"burials" poems
Like a male monkey you rises up
And thumps hard your chest-it is you and you only!
O Man! You forgets, who you are and what you are is Nature’s
She generously gives and she avariciously takes-
Just a few chances she is giving you to repent before she ruthlessly returns
She is a sharp, doubled edged sword-merciful and merciless!
Man, Humanity is not hostility: Humanity is humility!
Like Sheol that is never satisfied you want to swallow the whole world
Like death you want to take everything, big-small-you want to stomach all
Everything you want to keep to yourself, to be to your entitlements
You take and leave nothing at all for the harmless hopeless-the voiceless
Yet you easily forgets, when the angel of death calls it’s only you and your soul in burials
Your ill amassed pride, wealth and health is not with you anywhere in this your brutal trials
Man, Humanity is not gullibility: Humanity is generosity!
O man! O man! You fills the whole world with mortality
You have killed the sole essence of the soul’s endless immortality
With your undignified dishonesty, your free-will to filthy immorality
War you begins wealthy to get-war is a supernormal profiting business
Man, Humanity souls has never been subjects to severity but sanctity!
Innocent-as little as little children-you murders-they were inevitable!
Common civilians’ deaths are collateral damages-inescapable!
You forgets who you are-you are a little loaned, little you returns for judgment
Here no allies to look after your backs, no cracks to corruption kickbacks-
It is the fairest of all hearings, a ***** for a ***** it is not for a big spoon!
Man, Humanity is not ignobility: Humanity is dignity!
What you are given to govern you governs not
What you are given to take care of you pilfers all
For you and your lineages eternal legacies-the richest ever to have graced the earth!
Yet you forgets, Master a little while returns to put you to a rigorous account
And whoever much is given-that much is also expected, what will be your report?
Man, Humanity is not royalty: Humanity is loyalty!
Humanity is a community, not a sorority of individuality!
Humanity is not infidelity: Humanity is honesty
Humanity is not how wealthy: Humanity is how a loyal legacy
Humanity is not how large is your multinationals entity:
Humanity is how huge is your small heart-its hospitality
Humanity is a humble history, a saintly story!
© Kìùra Kabiri. All rights reserved.
Feb 17, 2017
Feb 17, 2017 at 1:23 AM UTC
I never put away all of these socks,
there's just something so final about putting away
all the socks. When I close the drawer after putting away
the clothes, its like saying "remain here for awhile,
for I do not plan to wear you again for some time".
But putting away all of the socks
is like saying "stay here,
I'm not going anywhere". What if
something pops up though?
It gets cold, a friend calls
with exciting plans and I must say,
"No sorry, I just put away all of my socks"
Whats the point in putting them all away if I just
go right back and take some out? Might as well
leave a pair or two by the shoes, at the ready.
Plus whenever I put away all the socks
I find the stragglers, the lone socks, the swiss socks,
the worn out ones and then I have to make difficult
decisions. Weighing the severity of the tears against
how uncomfortable they'll be. Designating indoor only
socks and how many more wears a sock can receive before,
garbage. And every time I put on a sock like this I shed a tear
because socks don't receive burials. Socks are easily replaced.
It's just not worth the trouble to put away all these socks.
Sep 2, 2010
Sep 2, 2010 at 2:39 PM UTC
It was a marathon race of
timeline. The days are bound and shot.
How do I come to you to express
my grief of the country
in tumult!
In shouting and screaming,
there was no magic wand to invoke
peace. Your mouth opens
and shuts like the shell valves. The
scollops― words, swim in
sea of burials.
The seriality was unconscionable.
It falls short of a stroke.
The blood splits. A riot erupts
to wet the lips of curved razor.
The sun retreats, to let
the stars find their sky.
Oct 1, 2016
Oct 1, 2016 at 1:45 AM UTC
Imagine yourself a red ceramic Poppy,
placed with care into the English soil.
One hundred years ago you were a soldier,
a frightened teen in a chaotic world.
You’d been sent, by King’s command, into the battle-
A mindless melee John French thought he’d won.
