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They say farmer’s son will learn to take care of seedlings;
smith’s son will learn how to forge and beat the iron;
baker’s son will learn how best to bake
to conquer best the market…

They say some birdies grow up knitting nests;
***’s foals grow up carrying loads;
cubs grow up learning how to roar most

to scare most the jungle…
The blood brothers2 were brought up
like sibling cubs of the lion
as if Mesopotamia was forest.


On birth day3 they learnt to blow lives out of bodies as candles;
a witness will tell how a citizen was received
by Mukhabarat4 waiters
one of such days,
and describe conviviality at Saddam’s
where the evil has born the arch evil5,
and where they learnt the art of making people yell!

At bees biting babies6 Uday was taught to find rejoice;
at parents wearing Adam’s garment7
in front of children
his father’s great power was worth of praise! 8
and he burnt to rule like father or more!



Would the Maker of the Heaven and Earth hold the fit
at the fate of Nahle Sabet9, the cake thrown to swine?
Would Mucius’s10 soul hold the fit
at the fate of Saad Abd al-Razzek Nihaya11
whose medals and stars were made spots
fit to throw to bin after the half of his life
hurled down from the sky?
Would the pearl Ilham Ali al-Azani12 be thrown like dirt to bin,
father’s fear of Allah tried,
and shot like a sneaking thief,
and the abu sarhan 13 stay without a prize,
and cause more devastations in the garden of Allah?

1. The lion and his cubs: Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti and his two sons Uday Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti and Qusay Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti. - 2. The blood brothers: The criminal brothers. Though crimes committed by Uday, the first born of Saddam Hussein, have been the most reported by media, his young brother was not less cruel. In April 26, 1998 he ordered Colonel Hassan al-Amri to ****** on a grand scale at Abu Ghraib, Iraq’s largest prison, and more than 1,500 prisoners were all massacred the next day. – 3. On birthday: Reports say that Saddam’s sons received pistols as presents on their birthday! – 4. Mukhabarat: Saddam’s secret police. – 5. Where the evil has born the arch evil: such is the description of Saddam’s house. He taught criminality to his sons, and his first born became crueller than father. Uday told Latif Yahia, his body double, whenever he seemed weak or squeamish as a child his father would beat him with an iron bar and then force him to watch videos of prisoners being tortured. – 6. Bees biting babies: This is one of the tortures applied: naked children in a room with a bee hive, being stung hundreds of times, and their parents were forced to watch behind glasses! -7. Parents wearing Adam’s garment: men forced to **** their wives in front of their horrified young children! - 8. His father’s great power was worth of praise: First you note the irony. Uday told Latif Yahia, “Just wait until I become president. I’ll be crueller than my father ever was…” - 9. Nahle Sabet: A pretty architectural student. The girl resisted and rejected Uday publically; he threw her naked to his pack of wild dogs which ripped her to pieces while he watched, drinking champagne and laughing! Here is the testimony by Latif Yahia: «It was the look he was sporting on a crisp, dry winter day in 1987 when he drove around the campus of the University of Baghdad looking for action (for women to ****). He caught sight of Nahle Sabet, a pretty architecture student from a respected middle-class Christian family he’d noticed when he occasionally attended classes. He cruised past her slowly now, honking, trying to get her attention. She refused to even look in his direction. Two days later Sabet was a few blocks from her family’s home in a Baghdad suburb when a Mercedes sedan screeched to a halt on the sidewalk in front of her. Two men in dark suits got out and identified themselves as secret police. They told her she was wanted at headquarters for questioning and led her into the car. Headquarters turned out to be a farm Uday owned several miles from Baghdad. The frightened girl was hustled into a drawing room, where Uday sat at an antique desk. “You’re very lucky,” he said. “I’ve chosen you as my new girlfriend.” “You’re insane,” Sabet stammered. “I want to go home!” “Strip her,” Uday ordered his guards. The burly men pounced on her and ripped at her clothes until she was cowering naked on the floor. Uday towered over her, unrolling his favourite wire cable. “First I will beat you. Then, if you’re good, I’ll allow you to please myself and my men.” It took Uday and his men almost three months to break Sabet’s spirit. Then Uday was tired of her. Her face was ruined; her body was a mass of bruises. He had the guards take her out to the kennels where he kept his attack dogs. He’d told the keepers several days before to stop feeding them. Nahle Sabet was then smeared with honey and tossed into the kennels, where all evidence of the crime disappeared.» – 10. Mucius, (Gaius Mucius Scaevola): God of bravery and heroism in Ancient Roma. – 11. Saad Abd al-Razzek Nihaya: An Iraqi army officer decorated for bravery in the Iran-Iraq War but that didn’t help him or his new wife. Uday saw the couple walking together, took the girl to a hotel suite. She pleaded with him not to defile her - she had only been married yesterday. Uday beat her until she was ****** then ***** her. Then they heard a long, piercing scream, then silence. The girl had jumped from the seventh floor. Her husband cursed Uday, and he was soon sentenced to death for ‘insulting the president.’ – 12. Ilham Ali al-Azani: Uday always slept with the winner of the Miss Iraq contest. But when attractive student Ilham Ali Al-azami won she turned him down. Uday abducted Miss Iraq to his palace. He ***** her over and over again and then as ‘punishment for her defiance’ allowed all his bodyguards to **** her for an entire week. Then Uday circulated a rumour that the girl was a **** and let her go. The girl’s father, a devote Muslim, was so ashamed that he killed his own daughter. When the aging father appeared at Uday’s palace Uday had the old man shot.- 13. Abu sarhan: Uday seemed proud of his reputation and called himself abu sarhan, Arabic for "wolf".

