"charnel" poems
The world is losing
Gravity,
But no one can escape,
We're hurtling on our petrie dish
In a gel that seals our fate;
Gravitating
Towards black holes;
They're closer than you think.
In China
There's a wall of dust,
Seen clear from outer space;
Our living waters die
In a legacy of disgrace.
We're citizens
Wearing masks;
We should hide our faces,
But we're running daily tasks.
We're fossils burning
Fossil fuels
Found in cremation gas.
The amphibians
Are on the fringe;
Whales can't sound,
They run aground.
It's an environmental slaughter.
Our world has lost
Some gravity.
We need to plant our feet,
But charnel fires
And greenhouse gas
Have hastened our retreat.
Migrating birds lose sense of time,
Confused by the lights.
The morning dove coos at night,
The nightingale at dawn;
We're like
New turtles muddling,
Under lost starlight.
We must grasp
The gravity
Of burning
Burning light.
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 10:19 AM UTC
The world is losing
Gravity,
But no one can escape,
We're hurtling on our petrie dish
In a gel that seals our fate;
Gravitating
Towards black holes;
They're closer than you think.
In China
There's a wall of dust,
Seen clear from outer space;
Our living waters die
In a legacy of disgrace.
We're citizens
Wearing masks;
We should hide our faces,
But we're running daily tasks.
We're fossils burning
Fossil fuels
Found in cremation gas.
The amphibians
Are on the fringe;
Whales can't sound,
They run aground.
It's an environmental slaughter.
Our world has lost
Some gravity.
We need to plant our feet,
But charnel fires
And greenhouse gas
Have hastened our retreat.
Migrating birds lose sense of time,
Confused by the lights.
The mourning dove coos at night,
The nightingale at dawn;
We're like
New turtles muddling,
Under lost starlight.
We must grasp
The gravity
Of burning
Burning light.
Apr 21, 2016
Apr 21, 2016 at 10:41 AM UTC
Avec mes premiers droits d’auteur je m’achèterai une vieille maison à retaper
Longeant une petite route déserte au milieu d’un champ immense
Je ne sais pas qui retapera ma maison
Je ne mentirai plus oh non jamais plus
Mais j’aimerais que l’ivresse me vienne plus vite
Comme ce mur blanc salement tacheté de jaune
Je voudrais tout couvrir, effacer toutes les traces
Ne plus penser à toi
Mais te dire à quel point tu m’as troué le cœur
Te tordre le cou devant un parterre de gens débiles
Oui
Je ne veux pas penser à la mort de mes parents
Encore moins à leur folie
Même si je sais, je sens qu’elle approche
Je me vois bien crever toute seule comme une vieille conne frigide entourée d’une centaine de cadavres de lapins dans cette vieille maison que j’aurais achetée avec mes droits d’auteur
Les gens je les déteste, ils ne se rendent pas compte du mal qu’ils peuvent faire
Ne se rendent jamais compte de rien
Non
De rien du tout
Pourtant
Je sais que ces trous du cul ont mal eux aussi
Je sens d’ici leur souffrance
Sous leurs mensonges et leurs faux-semblant je sens leur douleur d’inexistence
Mais moi vous savez
Je ne sais pas pour vous
Mais moi
Je veux juste écrire
JUSTE ECRIRE
Que mes parents demeurent immortels
Et aussi un peu d’amour charnel
Juste
Une fois
De temps à autre.
…/…
Avec mes premiers droits d’auteur je me suis achetée une vieille maison à retaper
Longeant une petite route déserte au milieu d’un champ immense
Mais comme mes parents sont morts et que je suis une vieille conne frigide qui n’aimera jamais un homme autre que son père
Personne n’a retapé ma maison
Vieille maison qui tombe à présent en ruine
Dans laquelle je m’effondre
Jour après jour
Minute
Après
Minute
Mar 23, 2012
Mar 23, 2012 at 11:34 AM UTC
In a revered Tibetan tradition,
I read aloud to my father,
the dead are borne to mountains
and the bodies offered to vultures.
I show him the photographs
of a monk raising an ax,
a corpse chopped into pieces,
a skull crushed with a large rock.
