"cannonade" poems
I ASKED if I should pray.
But the Brahmin said,
"pray for nothing, say
Every night in bed,
""I have been a king,
I have been a slave,
Nor is there anything.
Fool, rascal, knave,
That I have not been,
And yet upon my breast
A myriad heads have lain.'''
That he might Set at rest
A boy's turbulent days
Mohini Chatterjee
Spoke these, or words like these,
I add in commentary,
"Old lovers yet may have
All that time denied --
Grave is heaped on grave
That they be satisfied --
Over the blackened earth
The old troops parade,
Birth is heaped on Birth
That such cannonade
May thunder time away,
Birth-hour and death-hour meet,
Or, as great sages say,
Men dance on deathless feet.' 0084
4.5k
We started out with Armistead
from the shelter of the trees.
A jackrabbit raced past to the rear,
no dumb bunny was he
The heat rose up to meet us
As we started up the rise-
The prospect of the copse of trees
Before us was the prize.
The flower of Virginia here
displayed upon Parade
We must have looked magnificent
Just before the cannonade
They piled on Double Cannister
and tore holes in our line
We staggered from the weight of shot
that fearful hissing whine..
Then enfilading fire came
From the Yanks behind stone walls
Just then post fences six feet high
briefly caused our charge to stall
Brave **** Gannett was unhorsed
Upon this very spot
Kemper, wounded mortally,
Was retrieved from shell and shot
We made it past the final fence
And up the grassy knoll
Defiant in the cannons mouth
"Turn those guns!" I'm told.
But at that very Moment
General Armistead was downed
The attack lost its momentum
Our wave crested on high ground..
The blue bellies yelled Fredericksburg
As the Crimson tide retraced
Half in Anger, Half in relief
that the challenge had been faced.
The hill before the copse of trees
Pocked with our dead and dying
While the remnants of Picketts men
Towards Longstreets line were filing
Matthew Brady took my photograph
before I was led away
My face a study in defiance
A true man of the gray.
Dec 19, 2011
Dec 19, 2011 at 8:56 PM UTC
Echoes
The thunder echoes against the cracked jaw of the sky
I smell the heat and the humidity
And the envy
Drowning
The earth is drowning under the cannonade of rainfall
I can feel the sorrow and the hope
And the hubris
The unbridled fury of an outcast
Secrets
Whispered through the arms of a lover
On the wind whipping down the road
Up through the willows
Apr 22, 2014
Apr 22, 2014 at 8:57 PM UTC
She's daffodils and morphine,
stimulating the heart to pulse precarious!
She's the tender cannonade of
lovesick ******
She's the trapeze wire
in a thunderstorm!
and by god
the thermonuclear bomb
of this generation!
Darling liberty
enkindle
me
cruelly.
Jun 24, 2015
Jun 24, 2015 at 9:42 PM UTC
This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge ***** rise the burnished arms;
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.
Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,
When the death-angel touches those swift keys!
What loud lament and dismal Miserere
Will mingle with their awful symphonies!
I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
The cries of agony, the endless groan,
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.
On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer,
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman’s song,
And loud, amid the universal clamor,
O’er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.
I hear the Florentine, who from his palace
Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din,
And Aztec priests upon their teocallis
Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent’s skin;
The tumult of each sacked and burning village;
The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns;
The soldiers’ revels in the midst of pillage;
The wail of famine in beleaguered towns;
The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder,
The rattling musketry, the clashing blade;
And ever and anon, in tones of thunder
The diapason of the cannonade.
Is it, O man, with such discordant noises,
With such accursed instruments as these,
Thou drownest Nature’s sweet and kindly voices,
And jarrest the celestial harmonies?
Were half the power, that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals or forts:
The warrior’s name would be a name abhorred!
And every nation, that should lift again
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead
Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain!
Down the dark future, through long generations,
The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease;
And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations,
I hear once more the voice of Christ say, “Peace!”
Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals
The blast of War’s great ***** shakes the skies!
But beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of love arise.
1.9k
Once the Emperor Charles of Spain,
With his swarthy, grave commanders,
I forget in what campaign,
Long besieged, in mud and rain,
Some old frontier town of Flanders.
Up and down the dreary camp,
In great boots of Spanish leather,
Striding with a measured *****
These Hidalgos, dull and damp,
Cursed the Frenchmen, cursed the weather.
