#trench
I'm a pitless trench
that no light can ever reach.
ʷᵃⁱˡⁱⁿᵍ ⁱⁿ ˢⁱˡᵉⁿᶜᵉ.
Apr 27
Apr 27, 2026 at 12:19 AM UTC
I approach the enemy
and hide until dark
I dig in, at night
I creep around
in my trench-coat
to level the terrain
for a surprise attack
at an opportune moment
Fighting sleep
I stand in the ditch, biting
the tip of my tongue
and peering into the distance
My insignia grace
my shoulder *****
Dec 21, 2025
Dec 21, 2025 at 2:56 AM UTC
running in circles
the rat race got
me down, digging
my feet in, jump
I'll get out of this
trench if it's the
last thing I do.
Aug 30, 2025
Aug 30, 2025 at 5:59 PM UTC
i woke inside the trench.
my teeth were not my own.
my hand was gone, or chewed
in word i’d never known.
the war was soft and wet.
the skull had turned to chalk.
birds dropped like folded notes.
the siege forgot to talk.
she rode like wrath grown tall.
her helm was grief made gold.
no mercy in her path,
just silence, woe and cold.
the saints had kissed her lips.
their bones were in her hair.
the banner trailed behind,
stitched from a baby’s prayer.
she said:
stand. (i was.)
bleed. (i am.)
forget. (i have.)
they named her rust and sin.
they called her winterborn.
i called her sir. she knelt.
she cracked the siegehorns’ horn.
she fed the dying steeds.
she named them one by one.
she burnt all of their spines
beneath a rotting sun.
we drank the ink from flags.
we ate the borderlines.
we fed the crowns to crows
we wept in battle lines.
dull gape, like beryl stars,
spun like a compass dead.
she searched for Gods on fire,
who left the church in red.
our vows were carved in filth.
she wore a veil of teeth.
i wore the wound she gave
and nothing else beneath.
Jun 29, 2025
Jun 29, 2025 at 9:50 PM UTC
My love can be oceans deep
vast yet beautiful;
As its waves gently drenching the sand,
all I can imagine is the warmth of your hand
No words can comprehend how much I love you
That is why even after crossing the seven seas
I might find myself drowning
if you got tired of me
Apr 17, 2021
Apr 17, 2021 at 6:58 AM UTC
At Wilfred Owen’s Grave
by Michael R. Burch
A week before the Armistice, you died.
They did not keep your heart like Livingstone’s,
then plant your bones near Shakespeare’s. So you lie
between two privates, sacrificed like Christ
to politics, your poetry unknown
except for that brief flurry’s: thirteen months
with Gaukroger beside you in the trench,
dismembered, as you babbled, as the stench
of gangrene filled your nostrils, till you clenched
your broken heart together and the fist
began to pulse with life, so close to death.
Or was it at Craiglockhart, in the care
of “ergotherapists” that you sensed life
is only in the work, and made despair
a thing that Yeats despised, but also breath,
a mouthful’s merest air, inspired less
than wrested from you, and which we confess
we only vaguely breathe: the troubled air
that even Sassoon failed to share, because
a man in pieces is not healed by gauze,
and breath’s transparent, unless we believe
the words are true despite their lack of weight
and float to us like chlorine—scalding eyes,
and lungs, and hearts. Your words revealed the fate
of boys who retched up life here, gagged on lies.
Published by The Chariton Review, The Neovictorian/Cochlea, Rogue Scholars, Romantics Quarterly, Mindful of Poetry, Famous Poets and Poems, Poetry Life & Times, Other Voices International
Keywords/Tags: Wilfred, Owen, war, poem, trench, warfare, chlorine, gas, gangrene, armistice, ergotherapists, Craiglockhart, Sassoon, Yeats, honor, lies, gag, gagged, gagging, death, grave, funeral, elegy, eulogy, tribute, World War I
Mar 19, 2020
Mar 19, 2020 at 3:42 AM UTC
I wake up.
I took two pills before I blacked
I forgot I did,
I'm on autopilot.
You might worry,
The circles around my eyes
are a tell-tale sign
I assure you I'm not fine.
I am not in control of my life
I'm living in strife
everyone I know has left me
You see,
You don't see
And that's the thing
I don't want you to see
But why doesn't anyone see?
Oct 17, 2018
Oct 17, 2018 at 7:15 PM UTC
Grey is the gentle night sky on a moonlit night
A small scurrying field mouse
A soldiers greatcoat as he runs through a trench
Grey is the gentle lake in twilights sight
Grey is the color of the last heartbeat
Grey sounds like the feathers of an Owl
Without sound as it sails to its prey
Without sound it steals its last heartbeat
Grey is the sound of the gallows
The last struggle
Grey feels like soft velvet
A rabbits Fur
The feeling of sweet loves embrace
But Grey also feels like loneliness
On a rainy night, when love is needed most
Grey tastes of Rot
Of decay and death
And of the sweetest cinnamon
Grey tastes like the old ways
Grey smells like the trenches
***** and old
Filled with pride and death
Men dying for their country
So that one may be the winner of the world
Sep 12, 2018
Sep 12, 2018 at 11:35 AM UTC
Alone is a trench you dig by yourself.
Love is a garden that I dug with you.
We shower each other in compliments,
like rose petals that bloomed
so recently, so beautifully,
we just had to pick them.
We couldn't help it,
we admired them so.
Alone is a blue sky without a cloud in sight,
[and it misses them so.]
Love is the lightning and the rain in a thunderstorm.
They too, complement each other,
one conducting the other
in a symphony, full of gorgeous crashes,
one can't help but
be awed,
be inspired,
be in love,
with what we've become.