As one we contemplate the birds,
the charnel ground, the bone dust
thick as smoke flying in the wind.
Our dark meditation comforts us.
I ask if he’d like me to carry him—
like a bundle of sticks on my back—
up a mountain road to a high meadow
and feed him to the tireless vultures.
"Yes," he says, raising a crooked finger,
"and remember to wield the ax with love."
2.8k
The Warden roused them early
on this, their final day.
He marched them out on hobbled feet-
Grey trucks took them away.
Doctors, lawyers, engineers,
All captured in a raid.
German Soldiers had been killed
Reprisals must be made..
Fathers, Husbands, sons all caught
within the **** snare.
Among them was a carpenter
Who bowed his head in prayer.
He’d walk the hills of Rome no more
Nor touch a lover’s cheek.
Here, near the Via Appia
He’d find eternal sleep.
Five by five they entered in
to the foreboding cave.
There they knelt for benediction,
the kind that pistols gave.
The cave became a charnel house
Each man shot in the head.
It reeked of blood and excrement
Flies feasted on the dead.
The carpenter fell once or twice.
Can blood for blood atone? .
His killers coveted his coat
and forced him to disrobe.
By now they had grown sloppy
with drink and hate and fear.
The first shot missed completely
The second grazed his ear.
In seconds live eternities
He said his final prayer:
“Forgive them, Father, even this
done out of hate and fear
several shots rang out just then
each found his noble head
they shot him once more, in his side
to make sure he was dead.
Explosions rocked and sealed the cave
With tons of rock and stone
They didn’t think to post a guard
The grey trucks drove back home.
Jun 11, 2012
Jun 11, 2012 at 7:20 AM UTC
There was a man.
Lying face down,
In his ocean of rain-
A reclusion of self...
Sharp with shells
Piercing permeable
Sonnets--
Thistle to speech
Embedded paving's
Of lavender bunkers.
Exude this chalice
For my chandelier
Made tome-stone--
Cemeteries bequeath.
Sep 19, 2014
Sep 19, 2014 at 6:42 AM UTC
She's manifested today like a ghost
appearing from a haunted house.
Desertion is that inhabited manor
from which the voices in her head
urge her into exile, urge her phantom existence.
Sitting upon the berm overlooking
the beach and lighthouse of Coos Bay,
she wishes she could ride the setting
Pacific sun to New Guinea or beyond.
Below five athletic young women
contest the physics of a soccer ball,
imagining the red-white lighthouse a goal.
In other times she'd ask to join them,
but she must lose her personal history now,
remain hidden in plain sight.
The loneliness of this subsistence
a charnel house blackening her heart.
She's Amelia Earhart about to crash
the Yukon's heartbroken cry.
Feb 22, 2012
Feb 22, 2012 at 2:01 PM UTC
They’d crashed the party at midnight
Surely, a motley looking crew,
All of them dressed in the weirdest best
That the Monster Shop could do,
There was Beelzebub, and Astaroth
And the pale Witch of the North,
Ahead of the Prince of Darkness in
A goats-head mask, of course.
They didn’t look out of place, for all
The guests were dressed to ****
One attired as a Fairy Queen
While others were dressed to chill,
Out of the mouth of Frankenstein
The blood poured in a stream,
And though it was only cochineal
It brought the odd party scream.
Most had thought it a great idea
(Except for her folks, who’d cursed),
They’d all dress up in the neighbourhood
For Emily’s twenty-first,
They’d even formed a committee so
They knew what they had to do,
And each would be wearing a different face
So there’d only be one, not two.
They studied the Ars Goetia
And scanned it for demon names,
The butcher had come as Malphas for
He only had brawn, not brains,
The newsagent was Vapula
And his errand boy was Baal,
While the postmaster was Sallos
And he came there, bearing mail.
They all were full of the grapes of wrath
As it chimed the midnight hour,
While Emily surged out like a goth
From the depths of her wardrobe bower,
The house, at 22 Rankine Street
In the ‘burb of Astral Downs,
Was built where an ancient charnel house
Had piled the bodies in mounds.