Excerpt of Gallows Bird in Heaven, http://www.amazon.fr/Gallows-Bird-in-Heaven-ebook/dp/B005JKMW66

Source of the note: www.meritummedia.com, visited 2013/05/19
Excerpt of Gallows Bird in Heaven, http://www.amazon.fr/Gallows-Bird-in-Heaven-ebook/dp/B005JKMW66
zasrany Mar 2014

You are stronger than you realise.
You are crueller than you realise.
The smallest words will break your heart.
You will change. You’re not the same person you were three years ago. You’re not even the same person you were three minutes ago and that’s okay. Especially if you don’t like the person you were three minutes ago.
People come and go. Some are cigarette breaks, others are forest fires.
You won’t like your name until you hear someone say it in their sleep.
You’ll forget your email password but ten years from now you’ll still remember the number of steps up to his flat.
You don’t have to open the curtains if you don’t want to.
Never stop yourself texting someone. If you love them at 4 a.m., tell them. If you still love them at 9.30 a.m., tell them again.
Make sure you have a safe place. Whether it’s the kitchen floor or the Travel section of a bookshop, just make sure you have a safe place.
You will be scared of all kinds of things, of spiders and clowns and eating alone, but your biggest fear will be that people will see you the way you see yourself.
Sometimes, looking at someone will be like looking into the sun. Sometimes someone will look at you like you are the sun. Wait for it.
You will learn how to sleep alone, how to avoid the cold corners but still fill a bed.
Always be friends with the broken people. They know how to survive.
You can love someone and hate them, all at once. You can miss them so much you ache but still ignore your phone when they call.
You are good at something, whether it’s making someone laugh or remembering their birthday. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that these things don’t matter.
You will always be hungry for love. Always. Even when someone is asleep next to you you’ll envy the pillow touching their cheek and the sheet hiding their skin.
Loneliness is nothing to do with how many people are around you but how many of them understand you.
People say I love you all the time. Even when they say, ‘Why didn’t you call me back?’ or ‘He’s an *******.’ Make sure you’re listening.
You will be okay.
You will be okay."
The poem was written by a ******* tumblr named Ivy you can check her out here , http://ohthativy.tumblr.com. I apologise for not giving her credit from the start I just didn't know who the author was.
Late, my grandson! half the morning have I paced these sandy tracts,
Watch'd again the hollow ridges roaring into cataracts,

Wander'd back to living boyhood while I heard the curlews call,
I myself so close on death, and death itself in Locksley Hall.

So--your happy suit was blasted--she the faultless, the divine;
And you liken--boyish babble--this boy-love of yours with mine.

I myself have often babbled doubtless of a foolish past;
Babble, babble; our old England may go down in babble at last.

'Curse him!' curse your fellow-victim? call him dotard in your rage?
Eyes that lured a doting boyhood well might fool a dotard's age.

Jilted for a wealthier! wealthier? yet perhaps she was not wise;
I remember how you kiss'd the miniature with those sweet eyes.