Perhaps some yards of France had been reclaimed
at a mind numbing cost of mothers’ sons.
You were one of those shot, gassed or burned.
Hit by a shell and blown to kingdom come.
(In ‘fourteen they had funerals for the fallen.
Mass burials became the norm before Verdun.)
That’s how you went from the playing fields of Eton
to an unmarked grave somewhere in Northern France.
So now you are a red ceramic poppy,
a symbol of an Empire, now passed.
Placed in English soil by teenaged hands.
one of nine hundred thousand home at last.
Jul 30, 2014
Jul 30, 2014 at 6:08 AM UTC
its tha return of tha gangsta thanks to ya
too many blacks out here livin' they life in fear
families seeing tears problems tier
blurry visions make it hard to see clear my dear
cant get through the atmosphere
feel me it's the return of the gangsta I'd like to thank ya
Malcolm for giving me the principles and reaching a few people's
opening minds to grinds and you'll find
me chilling on the corner puffing marijuana yep I'm a gonna
in society outlaw outcast put my thoughts on blast
techs is humming cuz I smell war coming armies drumming
po folks crying innocent victims dying
for no apparent reasons caught in daily treasons which gives me a reasons to put an end to Americas sin but too many folks stuck in
a fantAsy called reality in actuality
they plotting our burials G
troops overseas findings empty caves so the government can make saves war profiteers racketeering gangsters hustlers
exposing lies don't be a busta like a Douglass no diamonds in my cutlass couldn't move so I had cut less people out of my circle I'm nerdy as urkel yea my intellect carefully selects
what's real from reality I envision myself as well as my enemies in a fatality so battling me I was made for war built off the backs of my ancestors sore yea white house was built by the slaves for white supremacy kind of irony they sayin' my folks was lazy?
worked up from Sun up to Sun down
I can't believe my folks walking with they heads towards the grounds
how bout we get mad and let off gun sounds pound for pound
you know they can't hang with us
that's why they had to make laws against us
scared of rise and corruptions ain't a surprise through the eyes
of real people who realize pain ain't a substitution for happiness bliss
I guess I was sunkissed
by wisdom mouth open hail Mary entered me and told me
we all family eyes lit no **** no fit nothing
but a glowing brain exemption of fame down goes my name
in the book of life made wisdom my wife
she took my arm she's my charm
as I glance at the souls gunned down on plantations farms gangsta....
Feb 21, 2017
Feb 21, 2017 at 2:49 PM UTC
Wood of crimson & bone where the dead
lie still, leaves are their burial
Rites they fall from life to
Canvas,
Shroud,
Envelope
The flesh, for the fallen are the
Food of the wood, new life
Reaches up, Roots entangle
Around every bone,
Interweaved,
Disordered,
Chaotic
Lifelessness now scattered
Among the roots of this linage
Of old, new saplings
Now sprung forth from the
Leaved burials that litter the floor,
They call this forest, leaves of blood
As all leaves that grow forth are
Crimson,
Burgundy,
Blossoming
Forth, as if each leaf has life of its own,
Each of the branches growing
Resemblance of ***** fingers reaching
Out to a world, wisps
Encircle,
Envelope,
Halos
Of white mist greet all trees,
As if the souls of the departed
Sleep silently around this gravestone
Of wood, And leaves one again
Fall, not all just one, and this tree with
No leaves, now resting upon the floor
Like the features of bones grow out and forth
As some where in this
Forest of crimson and bone,
A body now rests in its tome of red
This is the home of the dead, where the trees grow.
Nov 5, 2014
Nov 5, 2014 at 6:35 AM UTC
Scream into the darkness
Without a sound
Weakling
Powerless miscreant
Buried by ash
And trampled by a thousand footsteps
A thunderous roar rips through the night
My desire to reconnect is devoured
By my craving for...
