those who plant enough trees to sleep.

A tall green tower climbs over mountains
A prince's curse it gladly renounces
Around it, houses broken and bent
By war-torn rebels who won't repent.

Gardens never seemed so small
When charlatans crowd their purple halls
And somewhere far, an ancient says,
This would never pass unnoticed were I not dead.

Cities of tombs and streets without light
Fall slowly into an unsavory night
Moss grows swiftly on age-old tombs
While sirens sing immortal tunes.
I used to go to the Bryce Hospital cemetery
at night and sit on a tombstone overlooking the Black Warrior River .
I used to talk to the dead but I gave it up after none of them answered back .
Still I was at ease there in the dark amongst their remains . I had no fears , no worries , no thought of tomorrow . Just a gentle touch of acceptance . I guess you could call it peace .
AJ Apr 2016
Upon the hilltop
Far over the golden horizon
Where the sun peeks out
From behind the blue crystals
Lining the cloudless sky,
There sit gray
Obelisks, towers of fractured stone
And gleaming silver flowers
That chant the distant melodies
Of those who lay below the grass.

The obelisks line in circles
And weep silently for what age
Has brought upon their faces;
Moss and cracks, dirt upon bouquets,
Names weathered down to pebbles
Vast plains of unturned soil.

At nightfall, winds break
Upon the hilltop's gates
And send forth siren calls
That plead for silent harmonies
Somewhere deep underground,
Below the grasses, below the tombstones
That rise and fall like waves
That sit silent, immobile,
As time strikes its silver chisel
Upon the forgotten markers of those
Who have been locked
Inside its ticking crypt.
Amy Perry Apr 2016
The cemetery was my circus I found
After outgrowing fantasy and the playground.
Golden afternoons in the country after school,
My blood having no resemblance, no ancestors,
To all the Sutton's and Smotherman's and Suddeth's
Who here resided with Tennessee pride. Inside and outside.
The still silence of my childhood cemetery carried an eerie air. I wanted to be here.
The peaceful calm, it called me back,
The king cawing crow, attending in black.
As for any of the lost, perhaps content, Confederate souls,
Who have yet to cross over, lamenting or dozed.
I suspect now, that it was I who startled those ghosts.
My blood, my frequency, my scent of the coast,
Sent from a Union ancestry my vibration still boasts...
How unexpected was I to those Tennessee ghosts.
abp
AB Feb 2016
The sun hides in this place
The grey clouds hamper it's light.

Here the stones rest,
Long straight rows, emblazoned with names.

A sergeant here, a corporal there.
The rank no longer matters.

In battle they were brothers,
In death their stones share space.

The snow crunches underfoot moving through
The mass, a solitary crow stands sentinel.

Ever watchful, ever present,
We mourn, we respect, we love.

Men and women, they gave their lives for us.
For our sons and daughters to know better
Futures.
Visited Arlington recently and I was just awestruck by it. Tried to capture it's beauty and the reverence I have for that place in this poem
There is a cemetery in your heart worth minding,
Where the bones of your lovers are always grinding,
The path in is simple; escape long and winding,
Love is so rarely mutually binding.

Dig me a grave there, keep me bound.
Hold me by the hair, through your fingers wound,
As you push me harder into the ground,
Till I am buried within you, my funeral mound.
hazel Jan 2016
Had there been a time where idealizations were accepted among the walk of reality that lie before us it may all prove to be a bit more comforting.
Where the daunting banter of voices that sat atop my conscience were able to soothe the pain of grieving without true loss.
Heartache failed to be coupled with death.
A place where we could walk hand in hand with dark, empty vessels sent to sail with a destination that is but a passing fog and direction pinpointed out by wanderlust souls.
We lie with a marker of selfishness that runs so close to the bone- etching its edges into our flesh with such vigor that one could hardly ignore, yet it sits on the back burner.