In the hall there hangs a painting--Amy's arms about my neck--
Happy children in a sunbeam sitting on the ribs of wreck.

In my life there was a picture, she that clasp'd my neck had flown;
I was left within the shadow sitting on the wreck alone.

Yours has been a slighter ailment, will you sicken for her sake?
You, not you! your modern amourist is of easier, earthlier make.

Amy loved me, Amy fail'd me, Amy was a timid child;
But your Judith--but your worldling--she had never driven me wild.

She that holds the diamond necklace dearer than the golden ring,
She that finds a winter sunset fairer than a morn of Spring.

She that in her heart is brooding on his briefer lease of life,
While she vows 'till death shall part us,' she the would-be-widow wife.

She the worldling born of worldlings--father, mother--be content,
Ev'n the homely farm can teach us there is something in descent.

Yonder in that chapel, slowly sinking now into the ground,
Lies the warrior, my forefather, with his feet upon the hound.

Cross'd! for once he sail'd the sea to crush the Moslem in his pride;
Dead the warrior, dead his glory, dead the cause in which he died.

Yet how often I and Amy in the mouldering aisle have stood,
Gazing for one pensive moment on that founder of our blood.

There again I stood to-day, and where of old we knelt in prayer,
Close beneath the casement crimson with the shield of Locksley--there,

All in white Italian marble, looking still as if she smiled,
Lies my Amy dead in child-birth, dead the mother, dead the child.

Dead--and sixty years ago, and dead her aged husband now--
I this old white-headed dreamer stoopt and kiss'd her marble brow.

Gone the fires of youth, the follies, furies, curses, passionate tears,
Gone like fires and floods and earthquakes of the planet's dawning years.

Fires that shook me once, but now to silent ashes fall'n away.
Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day.

Gone the tyrant of my youth, and mute below the chancel stones,
All his virtues--I forgive them--black in white above his bones.

Gone the comrades of my bivouac, some in fight against the foe,
Some thro' age and slow diseases, gone as all on earth will go.

Gone with whom for forty years my life in golden sequence ran,
She with all the charm of woman, she with all the breadth of man,

Strong in will and rich in wisdom, Edith, yet so lowly-sweet,
Woman to her inmost heart, and woman to her tender feet,

Very woman of very woman, nurse of ailing body and mind,
She that link'd again the broken chain that bound me to my kind.

Here to-day was Amy with me, while I wander'd down the coast,
Near us Edith's holy shadow, smiling at the slighter ghost.

Gone our sailor son thy father, Leonard early lost at sea;
Thou alone, my boy, of Amy's kin and mine art left to me.

Gone thy tender-natured mother, wearying to be left alone,
Pining for the stronger heart that once had beat beside her own.

Truth, for Truth is Truth, he worshipt, being true as he was brave;
Good, for Good is Good, he follow'd, yet he look'd beyond the grave,

Wiser there than you, that crowning barren Death as lord of all,
Deem this over-tragic drama's closing curtain is the pall!

Beautiful was death in him, who saw the death, but kept the deck,
Saving women and their babes, and sinking with the sinking wreck,

Gone for ever! Ever? no--for since our dying race began,
Ever, ever, and for ever was the leading light of man.

Those that in barbarian burials ****'d the slave, and slew the wife,
Felt within themselves the sacred passion of the second life.

Indian warriors dream of ampler hunting grounds beyond the night;
Ev'n the black Australian dying hopes he shall return, a white.

Truth for truth, and good for good! The Good, the True, the Pure, the Just--
Take the charm 'For ever' from them, and they crumble into dust.

Gone the cry of 'Forward, Forward,' lost within a growing gloom;
Lost, or only heard in silence from the silence of a tomb.

Half the marvels of my morning, triumphs over time and space,
Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage into commonest commonplace!

'Forward' rang the voices then, and of the many mine was one.
Let us hush this cry of 'Forward' till ten thousand years have gone.

Far among the vanish'd races, old Assyrian kings would flay
Captives whom they caught in battle--iron-hearted victors they.

Ages after, while in Asia, he that led the wild Moguls,
Timur built his ghastly tower of eighty thousand human skulls,

Then, and here in Edward's time, an age of noblest English names,
Christian conquerors took and flung the conquer'd Christian into flames.

Love your enemy, bless your haters, said the Greatest of the great;
Christian love among the Churches look'd the twin of heathen hate.