Subterranean hedonism
Exhausted from the surface
I burrow into fantasies of sunken darkness
I have tried to blend into the world
But people continue to dissapoint me
Bones ground to ash and thrown to the wind
My last burials rites
I had hoped it wouldn't come to this
But there is no hope...there is only me
Jun 19, 2016
Jun 19, 2016 at 3:39 AM UTC
Default African,
Yes I am,
And a disgrace for that matter,
Yet African with Katekism,
I am supposed to be,
Come rain, sunshine or high waters,
I have betrayed you Africa,
I have 'back-stabbed' you in the face,
And spit rotten phlegm in the wound,
Giant mother,
With this badge of slavery I now proudly wear,
**** me.
Never have I washed my father, Or mother,
Never have I washed my grandfather or grandmother,
Neither of these have I ever dared looking after,
Yet today,
I assume total custodianship and curator-ship,
I take care of some grandfather and grandmother,
Somebody's father,
Somebody's mother,
Somebody's grandfather,
Somebody's grandmother.
Only yesterday I was told,
Your father and mother passed away last year,
And so did your brothers and sisters,
And they were all buried like dogs,
Their burials were the talk of town,
How could you let that happen,
How could you,
And I am these enermies' comfortable door mate.
My grandfathers were colonised,
Because of our rich land,
And now I have been extensively colonised,
Because of their pound,
Because of wanting to be a Westerner – overseas,
Away from you,
Continent of respect and dignity,
Continent of dance and song,
A continent pregnant with untold tales.
My sick mind has been colonised,
Graduating me into a nefarious modern commercial slave,
Just but an echo of an old tune,
A worse slave than my ancestor,
The Kunta Kintes,
I am a cheap voluntary slave,
Who has been gratuitously deserted by his values,
The African values.
I stand accused before myself,
I am a cumbrous culpable default African,
An African who has lost his ebullient Africanness,
A charlatan ********** African on a detour,
A dismantled, shameless self destroyed pimple,
A nauseating counterfeit second hand African,
An extraneous stain on Africa's underwear,
I am of as much value to Africa,
As is an over- used ****** to a filthy growth point **********
Regrettably, that is the African I have become.
How I wish I washed my father and mother,
How I wish I washed my grandparents,
How I wish I took care of them,
The wish is killing me badly,
I may as I have run away from you Africa,
But never from Africanness,
Litres of your blood flows in body pipes,
I am because you are,
I am a default African.
Apr 29, 2016
Apr 29, 2016 at 8:01 AM UTC
Pain , sorrow , flame , and passion said her rainbow in my ears ; like an echo from the past with no love for living here ; so I tried to light a candle for her golden woman's tears . But like the cool of a blown out candle for the thunder in my mind I watched a young girl try forever just to burn a million times , and we were leaving in the summer with no sympathy for wines ; it was violence , stones ,and hatred , love for pain was left behind .
She never stopped to think for her patterns seamed complete as her golden sun came rising and her colors met with mine , and from a simple warriors passion what shall we leave behind in a world where color is not but need , and death the woman's wine .
He couldn't stop to play or light the shadows of her mind , and like the golden light of misery she spiraled through his time , and who is to say there is more to her as she burned slowly in her dying , and fell into the gravity of her northern lights so blind , and listened to the howling wolves as she weaved for better times .
Thoughtless killing , thoughtful tool , I love you said her tune ; and yet as summer turned to fall the leaves upon her loom sang of spring's new hope again in a land of westering sun , "For in dying I will rise again to greet tomorrow's rain with no thought of bringing back your killing , no screaming from your pain ."
The ice it slowly covered me as I sank into her womb , and the myriad stars of children's dreams echoed softly from her rock ; like the endless ripples of her final chords and the broken glass of dreams , and said to me a man is never truly what he seems , but only just his moment , and how I build tomorrow's dreams .
I stood upon tomorrow's shores a witness to her schemes , and watched my mother burning , saw my father's broken dreams ; to chew upon coca leaves and watch as mother weaned . I must learn to grow old again for she died from all our pains , and yet continued weaving as her winter brought the rains ; for children must learn to live in the golden honey of her pain , with time her only company , and her rhythm father's game .