Apr 26, 2018
Apr 26, 2018 at 9:56 PM UTC
Sleep wants to claim you.
The shells exploding about
and sharp whistling shrapnel
prevents that claim to a large
degree. You watch rats run
along the trench with your
tired eyes. You dream of
home and homefires burning.
You catch laughter somewhere
over. Fritz and their Deutschland
humour. Some of the boys
shout obscenities back which
carries over no-man's land
and coal black. You smell
the stink of too many men
in too little space and death
and dying. You lean against
the wall of the damp trench
and stare at stars in that
canvas of sky. You will be
out of the trench tomorrow
you muse if you only survive
the night and bombs you might.
Mar 27, 2018
Mar 27, 2018 at 11:44 AM UTC
You had not imagined
you'd see the sights
you'd seen, or the smells
of death or sounds of
guns and shells.
You stood in the trench smoking,
inhaling slow and purposeful,
pushing, as best you could,
the sights seen from your mind.
Your boots stood in the mud,
your feet damp
where the boots leaked;
feeling the movements of lice,
you scratched.
You exhaled the smoke
and watched it
rise unevenly
before your eyes.
Two dead soldiers
lay a few feet away,
both you knew,
one quite a card,
now just a corpse
to be moved
when safe to move.
You vaguely recalled
your life back home,
the simple eagerness
to enlist.
You thought of Rosina
back in Blighty,
her bright eyes,
dark curly hair,
wishing you were
with her back there.
Feb 15, 2018
Feb 15, 2018 at 1:19 PM UTC
I was in a trench with all my sorrows
When all I needed was a rope
When all I needed was a ladder
You threw me a shovel
Jul 13, 2017
Jul 13, 2017 at 8:54 PM UTC
Don't wait for me
to come to the surface.
There is a lifetime of possibility
here on the ocean floor.
Let me be
the bottom-dweller
first discovered by submarine.
The darkness is not
as intimidating
as it may seem.
Don't feel around for my body
with your feet.
You won't find me in the shallow end
of the sea;
walk down the gradual slope,
where there is no air left to breath.
Over the mountains and hills
and great plains, then you'll find me
Seven miles deep
in the Marianas Trench.
Then you'll understand my immense stress.
Feb 19, 2017
Feb 19, 2017 at 1:31 PM UTC
I climbed out of this trench,
That was as deep as six feet,
When I realized that a broken heart,
Still manages to carry a beat.
Oct 11, 2016
Oct 11, 2016 at 5:59 PM UTC
"And now I do want you to know I'd hold you up above everyone.
And now I do want you to know I think you'd be good to me
And I'd be so good to you"
- Marianas Trench
Aug 30, 2015
Aug 30, 2015 at 2:15 AM UTC
In the trench alone.
when will I go home?
From No mans land I hear another moan.
surely, he will not go home.
Mans fight to the death.
"Please come home" our nearest say under their breath.
Blood turns the mud red.
How many more boys and men will go home dead?
A moments silence.
Bird song.
A trickling stream.
It's just a dream.
Mustard gas!
Barbed wire!
Gun fire!
In the trench alone.
When will I go home?
Dec 18, 2014
Dec 18, 2014 at 5:01 PM UTC
Nigel the soldier
Shoulders big as boulders
Up over the top
Tried not to stop
Tripped on some wire
Dodged all gun fire
Jumped back up again
Then it started to rain
Got to the other side
In one giant stride
Took some enemy out
They began to shout
Nowhere else to go
In a place he didn't know
Nigel the brave
Resting forever in an unmarked grave
Dec 18, 2014
Dec 18, 2014 at 4:58 PM UTC
Take a rest
is this gods test?
There is a stench resonating from the trench.
Death appears in many forms. A distorted face looks out from the mud unaware of what has been left behind. The bare trunk of a tree no longer able to sway in the wind. Mans broken spirit looking for a way to escape the living hell. No surrender. When will it end? No time to rest I must keep digging.
Dec 18, 2014
Dec 18, 2014 at 4:56 PM UTC
Grown my beard long enough,
time, now, to
announce to the world,
the demands of the new Caliph:
First a rider on raiment -
of black be your fashion.
Then, in the name of the Lord
the most merciful,
We demand razors!
Yeah we need more of them -
for shaving our underarms
and other sacred duties outlined below.
We demand brides!
We can knock at your censured
doors at night:
for faithful brides and
infidel ****** for pleasure.
In the name of the Lord, most merciful,
Madam, may I ask,
is your modesty circumcised?
In the name of the Lord, most merciful,
Can we have more watches please?
But mannequins, they must be covered.
And when we huddle the infidels
in trenches or behead your sons
please, we do so in but peace!
Aug 23, 2014
Aug 23, 2014 at 1:11 PM UTC
Walking down the wet pavement was a tall, young man in a black, silk yukata robe with matching leather shoes, spandex half-mask and large, opaque umbrella with a round, wooden handle.
One could say that he was posing as a sharp-dressed samurai without a sword; that he was eager to recreate the experience of a samurai strolling through his ancient hometown. But there were no cherry blossoms falling on his umbrella, only heavy raindrops.
In fact, raindrops have been falling on his umbrella ever since he purchased it from one of his favorite clothes department stores. Back then, he used to carry it with him whenever he wore his favorite grey, cotton trench coat and navy-blue jeans in the rain.
One may mistake him for a chameleon changing his colors once a day or a piano ballad shifting tempo and style with each verse; maybe even a cottage with lights flashing at different speeds like sweet turning sour in the blink of an eye.
Regardless of it all, he would always carry his trustworthy, respectable umbrella and count on it to keep him dry even in the heaviest of downpours.
May 11, 2014
May 11, 2014 at 6:52 PM UTC