Her folks had put in a swimming pool
Where there’d been a village well,
Right on top of a demon school
In the seventh circle of hell,
The water began to heave and churn
As Beelzebub drew near,
And it cooked a few of the swimmers there
As their laughter turned to fear.
‘You thought that you could make fun of us,’
Said the Prince of Darkness then,
‘For that, we’re making you one of us,
You won’t bother us again!’
The ‘burb dropped into a bottomless pit
That glowed with the flames of hell,
‘A subterraneaun coal seam fire,’
Said the Fire Chief, Adam Schnell.
Emily’s parents came back home,
Sat in the car, and cried,
‘I told her that Goth stuff wasn’t good!’
‘Too late! Our Emily’s fried!’
They filled it in, there’s a parking lot
Where her parents had sat and cursed,
I’d like to bet, they’ll never forget
Their Emily’s Twenty-First!
David Lewis Paget
Jul 29, 2013
Jul 29, 2013 at 10:53 AM UTC
When Lazarus left his charnel-cave,
And home to Mary's house return'd,
Was this demanded--if he yearn'd
To hear her weeping by his grave?
'Where wert thou, brother, those four days?'
There lives no record of reply,
Which telling what it is to die
Had surely added praise to praise.
From every house the neighbours met,
The streets were fill'd with joyful sound,
A solemn gladness even crown'd
The purple brows of Olivet.
Behold a man raised up by Christ!
The rest remaineth unreveal'd;
He told it not; or something seal'd
The lips of that Evangelist.
1.5k
When first that horse, within whose populous womb
The birth was death, o’ershadowed Troy with fate,
Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight,
Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home:
She whispered, ‘Friends, I am alone; come, come!’
Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid,
And on his comrades’ quivering mouths he laid
His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb.
The same was he who, lashed to his own mast,
There where the sea-flowers screen the charnel-caves,
Beside the sirens’ singing island pass’d,
Till sweetness failed along the inveterate waves…
Say, soul,—are songs of Death no heaven to thee,
Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory?
1.4k
in the High School cafeteria
there was horror on the menu;
A loner with a pistol
seeking victims and a venue.
Three times the pistol fired
and kids began to fall.
It might have been a massacre
if not for old Frank Hall.
Frank Hall was the football coach
with a short and stubby frame.
While others fled, he charged towards
this criminal insane.
Frank Hall didn't stop to think
he didn't have the time.
As he charged towards the gunman
His life was on the line.
The gunman fired once at Frank,
the shot rang high and wide
It caught a fleeing coed,
put a flesh wound in her side.
The gunman turned in panic
as the first responders came
He fled into the nearby woods,
just some kid named T.J. Lane.
Three teenagers lay dead inside
one more would never stand.
Many more lives had been spared
by the courage of one man.
He comforted the dying
as the ambulance came late.
The moment found the man-
was it providence or fate?
Jun 20, 2013
Jun 20, 2013 at 10:09 PM UTC
I sought to pierce the astral screen
discover things which lay unseen
existence layers to strip and peel
all cosmic secrets to reveal
with book and spell I tore the veil
beheld all things beyond the pale
creatures that rule the land of Leng
ghoul’s midnight feast, the yellow king
fungi that steal and eat men’s minds
horrors made gods that sit enshrined
the gates of mortal souls open wide
to blasphemous things that crawl inside
I descry the future’s dark corridor
where the stars are an endless sepulcher
and now I know my folly’s curse
my reason slips, my thoughts perverse
I must escape and look away
lest in this charnel house I stay
but I cannot stop through act of will
my vision seeks, strains further still
the last recourse causes gorge to rise
I must be free from these hell born eyes
the knife clutched in my shaking hand
I gouge and stab my sight be ******
and for a moment I am free
but then I am brought to my knees
o’ gods of pain and fear abhorred
my sight but clearer than before
all vision now within my mind
I would bless who could make me blind
with eyes which cannot close or hide
forever gazing and open wide
nor even death will seal them shut
on these horrors my soul must glut
my body fades I cannot die
and eternally through madness fly
Oct 26, 2024
Oct 26, 2024 at 10:15 PM UTC
Old, abandoned wooden hulks,
They lie, keeled over, on coarse grass,
Left to sleep on the estuary flats.