Like a child on the edge of night I stopped to sing my song of a thousand lonely burials and I must carry on , and yet I too must learn to live on the fragments of wind's sails , or try to build a better ship as her dawn comes on so pale , and the cold light of our father's eyes an icy wind in hell .
Oct 9, 2015
Oct 9, 2015 at 8:18 PM UTC
The World's Times chronicled
Crusades and Fatawas,
Jihads and Inquisitions,
Coups and Genocides.
Such resourcefulness
The Construct.
Another Cathedral rises
In a destitute country.
Do-able
We're told
From the leader's lips
We'll always have the poor.
Uh huh! The poor!
That's what was said.
We can always put them to work,
And there won't always be work.
They'll need membership cards,
And birthings and burials,
Like always.
See the pyramids along the Nile
You get up every morning from your alarm clock's warning
Another temple
Will grow from
Rice paddies;
A synagogue,
A mosque will
Cinch tiles
On the backs of peasants.
I've had enough
Laundering by recluse
Single mothers,
By crooks posing as shepherds,
And Holy Wars
*so oxymoronic
cleanses too*
Any Divines
Benefitting from
Our labour and wages;
Our drachma, denarius and shegel,
Aren't worth the worship.
Yet the lenders are good
At getting their pound.
*Don't drop a coin
In a wishing well,
Pay cash for a mass
Where they'll ring your bell.
Choose a charity,
There's so many,
That need a
Pauper's Penny.*
Sep 3, 2014
Sep 3, 2014 at 8:18 AM UTC
The living to themselves gossip attract,
but at death eulogies mitigate lies.
Love and care from he who breathes is withdrawn,
but his slumber does attract parties.
Fake mourners with feigned tears in burials act.
They rip off and use the grieving as pawns;
Their loss is their gain, their tears their laughter.
To fill their stomachs, they sob and flatter,
as they to misery dance, from dusk till dawn.
Whilst alive, at my deeds everyone frowns.
But at death, I am a departed 'saint'
whose sepulcher you spray with costly paint.
If you must celebrate me, do so now.
Do not in reverence to my casket bow.
Visit me now in my ramshackle house,
sharply rebuke me if you have a grouse.
Do as much you can to show you love me,
do not when I sleep go on bended knee.
Never belatedly show your respect
by attending my funeral in retrospect.
Jun 23, 2023
Jun 23, 2023 at 7:22 PM UTC
I've been
up and down lately,
well..
more than lately,
kinda jumpy too
Y'know...
Figure if I jump high enough
with the earth spinning beneath me
the way it does
I'll see it all
for free...
Mostly I jump
waiting the next bus
on cemetery hill,
up and down and up again
watching burials
intermittently
over the wall,
my now you see me-
now you don't appearances
are part of the mourning process
in Selly Oak these days;
leaving folk in holes
with dirt on their faces,
their chests
and their feet
frightens me,
seems gravity's got
a hold on them
forever now,
so I'm glad for
the days when smoke
stacks exhale
and the wind
is filled with people,
I feel the bounce
in my sole remembered
and I know
sooner or later
I too will catch an updraft
and fly....
I've been
up and down lately..
well..
more than lately
I've been kinda jumpy too
Y'know ?
Aug 19, 2015
Aug 19, 2015 at 6:13 PM UTC
I can’t remember when,
The last time I we didn’t cry,
The last time we were happy,
I can’t recall,
When there was no blood shed,
Why do we have to suffer and mourn?
For the losing of our loved ones,
Why?
I can’t tell when,
We'll escape away from our sins,
For the tide will always hit,
And we’ll feel the storm,
Scrape your hearts,
I don’t know when,
We’ll never be found in massacres,
Alshabab? ISIS? Xenophobia?
In worthless clashes many perish,
Religious leaders,
Aren’t you tired of burials?
Haven't we sinned against God,
Who do we expect to save us?
