#history poems on Hello Poetry

Peter Balkus Feb 2024

Every death is unexpected,
takes us always by surprise.
Darkness always falls so heavy
from the red Pompeian skies.
Never ready for her visit,
she will come to take your life.

Even if the holy fire
comes to wash your sins at night,
it will wake you up and frighten,
it will make you run for life.
Suddenly, without a warning,
all your dreams and hopes will die.

Young or old - it doesn't matter,
man or woman, noble, slave,
saints and sinners, bankers, poets
will end up in the same grave.
Our bones won't be discovered,
unless by an accident.

Everyone has the volcano,
sitting over their town.
One day it'll unleash inferno,
even when it's quiet now.
It will follow you, if happens
you decide to leave, move out.

Every death is unexpected,
takes us always by surprise.
Even if you say I'm ready,
you will run and try to hide.
But there will be no escape
from the red Pompeian sky.

#pompei #sky #history #death #volcano #life #end

Peter Balkus Feb 2024

*** I Am In Love With The Country...

I am in love with the country,
which doesn't exist anymore.
I am in love with its people,
for they have renounced the war.

I am in love with their women,
for in their modesty their beauty lies.
I am in love with their language,
for the alphabet of death never dies.

I am in love with the nation,
who didn’t **** in order to survive.
I remember that day very well.
It was love at last sight.

#love #country #art #history #war #peace #woman

Spicy Digits Feb 2024

Listen, watch

She is the witch they burned

The compassion they purged

The expert they scoffed

The healer they refused

The lover they daily used

The dark night pathologised

The divine objectified

The artist they buried

The joke they stole

The house they made smaller

The teacher they silenced

And the outlet of their violence.

#history #pattern #love #war #woman #women #oppression

Jeremy Betts Jan 2024

~•§•~ Maybe, Just Maybe ~•§•~

Maybe this non dairy rocky road was already laid out for me like some kind of haphazardly tossed together destiny of unfathomable tragedy
Or maybe I was too afraid to look too closely or venture too far from safety
Didn't see the blame had shifted dramatically, mostly to me, but how wrong can one guy possibly be?
And yet still I will admit, there's a possiblity the mentality I harbor is mostly negativity manifesting this reckless trajectory
No way to know for sure cause the final copy sent to the publisher was never run by me
So maybe, just maybe, it's some combination of these three, and everything you don't see but what pushed the first domino is beyond me
Can't jog my memory, the good, the bad and the ugly all lost to ancient history, constantly looked over, over and over to the point of obscurity
There's no money so follow the calamity of the paper back story, it's short and gory
Densely packed and stacked with everything that would make someone uneasy
Only pain and shame, no glory, not even a hole, boxed in and been lonely for 40
My future is solely based on what I've done previously
Most might say, "uh, yeah, obviously" but it can get tricky
With a little creative liberty taken to push the limits of an already worn down psyche
Me, myself and I, a split personality or just a not so holy trinity?

©2024

#destiny #tragedy #maybe #safety #wrong #reckless #obscurity #history #calamity #ugly

Carlo C Gomez Jan 2024

Sun in the Spiderweb

~
Bring your whirlwinds with you;
in the snow angel summer
bring Margot the sun.

In the hour of red glare
a rush to pick slowberries
before getting caught up in the silk.

Prisms, mirrors, lenses!
strategies for combatting visibility:
keep your eyes closed,
face away from the window.

The myriad threads of people in hiding,
they eat their own web each day,
and yet something always shines
in the heart's secret annex.

Men and women are
separated from each other,
the girls are on a train
to the Bergen-Belsen,
"white founts falling
in the courts of the sun."

Margot now cries quietly;
so silently she weeps over
sunshine and hate.
~

"white founts falling in the courts of the sun" is a line from 'Lepanto' by G. K. Chesterton (1911)

#holocaust #genocide #history #margot #anne #frank #sun #spiderweb

Francie Lynch Jan 2024

Past Over

The good ole days were enjoyed with ease,
There was less to enjoy because of disease;
There were fewer people to dress and feed
Thanks to childhood mortality.

The middle-class were few and greedy,
Thanks to needs and poverty;
We could find work and be employed,
But tenure turned to workplace injury.

Illiteracy was common,
Innumeracy, our fate,
Due to the high school drop out rate.

Polio and smallpox kept in check
The burgeoning growth of the unelect.

Minorities knew their social place;
Jim Crow was voting in black face.

Heteros ruled the ****** race,
Alphabet people were an outlier trace.

In summer and winter we were outplayed and beat,
With no Air Conditioning nor Central Heat.

Let's leave the past in the past,
Where history belongs;
Where hunger and sickness
Lasted all life-long,
And the poor and ignorant
Were subdued by the strong.

We can agree times were simpler then,
As time came rushing to an end.

Alphabet people are LGBTQA+

#history #society #change #disease #poverty #sickness #racism

Duane Kline Jan 2024

For My Son, The History Teacher

Trying to learn
Something from the
Past
Is a funny way to spend the
Future.

We look back
At the beauty,
Seeking the safety
Of our imaginations,
Knowing memories of
Other Lives
Can shield us
From the pain
Of our own
Biography.

You long to sit
In classrooms,
Captaining other minds
Through the fogs
And mists
That shroud memory.

The light you bring
Can illuminate
Or blind.
Sometimes, a dimmer light
Is better
To see through
The fog.

Glance backward,
Don't stare.
The future,
Glorious and clear
Awaits.

For Aaron
1/1/24

#history #learning #future #past #teaching

Carlo C Gomez Dec 2023

The Boat Dreams From the Hill

~
Time is a dark feeling
—the spell of a vanishing loveliness;
in the present mist
the imperatives in the wind
move less and less.

Haul away the anchor,
this is not a safe place.

Between insufficient coasts
—a land of look behind—
science is dead,
pessimism in the remaining oar,
and flies in the eyes of the Queen.
Their graves decorate the spine
on the east bank
they call Euthanasia,
each crucifix made of plasticine.

There's a discursive quality to the sea,
I can see the pearl fishermen,
the empty dancehall,
victims of latitude and eclipse.

I can see the tattered sleeves
of Edmund Fitzgerald and the pockets
of emptiness inside,
hoping to quell the hunger
of the cruelest month.

I can see an underwater country,
colonized by the unborn children
of pregnant African women
thrown off of slave ships
during the Middle Passage.

I can see myself sinking;
farewell my sorrow,
keeping precarious time
against a backdrop
of silence less and less;
its final sound being
that of seagulls
flying away into the distance
—a force of nature that’s
both solemn and inspirational
in equal parts.
~

#memories #melancholy #nautical #history #time #dreams #boat #sea

Jacqueline Skidmore Dec 2023

The Shelf

I am the eye on your shelf
I am the scratches of ink
that rip through unbarred arenas-
when sunken bones and unburied prints
amass a clump of
galloping words
tracing measured tracks
of battles forlorn

Hence my history beckons and the
leather straps like tires
machinal; my life
reduced to rubble burn-marks
in a book that
made you look
without a care
for where-
to put it.

another whisper in the wind which once
carried its conquered careful balance
Now sits still as a spineless paperweight
propped up by the heap of dust
in your periphery

#periphery #history #death #memento #battle #life #forlorn

Qweyku Dec 2023

Painful Breath

History is inherently
full of self-depreciation
studiously staging its ugliness.

It masks the truth of its beauty:

The painful present
birthing breath to the future.

© Qwey.ku 2023

#pain #breath #breathing #life #history #stories #painful #regrets #regret