From the golden alms of Blessing man had coin'd himself a curse:
Rome of Caesar, Rome of Peter, which was crueller? which was worse?

France had shown a light to all men, preach'd a Gospel, all men's good;
Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the light with blood.

Hope was ever on her mountain, watching till the day begun--
Crown'd with sunlight--over darkness--from the still unrisen sun.

Have we grown at last beyond the passions of the primal clan?
'**** your enemy, for you hate him,' still, 'your enemy' was a man.

Have we sunk below them? peasants maim the helpless horse, and drive
Innocent cattle under thatch, and burn the kindlier brutes alive.

Brutes, the brutes are not your wrongers--burnt at midnight, found at morn,
Twisted hard in mortal agony with their offspring, born-unborn,

Clinging to the silent mother! Are we devils? are we men?
Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again,

He that in his Catholic wholeness used to call the very flowers
Sisters, brothers--and the beasts--whose pains are hardly less than ours!

Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell how all will end?
Read the wide world's annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend.

Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past,
Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last.

Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave you courage to be wise:
When was age so cramm'd with menace? madness? written, spoken lies?

Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,
Cries to Weakest as to Strongest, 'Ye are equals, equal-born.'

Equal-born? O yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat.
Charm us, Orator, till the Lion look no larger than the Cat,

Till the Cat thro' that mirage of overheated language loom
Larger than the Lion,--Demos end in working its own doom.

Russia bursts our Indian barrier, shall we fight her? shall we yield?
Pause! before you sound the trumpet, hear the voices from the field.

Those three hundred millions under one Imperial sceptre now,
Shall we hold them? shall we loose them? take the suffrage of the plow.

Nay, but these would feel and follow Truth if only you and you,
Rivals of realm-ruining party, when you speak were wholly true.

Plowmen, Shepherds, have I found, and more than once, and still could find,
Sons of God, and kings of men in utter nobleness of mind,

Truthful, trustful, looking upward to the practised hustings-liar;
So the Higher wields the Lower, while the Lower is the Higher.

Here and there a cotter's babe is royal-born by right divine;
Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen or his swine.

Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! once again the sickening game;
Freedom, free to slay herself, and dying while they shout her name.

Step by step we gain'd a freedom known to Europe, known to all;
Step by step we rose to greatness,--thro' the tonguesters we may fall.

You that woo the Voices--tell them 'old experience is a fool,'
Teach your flatter'd kings that only those who cannot read can rule.

Pluck the mighty from their seat, but set no meek ones in their place;
Pillory Wisdom in your markets, pelt your offal at her face.

Tumble Nature heel o'er head, and, yelling with the yelling street,
Set the feet above the brain and swear the brain is in the feet.

Bring the old dark ages back without the faith, without the hope,
Break the State, the Church, the Throne, and roll their ruins down the *****.

Authors--essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your part,
Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues of Art.

Rip your brothers' vices open, strip your own foul passions bare;
Down with Reticence, down with Reverence--forward--naked--let them stare.

Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your sewer;
Send the drain into the fountain, lest the stream should issue pure.

Set the maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of Zolaism,--
Forward, forward, ay and backward, downward too into the abysm.

Do your best to charm the worst, to lower the rising race of men;
Have we risen from out the beast, then back into the beast again?

Only 'dust to dust' for me that sicken at your lawless din,
Dust in wholesome old-world dust before the newer world begin.

Heated am I? you--you wonder--well, it scarce becomes mine age--
Patience! let the dying actor mouth his last upon the stage.

Cries of unprogressive dotage ere the dotard fall asleep?
Noises of a current narrowing, not the music of a deep?

Ay, for doubtless I am old, and think gray thoughts, for I am gray:
After all the stormy changes shall we find a changeless May?

After madness, after massacre, Jacobinism and Jacquerie,
Some diviner force to guide us thro' the days I shall not see?

When the schemes and all the systems, Kingdoms and Republics fall,
Something kindlier, higher, holier--all for each and each for all?

All the full-brain, half-brain races, led by Justice, Love, and Truth;
All the millions one at length with all the visions of my youth?

All diseases quench'd by Science, no man halt, or deaf or blind;
Stronger ever born of weaker, lustier body, larger mind?

Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue--
I have seen her far away--for is not Earth as yet so young?--

Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion ****'d,
Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert till'd,

Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles,
Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles.