If we don’t see our wrongs,
Air crashes and road accidents
Attack our beloved continent,
Now it’s politics
We fight each other like fools,
The police ****** us like chicken,
Increasing number of the dead,
Disaster after disaster,
Politicians cheat you,
They lie to you with intentions,
They blinded us long ago,
Feeding our minds with hatred,
We think that they are the Bosses,
Yet we are theirs employers,
We should wake up and fight,
Fight for peace and justice,
If not so,
I don’t know when we’ll be free,
Free from problems,
Free tribalism and racism,
Flee from all your sins,
Where are we heading to?
Jun 4, 2015
Jun 4, 2015 at 3:39 AM UTC
The battlefield long now cleared
of corpse, blood and gore.
Belay the epic truth they tell,
knee deep in history and wars.
Dead stacked like cords of wood,
burnt on unsanctified fires.
Log by log of rigored souls
sent the flames up higher.
years later make shift morgues sat 'bout
to hold the fallen heroes.
Kept in dungeons and deeper colds,
till springtime thaw for burials.
Those that live on to build
and keep recording life.
Never thought once and all
war would end their daily strife.
So it goes, axe to sword,
Cannon to machine gun.
Scud missles to nuclear.
Who will be left to say they won?
Jun 22, 2010
Jun 22, 2010 at 10:30 AM UTC
I.
When the snow came we sheltered ourselves away.
Warm by the pyres.
We let them burn.
Cinder and ash.
The dying light of our fires,
like a hundred stars swaying,
winking almost, against
the banks of snow covered hills.
Deep in our slumber we felt the
touch of warm spring.
Water cool enough to swim in.
Blue and green and milk white.
In waking, and we did so with protest,
there remained only the gray white
of winter dawn and the ****** cold.
When one of us fell, frostbite or exhaustion and little else,
we would carry them along.
Burials impossible, we added
their number to the pyre.
In this way we could keep warm.
In this way we could pretend that
we still felt human and alive.
Some days the snow was hard enough to
stand on.
Other days it was clean enough to eat.
Still we walked.
Always, it seemed, we walked.
Always we.
II.
In the heat of desert day we would fan
ourselves with our hands.
We didn't dare to remove any .
We didn't dare not to stop to drink.
We wrapped our heads in cloth and
worshiped long forgotten gods.
On days when we couldn't move through
the sand storms we made camp.
We were once many.
We were so many.
Now we are walking.
If this trudge toward oblivion
could be called walking.
And walking we called it.
We would stop to smile lies
at one another.
We would stop to die.
Forgotten as old gods.
Less than the sand we died on.
Less than the whole.
Incomplete.
And we would be left were we left.
We didn't bury anyone.
We were so many.
III.
Call to me, for I can only just hear you.
Call for me
and I will come.
I will find you against odds and
skies.
I will see you whole.
I will breath you complete.
We awake to movement.
We are movement.
Ever walking, ever here and there.
Looking, we believe.
We believe in nothing.
IV.
There are those that want our things.
Our sad detritus.
Our lives before it ended.
Incomplete decks of playing cards.
Eye glasses with lens missing.
A license plate from an old car.
(They are all old cars.)
Mason jars, soda bottles,
cans, thermos, can of peanuts
all filled with water.
It's the water they want from us,
though they will take the other things.
They always take the other things.
Memories and dust.
Memories and Dust.
Cinders and Ash.
We were many.
V.
When finally we are alone,
the leaves fall about us.
The moon hangs in our imperfect sky.
In the end there is us.
And the end is us.
And we?
We are alone.
We were many.
We are one.
Sep 23, 2011
Sep 23, 2011 at 2:06 AM UTC
a life taken
a life broken
a life lost (say forgotten)
a life begins and ends, never lived
no recognition
no words of dear ones
bombings
silent screams
voices flattened in the mud - ash
(loud ones heard by none)
wars
marching or killing
sometimes both together
(mass graves no burials no rites)
revolutions
burning homes buildings towers
(men women children infants)
freedom is the prize.
****** is the price.
why did no one stop?
all life is sacred.
still, time marches on,
blood up to it's knees.
more destruction
more violence, their excuse?
peace honor religion opinions?
rallies of hate
against voices of love.
barbarians
in the age of civility...
an ache begins in the seeing heart
why did no one stop?
the pain of knowledge chokes on tears
why haven't they stopped yet?