These brute barges, timbers strong
As the men who worked them, masterless,
Rise on no tide, rest heavy and decay.
From one, still upright, a mooring rope
Hangs in an arc, like the downward curve
Of its great, oaken, rusty-hinged rudder;
Tied to the mud where older keel spines die.
Jun 19, 2011
Jun 19, 2011 at 8:07 AM UTC
i
In stormy sea's, And in the breeze, Wherein caliginosity doth hide
Behold mine morning glory, for thou art part of mine loin's;
Whence death I hath came from, in the charnel house I laid
I was shackled in all debacle, lost, seeking, lonesome, in mine age.
ii
Thou hath disenthralled me, and hath taken me to thine hip's
Thine craft was shiny, seraphic blinding, I floated onto thy ship;
Hovered I didst, as if a nasa takeoff to thy outter layered space
Thou hath sweetened me, with Asian tea, and put honey to taste.
iii
Albeit I was just a campesino, with nothing to giveth mine dove
She soared me. Explored me, ourn kisses brought tear's of love;
Avouched me she hath done, she took mine side against the crowd, she hushes me with all compassion, her tiera Asiatic loud.
©Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©あある じぇえん
Aug 7, 2015
Aug 7, 2015 at 9:29 PM UTC
Quinquennium, two moons ere midsummer's eve
Amore entombed; clandestinely, I cleave
Haunting, daunting, even on waking eyes
Grateful, I was, charnel did not suffice
Atop tower of spice, my Star ensconced
Horseless carriage scorched the road, innards conched
Sworn meeting's ripe with anticipation
Longed to see this friendship's progression
Bulwark stood guard, nigh foot of the mountain
Levee treacherous affection, contain
Celestial sight roused earthquakes in this chest
Released the dam, alluvion that is best
Thy beauteousness, a marvel with purpose
Ineffable, even with grand verbose
Wise and fair, thoughtful eyes, smile, oneiric
Prithee, grant pardon this humble lyric
Apr 12, 2017
Apr 12, 2017 at 6:49 AM UTC
Her love proved insufficient,
or , worse, illusory.
So you struggle bravely on alone
towards your Calvary.
Remember One who, too ,faced death
abandoned by his friends.
He, too, felt forsaken,
and cried out at the end.
We prisoners all face one fate.
It is our common link.
We all will share this cup of pain
that you are forced to drink.
Yet In this charnel house of Earth
another lies alone.
One, like you, that a
lack of Love has struck a fatal blow.
An evil illness stalks your days
but Love lives in your heart.
bring Love to an unloved one,
and you will have played your part.
Nov 25, 2013
Nov 25, 2013 at 11:21 AM UTC
Bien **** quand il se sent l'estomac écoeuré,
Le frère Milotus, un oeil à la lucarne
D'où le soleil, clair comme un chaudron récuré,
Lui darde une migraine et fait son regard darne,
Déplace dans les draps son ventre de curé.
Il se démène sous sa couverture grise
Et descend, ses genoux à son ventre tremblant,
Effaré comme un vieux qui mangerait sa prise,
Car il lui faut, le poing à l'anse d'un *** blanc,
À ses reins largement retrousser sa chemise !
Or il s'est accroupi, frileux, les doigts de pied
Repliés, grelottant au clair soleil qui plaque
Des jaunes de brioche aux vitres de papier ;
Et le nez du bonhomme où s'allume la laque
Renifle aux rayons, tel qu'un charnel polypier
Le bonhomme mijote au feu, bras tordus, lippe
Au ventre : il sent glisser ses cuisses dans le feu,
Et ses chausses roussir, et s'éteindre sa pipe ;
Quelque chose comme un oiseau remue un peu
À son ventre serein comme un monceau de tripe !
Autour dort un fouillis de meubles abrutis
Dans des haillons de crasse et sur de sales ventres ;
Des escabeaux, crapauds étranges, sont blottis
Aux coins noirs : des buffets ont des gueules de chantres
Qu'entrouvre un sommeil plein d'horribles appétits.