Thus as to and fro they went,
Over upland and through hollow,
Giving their impatience vent,
Perched upon the Emperor’s tent,
In her nest, they spied a swallow.
Yes, it was a swallow’s nest,
Built of clay and hair of horses,
Mane, or tail, or dragoon’s crest,
Found on hedge-rows east and west,
After skirmish of the forces.
Then an old Hidalgo said,
As he twirled his gray mustachio,
“Sure this swallow overhead
Thinks the Emperor’s tent a shed,
And the Emperor but a Macho!”
Hearing his imperial name
Coupled with those words of malice,
Half in anger, half in shame,
Forth the great campaigner came
Slowly from his canvas palace.
“Let no hand the bird ******
Said he solemnly, “nor hurt her!”
Adding then, by way of jest,
“Golondrina is my guest,
’Tis the wife of some deserter!”
Swift as bowstring speeds a shaft,
Through the camp was spread the rumor,
And the soldiers, as they quaffed
Flemish beer at dinner, laughed
At the Emperor’s pleasant humor.
So unharmed and unafraid
Sat the swallow still and brooded,
Till the constant cannonade
Through the walls a breach had made
And the siege was thus concluded.
Then the army, elsewhere bent,
Struck its tents as if disbanding,
Only not the Emperor’s tent,
For he ordered, ere he went,
Very curtly, “Leave it standing!”
So it stood there all alone,
Loosely flapping, torn and tattered,
Till the brood was fledged and flown,
Singing o’er those walls of stone
Which the cannon-shot had shattered.
1.9k
Within a poem I found little things -
The scent of earth, the summer of youth
Within it I found the comfort of words
A restful haven of solitude.
I found, too, the thorns that bleed
The world and life when the heart breaks
I saw the beast of wasted lands
And heard the fire of the cannonade.
And within a poem, I found art and soul
I felt the core and the residue
And with every thought shared
Each word written -
Within a poem, I found you.
Mar 21, 2017
Mar 21, 2017 at 9:56 AM UTC
sensual subtlety or the subtlety of sensuality
(HOW does size matter?)
<•>
*as always the title comes first,
embalming the mind so it may voyage onto unwritten waters,
over boundaries so the provocateur provoked may safely return,
avoiding evoking anti-frieze cannonade fire
some can disable with swinging fist,
a chopping arm on an exposed neck,
a swift kick to the semi-privates
but I can do same, inflicting immobilization
with a single solitary itty bitty
pinky figuring finger
no random boast, no hoax, not chest beating,
just a fact ma’am, nothing but the facts
the sensual subtlety of the delicate
is overpowering and irresistible
making grownups revert
into laughing crying out loud babies
the subtlety of sensuality pink’d exploding exploration,
the intoxicating tiny tingling subtle and without equal,
kingdoms have fallen, paintings and poems, art all kinds,
instigated and in eye sockets permanently inserted,
history redirected
know I will no be telling details,
the whose and where,
the why and surely not the
how, not here anyway
so when you tell me in raw fashion
size matters most definitely
in the matters of the heart
or the physicality
whole heartedly agree
waving my littlest pinky finger
watching you wavering
until you’ve learned the lesson
it’s the how*
not the how big
May 5, 2018
May 5, 2018 at 4:09 PM UTC
The copious shambles of rocks
waylaid the roadside,
by the time we saw the Beaufort castle walls
it was easy to see it as a mirror
of its surroundings,
a cannonade of angry words
miscued with shots of Peace.
This belated excursion
was like an erstwhile trumpet
for phosphorus clouds
and driven rain shrapnel
had attempted to ebonize the landscape,
our luggage with best intent was smoking
by the derelict Vichy bolt hole.
Dec 16, 2012
Dec 16, 2012 at 9:21 AM UTC
It is generally supposed we come to this place
As a just reward for treachery and traitorousness.
Indeed, nothing could be farther from the truth;
Most of my compatriots her have blindly hitched their fortunes
To some flag, some shining dogma, our fates sealed
Through an unwillingness to be sufficiently self-interested,
The refusal to abandon ship once it became apparent
That the experience upon the rocks
Would be neither enabling nor ennobling.