Jun 9, 2014
Jun 9, 2014 at 5:28 PM UTC
i consume the continuous days without nighttime
and greater shadows afflict mine. towards the edge
a body without mass they had no power
to gravitate towards the ground. In my throat
there's a soundless scream and an abyss of burials
no one attended. and in case the mindless tongues,
the senseless sensates, and the human brainiacs, cared
the sky would be my dance floor, and the atmosphere would still
drive me breathing it in. a mismatch of socks,
a counterclockwise swing, a cold cup of coffee,
a bullet sans its gun, and a gun with the imaginary trigger -
i am no good. i am no good.
Jul 28, 2015
Jul 28, 2015 at 3:36 PM UTC
A day
that cries at burials,
plays havoc on sinuses
and sales
vendors...
...rainy days
remind me
of tears
rolling down
the eye-windows
of my abode...
...and cling onto
flowery buds
and leaves
looking like
tiny delicate
crystal *****
soon fortelling
their own quick
evaporating end
of ephemeral
microscopic
life form
worlds
held inside
each droplet...
...how well
DeVaSTaTiNg
each innocent
each drop becomes
Once POOLED TOGETHER, CAN EVEN MOVE MOUNTAINS, FLOOD WHOLE TOWNS, AND CLAIM VICTIMS BY THE SCORE...
...I see crowds
being gently pelted
by these heavenly
tears;
reminding me
of a GIANT baptism
that nurtures
bodies and minds
as well as
flowers and trees...
... I became interested
with the truth,
that the FORCE
of droplets
being OVERWHELMING
and AWESOME...
Sep 25, 2014
Sep 25, 2014 at 1:09 PM UTC
You.
The other mommies of babies
fallen from life
banged mercilessly on the pavement
of our wombs
and broken.
You
you held your baby
lifeless
but you held him.
you held her.
You took pictures.
Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day
your Facebook status—
you beg us to remember.
I understand this.
These little souls no one knows.
No one connected to,
no one will remember.
No one cares.
But we feel the fluttering.
We feel it in our hearts,
that desperate gaping—
and in our bellies.
You want us to know: your baby.
You, mother.
Soul vanquished.
Soul rent in two.
The weeping, the never was,
the forever is.
And so you post pictures
of the baby
you held
dead.
But we—
we are the mothers who flushed our children into toilets.
We are the mothers who tried and tried to grasp
to hold
our baby
our dead baby.
But ours was too small.
Fishing through mountains of gore
pieces
was that my baby?
is this my baby?
In silence. Alone. Torn with pain,
solitude, anguish, bleeding.
Grasping at something—
this might have been the baby.
Flush it down.
How?
Is this what mothers do?
You held your baby.
You ***** a memorial, maybe even a burial.
Or ashes.
We are the mothers who hold out ****** hands
in silence
and babies lost somewhere in the septic system.
Should we take a picture?
Do you want to hear our story?
On this day of infant loss remembrance,
do you want to hear how we caught
the amniotic sac
and held it up to the light
hoping
and terrified.
What if we saw the body?
What could we do?
There are no hospital or nurses in our bathroom.
No cameras.
No burials.
Only blood, blood everywhere—
and the toilet.
And the sac, if we find it—
it might burst.
And then our baby might go out with the mopwater
or lie unnoticed on the ceiling.
Somehow we lost our baby.
We can't find it.
I wish I could have held my baby,
given it a name.
But I lost it.
Weep with me, too.
Aug 28, 2016
Aug 28, 2016 at 9:20 PM UTC
tell me everything is going to be alright when he cries.
pat my shoulder. squeeze my hand.
sit by my side.
give me the strength.
the strength not to cry.
the strength to tell him everything will be alright.
Dec 11, 2011
Dec 11, 2011 at 6:35 PM UTC
This world is ****** up, so we need to change it.
Some might not agree and think I'm a deranged kid.
Well, maybe I am...
... Then again, maybe not.