L'écoeurante chaleur gorge la chambre étroite ;
Le cerveau du bonhomme est bourré de chiffons.
Il écoute les poils pousser dans sa peau moite,
Et parfois, en hoquets fort gravement bouffons
S'échappe, secouant son escabeau qui boite...
Et le soir aux rayons de lune, qui lui font
Aux contours du cul des bavures de lumière,
Une ombre avec détails s'accroupit, sur un fond
De neige rose ainsi qu'une rose trémière...
Fantasque, un nez poursuit Vénus au ciel profond.
986
ON LOOKING AT SCHILLER’S SKULL
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Here in this charnel-house full of bleaching bones,
like yesteryear’s
fading souvenirs,
I see the skulls arranged in strange ordered rows.
Who knows whose owners might have beheaded peers,
packed tightly here
despite once repellent hate?
Here weaponless, they stand, in this gentled state.
These arms and hands, they once were so delicate!
How articulately
they moved! Ah me!
What athletes once paced about on these padded feet?
Still there’s no hope of rest for you, lost souls!
Deprived of graves,
forced here like slaves
to occupy this overworld, unlamented ghouls!
Now who’s to know who loved one orb here detained?
Except for me;
reader, hear my plea:
I know the grandeur of the mind it contained!
Yes, and I know the impulse true love would stir
here, where I stand
in this alien land
surrounded by these husks, like a treasurer!
Even in this cold,
in this dust and mould
I am startled by an a strange, ancient reverie, …
as if this shrine to death could quicken me!
One shape out of the past keeps calling me
with its mystery!
Still retaining its former angelic grace!
And at that ecstatic sight, I am back at sea ...
Swept by that current to where immortals race.
O secret vessel, you
gave Life its truth.
It falls on me now to recall your expressive face.
I turn away, abashed here by what I see:
this mould was worth
more than all the earth.
Let me breathe fresh air and let my wild thoughts run free!
What is there better in this dark Life than he
who gives us a sense of man’s divinity,
of his place in the universe?
A man who’s both flesh and spirit—living verse!
Keywords/Tags: Goethe, Schiller, skull, bones, charnel, house, grave, souls, ghosts, spirit, flesh, death, shrine, divinity, universe
Sep 25, 2020
Sep 25, 2020 at 4:02 AM UTC
every curve, jilt raw and open
empty like my rotted insides, soaked like ****** eyes
and the smell of the charnel house, my company
i have locked myself here like the bone i am though
the frames untouched, the flames brush
painted I before I knew me
the monotonous, the nonsense
and this one end wonder makes me wonder
why not jump
in, onto dream ward bound the spiraled
runway plastered with the dancers feet
and me, somewhere
in the crowd.
Jan 28, 2013
Jan 28, 2013 at 7:49 AM UTC
Pennated souls conform themselves
By gesture unto the penitent crack of doom,
Truths sombrous tintinnabular dissolution
Like to it; crossing the rubicon
Entering the sanctum sanctorum of Mors.
The wraith gerant priest of the
Higher world weighing trammelled
Empty bottles with the funereal
Sword of Damocles, gilding
Thread and thrum eternities moribund lily.
The hollow glass of mortality
Destinies lake of fire;
First purging the dickens dead men,
Living creatures on the wrong tack
Tarred with the same brush
To an igneous second death
Pent to illume the myrtle charnel house
Of the devils bones.
ELEETE J MUIR
Jan 13, 2015
Jan 13, 2015 at 9:45 PM UTC
/*\for you, the she,
a precious jewel that comes in many
colors, including melanc~holy
<>
who dipped her toe unaware the ***
grows ever hotter with every stirring and the
carnal charnel
nature of
a light
perusal,
a quick wick once-over, a scan, nothing
but just a light, slight, of a
finger~to~lips~tasting/*\
where -poem scripts
lie easy buried
neath a bare
minimum of
1 inch of soil
<>
not the meaning you instinctively assumed,
after years of misunderstooding
of the use-all of
perusal
Mademoiselle Usage,
a mis~usage|
the realizable danger of perusal is in its true meaning.
