Throughout history,

Hearts have been broken,
Children have died,
Tears have been shed
By widows who cried,
Wars have been fought,
Homes have been burned,
Errors repeated
From lessons unlearned,
Good have been murdered,
Bad given freedom,
Rich thrown to waste
What the poor yearn to feed on.
Few have found refuge;
Re-learned how to smile.

Who?

The poets who sat down
And wrote for a while.

- p. winter

Shall we step outside for a swim
in this ocean of artificial light?
Aren’t the lamppost legions lining the streets
the bioluminescence of the night?
Shall we take a stroll through the gardens,
through the forest of wire and twisted metal,
and admire how the cool autumn winds
waltz with these polythene petals?

The old and the new are already married,
Tied to the mast of time’s great voyager.
And beneath their most brilliant disguise
Lies the truest and most perfect reflection.
What does it matter in the sagas and songs
If now there’s a tower where once a tree stood?
A tree is nothing but a pillar of bark
Their lofty branches, girders of wood.
The grey and the green, the towers and trees,
Former is shunned, yet the latter is lost.
Hemlock and arsenic both send you down
And of granite and concrete, are either so soft?


Time marches on and leaves no-one behind.
It’s the ceaseless march of all of mankind.
If the end seems impending, and the path draped in black
To the darkness you go, there is no turning back.
This pilgrimage is a bitter prescription
And our sour rejection is sorely reflected
that legacies past are lauded and loved
While modernity’s beauty lies cold and neglected.
On the railway tracks we are hurtling down
Laid each day by the hands of history
We cannot turn back or regret our mistakes
Or the careless advances we were perceived to make.
While we grasp at the memories, and skeletal remains,
With our rueful yearning that's becoming so desperate
The fact remains, ‘till the end of our days
There's no better, or worse, there is only different.
There is no behind, there is only beyond.
The passing of past lays the road for the new.

My ancestors
dropped
the pencils
in my hands
I am drawing
them now,
the lines
in my face
I sketch
them out
clearer
every day.

©

I.

Reticent mountain; slumbering veins,
  awaits a morning to shatter his pain!
  They're buckled lips now waste away
      as monuments fall in careless displays!

II.

Admonished mountain; flailing words,
  are vast in numbers with voices unheard!
  The babblers dream now fades away
      as history mourns the children's day!

III.

Forgotten mountain; skyward bound;
  what beauty could free a monstrous sound?
  The records beseech the fluttering hearts
      the heed its words now eons apart...

The spawn of the soft drink,
During the simple times faded away,
Coca-Cola and soda water,
Enjoyed by all grandfathers,
A time of simplicity,
Passed into history,
A golden age,
Now tarnished by time,
And devalued by the present.

By Arcassin Burnham


I hope the men don't run off and try to see the fear in others,
Hope the women don't gossip like they don't have a care for others,
I hope the kids in school don't have agendas just to pick on others,
This world literally crazy,protect your sisters and brothers,
Putting your damn videos on Worldstar just to see someone bloodier,
Do we really wanna be seen in the history books as histories most violent
Country?
Now come on guys everybody and their mama knows that this country is
Built off money,
a socially awkward economy,

that tells you to obey their policies,
the justice system , are you blind to see,
they kill for no reason , we run out of peace,
as a black man you can't on your two feet,
without getting cascaded with bullets,
whatever hope we get or had in the past just know they're the ones
that took it.

the furthest hill to the closest tree,
It mocks what the eye can see,
In capture of heart and love of place,
The perfect portrayal of her face,
Like it was there but it is gone,
But now with this it will be forever and on.
Saving what happened frozen in time,
To when the fate seals and one forgets,
The eldest painting just begins to set.
It tells of time and thought,
The memory that another caught.
The land, the people the joy the glee,
Much more horror than our eyes can see.
With a brush and paper and the world in view,
We'll be able to take away a flash or two.
Paint and people come together
A piece of past kept forever,

The ancient knowledge,
Scribed in faded pages,
Writing hidden behind code,
As father time erodes the value,
Of the work of the past,
Of course,
Even man,
Is blind to the value of most things,
Until they are lost to the ocean of history.