Come with me, my love, dance in my graveyard of pasts.
Take in the sights of freshly filled earth that mold itself beneath our feet as we take a gander at what was.
Here lies the spring evening under the sycamore, young hearts screaming with excitement, the way the wind intertwined among-
The nearly bare branches of autumn rest peacefully with the skin coat worn as a declaration of verses that died between clenched teeth and sealed lips.
This is the laughter worms now feed on.
Here are the fingertips and silk braced locks buried alongside one another but never to touch again.
Pay mind to the faces piling up adjacent to the stone wall, laugh lines rotting by the rise and fall of moonlight.

What a spectacle of self, is it not, dear?
We can witness blue fade to black, closing the light on this scene.
Sit here and rot beneath the sycamore tree.
Clench our hearts between our teeth and swallow messenger bottles along with them.
Never to walk in unison but let one dissipate aside the other.
Let our memories of memorized bone structure fall before our very eyes- wouldn't it be grand?

Induct this into the cemetery of past and do away with the make up of oneself.
We will let this idealization fall cold,
Watch rigor mortis seep in with such mesmeric fashion.
Tuck it away before pre-thought memories taint themselves with reality.
Lower it down under into the ever so charming embrace of wood and soil, mites and fungus.
Clean our hands of touch ever so sacred.
Let it bleed out, darling. Let it decay.
Anyway- how will we remember this when its done away with today?

Let the grieving sink in, just to coddle remembrance of nothingness.
Embrace the black holes swallowing pieces of us.
Dance among the treetops and feel the wind, when our memory dies we can truly begin.
And again,
And again.
Written January 2016
They told me she died.
So I woke up in the graveyard of my dead dreams,
Took up my trusted shovel,
And like a good old country lad,
Decided to dig her up.

They told me she died.
But I knew they had to be wrong.
Why, there she lay, as unattainable as ever,
Smiling smugly from her coffin,
Mocking me with her fake omniscience.
For Death, may be a great leveller,
And make sceptre and crown
Just tumble down,
But not so her beauty.

They told me she died.
But how could i believe them,
After knowing her wicked wit of Solomon.
With which all her life,
She didn't let death so much as touch her beauty,
For she hid it so deep within,
Veiled beneath the layers of toughness
And faded tee’s,
That even a soldier camouflaging her scarlet skin,
Would be put to shame.

They told me she died.
But they didn't bury her beside me.
But by another man’s side.
Because he was man enough to ask
What i should’ve,
And now she lies buried,
As his bride.
brixton bell Dec 2015
the taste of gunpowder on his tongue as the night tangled around us like sheets: & so we hung, from the stars, as diamonds. His touch was new & like nothing i had known. (it made me feel alive again.) He is fragile flower petals, the burning soul of a constellation.

we will wait for snow, he says, & i know somewhere inside. For i remember the winter night; some three hundred days ago. i wore mittens - hand stitched blue- everyday that frozen month.
They said he wasn't there. he had gone home, 'for the holidays.' & so i left. tiny steps down the sidewalk, frosted like a brilliant glowing cake.

Alone that night i drove the long way there- that cemetery where you sleep now. (He misses you so much.) And you waited, said hello, & i wanted to cry. A blanket of snow, we talked of stories and i know. You miss him too. We were together, then. That candy cane night.
brixtonbell.com
Silence Screamz Oct 2015
Seething through the broken night
Shush the moment brought to light

The whispers heard by crying sound
as footprints cross the solemn ground

Gates passed through to Bachelor's Grove
Eyes of cold and constant flows

She haunts your thoughts and every step
Shivering spine with goose bumps left

Ghostly figures at night time stray
Orbs on  film can't look away

Look right through the fields of stone
Aged with time and weathered tone

Shoulders tapped with haunted thought
The air was empty, your mind is caught

Turned around with no one there
Hallow's Eve with more to scare

Visions of past and Chicago's dead
Rise on up through blackened thread

Screams of terror and morbid sins
Stopped in tracks, they're gone again

Reach the gate of rusted steel
Fallen down on deadly keel

Out of the depths of the spirit's trove
Passed through the gates of Bachelor's Grove
a little Halloween themed piece about Bachelor's Grove cemetery in Chicago, a really haunting experience
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