My own case is illustrative of the rule;
My father, noble sovereign ascending to the throne
Via parlor tricks and the rustic embrace of folk legend,
(The fornication resulting in my birth brushed aside
As some accident of mistaken identity or enchantment)
Is celebrated, beatified really, in song and legend,
Yet I, who pulled myself up by my own bootstraps as it were,
Winning his queen’s hand and defeating him on the field,
Am consigned to this unhappy place in perpetuity,
Suffering demons who hiss ******* Usurper!*
As they put me through my paces
(One takes their rebukes with a grain of salt;
They are all mad, the likely result of dealing with this glut of madmen.)
As I noted, the presence of myself and my brethren in this place
Serve as a testament to the merits of fidelity,
Which we commemorate daily, some days several times
(I confess it seems more than a touch silly,
But the necessity of creating distractions
Trumps other concerns in a locale such as this)
By staging caucus races, each participant addressing
The ******* in front of him directly,
Paying it fealty--My liege! My liege!--which is answered in turn
By a cannonade of noxious farting
(We assume the smells to be offensive,
As the atmosphere here is somewhat deleterious at all times)
All to the great amusement of those sprites
Who observe our machinations,
They in turn guffawing madly and urinating downward upon us
While we, as the acidic waste corrodes us, also cackle like lunatics,
Fairly shouting Ah, the gentle rain of Heaven--thank you, Lord!
Though, oddly enough, our laughter at times
(Most likely due to the aridity of the atmosphere around us)
Seems to catch a bit in the throat.
Feb 16, 2017
Feb 16, 2017 at 10:10 AM UTC
I take cold showers
To save the hot water for you
One plus one isn't always two
Green plus yellow is blue
Black is the absence of them.
I know the monsters' den
All too well.
You're a resounding bell
A deafening cannonade
For nothing was I made.
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 1:14 PM UTC
Everything ends,
Debt collected by the light that gave it life.
Not everyone lives past the grave,
Often forgotten, memory slipping away.
I know for certain I will fade,
For that is how it must be.
Do away with my name and virtue,
Let only the raw words stay.
Yet still, when I do die,
I want a cannonade on evil,
And stars falling from the sky.
Mar 1, 2025
Mar 1, 2025 at 1:01 PM UTC
Oblivion should be a disease
Water vapor and antifreeze
Pool on the inside of my chest.
Do what's best
Not what's healthy;
Around everyone, be stealthy;
Build a metal barricade:
Mantras like a blaring cannonade
Teach me what it smells like to never listen
The only thing I wish had stayed
Was your smile, a glimmering glisten
Aug 26, 2013
Aug 26, 2013 at 2:49 AM UTC
He speaks to me
In poems
I write about him
In dreams
I drift and dance
Aimlessly and enamored
Aside an amassed
Illusion of what
Should be there
It’s you
Impossibly palpable
Tauntingly tangible
It’s you
The rolling rumble
Of a gifted cannonade
I wear his words
And take shelter in his voice
He is a sweeping, blood red sunset
I soak him in
With a smile on my face
When others cannot look
I cannot look away
When I am hell fire
I rain into him
And he
Swallows me up effortlessly like
The calmest, deepest sea
We are bound
By what cannot
Be broken
In what we share
And words left unspoken
If it should be
An ambient glow or
A scorched earth
I burn for him
And if it should be
A soft summer breeze or
A godless gale force wind
He feeds my flames
He feeds these flames
Apr 23, 2018
Apr 23, 2018 at 3:57 PM UTC
vague background terror claims camp way back where eyes
deprived of light cast sails and line through see
Your body is water. You gunsmoke cannonade
affections rip through my cannibal babbling brainscape
deaf and dumb to love’s language intending attendant
Old World Spanish.
bilateral line
Yours a river run down over nose and Cupid’s Bow to a
neck of shared fixation
clicking nails and
picked face turned rough planks are paddles by
which I leave and lose my way.
let me by losing it gain You near again
and join oceans all the same.
Oct 8, 2018
Oct 8, 2018 at 9:41 PM UTC
Turrets and towers and a fortified keep
all protected by barbicans of stone
encircle a heart that solitary beats
besieged by being alone.
The curtain wall rises terribly high
behind a dark, wide, and deep moat.
Behind both hides a soul with a sigh
draped in a man-at-arms’ coat.
The banners are torn and raggedly hang
far above the desolate ward,
while the heart hopes for a cannonade’s bang
to free itself with a stroke of a sword.
And there approaches on the sunlit plain
a fellow heart with siege engines in train.
Oct 9, 2024
Oct 9, 2024 at 4:10 AM UTC