not in a brief but glorious askance,
but the deep dive
into where the deep sea trench creatures be living,
where the nuance and the sea weeds brocades
the casual
visitor's
perusal,
and the urgency of living on the edge,
of ulterior motives apprised and appraised,
are sensing not,
the dangers consequential,
and down~into~the~rabbit whole
inevitably you encounter,
A man!poet mumbling on & on;
there is no such thing as respite,
the tears of the heart sees their swelling,
no pro bono 4 ply tissue is enough to
well **** arresting their continuity of their
welling,
writ not in cryptic notation,
all mine is there for plentiful plain,
not,
for excavation interpretation, exegetical heretical,
up until the
line of palpable,^
flashes the multi~mesmerizing^
yellow and red warning lines hysterical,
here is where
when in my depths,
you swim
or
flee
next question, please?
Oct 10, 2025
Oct 10, 2025 at 11:51 AM UTC
The house had an evil aspect as
It hung out over the street,
Casting a permanent shadow there
Where the market stalls would meet,
The first floor was half-timbered, with
The ground floor made of stone,
The windows were made of pebble glass
And the window frames of bone.
No one had lived in the house for years
Til the Robinson’s moved in,
A couple, straight from the wedding church
Where they’d cleansed themselves from sin,
They’d listened to all of the rumours that
The house had its share of ghosts,
But the cheapness of the peppercorn rent
Had influenced them most.
The house was built where a charnel house
Had stood in the days of plague,
Where later a debtors’ prison stood
Though its history was vague,
They said there had been a gallows there
With a trapdoor through the floor,
And the arm of the ancient gallows now
Was the lintel of a door.
But the Robinson’s had sailed right in
With a mop and a whisking broom,
‘In no time, it’ll be **** and span,’
Said Sally, within the gloom,
While Brad had opened the shutters then
To let all the light stream in,
‘We’ll flush the ghosts from their waiting posts
With a broom and a pound of Vim!’
They dusted down the old furniture
Left sitting since George the Fourth,
And turned the old oak table round
So the end was facing north,
‘But still there’s a dampness in the air,
And a tension that feels grim,’
Sally said, as they lay in bed,
And she clung, so close to him.
‘Are you sure that they can’t get in,’ she said
‘Now we’ve flushed them out in the street?’
But Brad was trying to understand
Why the bed was cold at his feet.
‘Why are the sheets so damp,’ he said,
‘And they’re cold, as cold as sin,’
Sally was shivering, fit to burst
Though the sun came streaming in.
They sat at the old oak table with
Their bowls of soup, home-made,
And Sally reached out to hold his hand
But he started back, dismayed,
The soup was thick in the serving bowl
It was still three-quarters full,
When a swirl in the murky liquid then
Revealed a grinning skull.
Sally shrieked, but she couldn’t speak
And Brad had held his breath,
‘We’ve got to get out of this house today,
We’re surrounded here by death.’
The shutters slammed on the windows and
The doors flew shut on their own,
And barring the pebble windows were
The frames that were made of bone.
The people out in the market heard
The screams at an early hour,
Looked knowingly at each other, said,
‘They have them in their power!’
And Brad was hung from the lintel when
They finally broke inside,
While Sally was dead by a grinning skull
In the dress of a new-wed bride.
David Lewis Paget
Mar 26, 2014
Mar 26, 2014 at 6:24 PM UTC
The angel of death wears a MAGA hat
And commends the work
Of his marketing and rebranding director
As they synchronize
Their Apple Watches to close
The circles of hell.
The charnel house market is about to boom and
He’ll offer the best capacity at top dollar prices
He’ll pocket the profits and stiff the contractors unless they’re stiffs already.
Even the angel of death might have an ethical quandry with this.
Our differences fade at the cemetery gate
Where we’re being processed like bottles at a redemption center
Where It means nothing unless he can pocket the deposits
And crow about his ratings
about how he’s the best
And if you look for salvation behind an artificial tan
You might as well be dead already
Like the space behind those eyes.
Apr 2, 2020
Apr 2, 2020 at 9:29 PM UTC