We need to save this planet, cuz one is all we got.
If we pull together, we can make this a better world.
But we've grown too focused on sarcophagi and burials.
It's scary though, the situation's pretty grim,
There's a chance to save it though the chance is pretty slim,
We need to keep hope alive, no way that I am giving in,
The world that I envision's better than the one I'm in.
At the most, it seems that all one can do is hope,
Let's rid the world of evil vices, things like guns and dope.
I hope it's getting through, this message that I send,
I fear I'll fight this battle til the day my life does end.
It feels like one against the world,
Surrounded desolation,
Cuz in a sea of people,
I still drown in isolation.
Nov 4, 2013
Nov 4, 2013 at 7:18 AM UTC
put me, lovingly, in a hearse, the way the dusk lays it shadows;
the night threatens to spill off my pores
trying to run from lonely places —
now, it bleeds all over me.
a sight of a mess.
a sight of horrors
and no napkins for wiping.
no napkins for grieving.
some just don't
make it out alive.
tell the daylight i cannot come.
put me, lovingly, in a hearse.
no, i am not made for burials —
it's for the ones left behind;
tell them all
i cannot come.
leave me, my sweet one, lying in this hearse,
the way the dusk leaves its shadows in the arms of the night.
sweet and fragile.
quiet and gone.
send me off, softly.
send me off, mourning.
send me off, for good.
tell the daylight i cannot come —
maybe i'll see her too, so soon.
— fray narte
Mar 9, 2021
Mar 9, 2021 at 12:05 AM UTC
I do not envy the one that
must make the call.
The boy, whose words had always
been so soft and wonderful and funny,
but are now like warm razor
blades on the eardrum.
It doesn't hurt at first, it's too quick.
“Burn him.” The child said.
“Leave only the memory of his deeds.
Let them be, as they were, forever.”
There are no burials today.
No funerals, no dirges.
There is only hot flame licking
the gaping wound left on the
earth, there is only the sound
of the wind rushing past our ears,
and the comfort of forgetting.
But not the release of sleep.
I can smell the ocean, and feel the world
from this ******** apartment.
I see it now, as I must, as a place
that used to be filled with wonder,
with rebellion, with futures.
It has these things still, but they are
a pale interpretation of the place
they once knew. It has changed
for them. They must live each day
hoping that their deeds will leave
a legacy behind them.
Will leave a memory
In tossing and turning the realization
dawns that it is still not finished.
After what has happened, he will still
find his way back to the beat.
To the ever changing path.
To the slow march toward
the pyre. It is how it must be.
“Burn him.” The boy had said.
The men had listened.
They live with themselves only
holding onto the thought that
it will continue.
Only with the thought that somewhere
out there, even after they have
made the way to sleep,
the Boy Hero sits, awake,
hoping his words can one
day be filled with Laughter
again.
The Boy Hero does not dream this night.
Jun 2, 2010
Jun 2, 2010 at 9:51 PM UTC
We lost the day shadow, ripped from the archway. I always knew That I was comfortable in the light.
She caught light beside my view That adults wouldn't see heroes out. They could harm but never know what angels I heard in concert. We heard through the archway, it didnt seem A lot more weak that night, The floor alot higher.
Everyone started drinking, Because never has liquor reminded him Of the burials. Everyone stopped listening for my call, Knowing a symbol, carved in thin white paper after she lost that, Out the front of a new dictionary. He was painted in ink, And answered all inquires.
Jul 4, 2012
Jul 4, 2012 at 7:01 AM UTC
It was like I never left.
It made me uncomfortable,
How easy it was, how familiar.
There was meaning to it when you strip it down.
Compassion.
Plus the urge not to be sad for a little while.
It's hard to escape the past,
Ghosts linger in this room.
I hear them as you sleep.
Whispering what I already know.
I think I may have to bury you,
Once and for all.
But maybe not right now
Soon I will bury you into this poem as a grave warning to all.
But for now, we do not have to be ourselves in the shadows.
Jul 19, 2017
Jul 19, 2017 at 3:21 PM UTC