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Katlyn Orthman Sep 2014
This land that's never set her eyes on war
Never tasted the blood of soldiers
But oh how she has tasted blood
Never tasted salty tears of genocide
But oh how she's tasted tears
Never hungered with her children's famine
But oh how she's hungered
Never brought to her knees with hopeless prayers
But oh how she has prayed
Never lived in constant terror
But oh how she has feared
The innocence that once rest like a quilt on frail shoulders
Ripped away to bear the fierce cold
Comfort, so taken for granted
Will be a beacon of what we'll miss
When all is lost
I have this terrible gut feeling that something awful is going to happen soon.
And so the year
goes on, accompanied by
another famine.
No proper rains this year yet, except occasional drizzles
This man, oh, he fights all alone.
He’s fighting so far from home.
Every day he bears his gun, he risks his life,
Fighting in hellish worlds plagued with strife.

He’s not in this for your revolution.
He’s just here of his own volition.
He doesn’t care if things get worse.
He just wants your gold in his purse.

Each and every time he fires,
Death comes, hangs ‘round the shires.
He’s borne witness to immense misery,
But after so much, rarely is he teary.

His brothers and comrades fell all around,
But he has time for neither cry nor frown.
In the town, he’s burnt, he’s looted, he’s *****;
And, into the night, his shadow’s shifted shape.

The dogs of war, they’ve never stopped;
Even when they’re sliced or chopped.
They just go to hell, where they regroup,
Then come back as yet more troop.

Time and guilt erode this man’s visage;
He’s still haunted by infernal image.
He still remembers his prime, young days;
Oh, how he wasted his youthful phase.
It's about an African mercenary who expends all of his youth fighting meaningless bush wars in the Congo.
Shane Oltingir May 2014
Give us burn-outs, bars, and battered schools,

Streets of litter, needles, walls,

Smoke and smog and drugs and drab,

******, and heartbreak, liquor, ****;

Fury, ****-ups, fear and fights,

Cut down trees, and sleepless nights;

Polluted rivers, dead-end jobs,

Tell us that there is no god.

Then wake up each and every morning,

Embrace and kindle global warming;

Watch as wars and famine strive,

And watch your poems come alive.


For that is what we writers need.
Just so you guys are aware, in this piece the use of the word '****' is simply a British colloquialism for cigarettes -- it is not a reference to homosexuals.
Kendall Mallon Apr 2014
The crown can feel hate, fear and shame—
never gratitude for starving a nation into sailing across
the western ocean—thousands sailing in a coffin
ships to break the chains of poverty in hopes of bellies full & bodies free,
but the hand of opportunity draw tickets from a lottery;
spirits celebrate in their hearts forever
the that land that makes them refugees—while those
who never got so far that they could change their names are robbed
of their toil to stuff the bellies of sentinels mowing down rising crowds
in the crown-jewel of the empire never kissed by moonlight.


How long with the Island remain silent
when ghosts haunt the waves?
Éire: within its minds sit hopes of peace

— The End —