Warless? when her tens are thousands, and her thousands millions, then--
All her harvest all too narrow--who can fancy warless men?

Warless? war will die out late then. Will it ever? late or soon?
Can it, till this outworn earth be dead as yon dead world the moon?

Dead the new astronomy calls her. . . . On this day and at this hour,
In this gap between the sandhills, whence you see the Locksley tower,

Here we met, our latest meeting--Amy--sixty years ago--
She and I--the moon was falling greenish thro' a rosy glow,

Just above the gateway tower, and even where you see her now--
Here we stood and claspt each other, swore the seeming-deathless vow. . . .

Dead, but how her living glory lights the hall, the dune, the grass!
Yet the moonlight is the sunlight, and the sun himself will pass.

Venus near her! smiling downward at this earthlier earth of ours,
Closer on the Sun, perhaps a world of never fading flowers.

Hesper, whom the poet call'd the Bringer home of all good things.
All good things may move in Hesper, perfect peoples, perfect kings.

Hesper--Venus--were we native to that splendour or in Mars,
We should see the Globe we groan in, fairest of their evening stars.

Could we dream of wars and carnage, craft and madness, lust and spite,
Roaring London, raving Paris, in that point of peaceful light?

Might we not in glancing heavenward on a star so silver-fair,
Yearn, and clasp the hands and murmur, 'Would to God that we were there'?

Forward, backward, backward, forward, in the immeasurable sea,
Sway'd by vaster ebbs and flows than can be known to you or me.

All the suns--are these but symbols of innumerable man,
Man or Mind that sees a shadow of the planner or the plan?

Is there evil but on earth? or pain in every peopled sphere?
Well be grateful for the sounding watchword, 'Evolution' here,

Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good,
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.

What are men that He should heed us? cried the king of sacred song;
Insects of an hour, that hourly work their brother insect wrong,

While the silent Heavens roll, and Suns along their fiery way,
All their planets whirling round them, flash a million miles a day.

Many an aeon moulded earth before her highest, man, was born,
Many an aeon too may pass when earth is manless and forlorn,

Earth so huge, and yet so bounded--pools of salt, and plots of land--
Shallow skin of green and azure--chains of mountain, grains of sand!

Only That which made us, meant us to be mightier by and by,
Set the sphere of all the boundless Heavens within the human eye,

Sent the shadow of Himself, the boundless, thro' the human soul;
Boundless inward, in the atom, boundless outward, in the Whole.

                                                *

Here is Locksley Hall, my grandson, here the lion-guarded gate.
Not to-night in Locksley Hall--to-morrow--you, you come so late.

Wreck'd--your train--or all but wreck'd? a shatter'd wheel? a vicious boy!
Good, this forward, you that preach it, is it well to wish you joy?

Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time,
City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime?

There among the glooming alleys Progress halts on palsied feet,
Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the street.

There the Master scrimps his haggard sempstress of her daily bread,
There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead.

There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor,
And the crowded couch of ****** in the warrens of the poor.

Nay, your pardon, cry your 'forward,' yours are hope and youth, but I--
Eighty winters leave the dog too lame to follow with the cry,

Lame and old, and past his time, and passing now into the night;
Yet I would the rising race were half as eager for the light.

Light the fading gleam of Even? light the glimmer of the dawn?
Aged eyes may take the growing glimmer for the gleam withdrawn.

Far away beyond her myriad coming changes earth will be
Something other than the wildest modern guess of you and me.

Earth may reach her earthly-worst, or if she gain her earthly-best,
Would she find her human offspring this ideal man at rest?

Forward then, but still remember how the course of Time will swerve,
Crook and turn upon itself in many a backward streaming curve.

Not the Hall to-night, my grandson! Death and Silence hold their own.
Leave the Master in the first dark hour of his last sleep alone.

Worthier soul was he than I am, sound and honest, rustic Squire,
Kindly landlord, boon companion--youthful jealousy is a liar.

Cast the poison from your *****, oust the madness from your brain.
Let the trampled serpent show you that you have not lived in vain.

Youthful! youth and age are scholars yet but in the lower school,
Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool.

Yonder lies our young sea-village--Art and Grace are less and less:
Science grows and Beauty dwindles--roofs of slated hideousness!

There is one old Hostel left us where they swing the Locksley shield,
Till the peasant cow shall **** the 'Lion passant' from his field.

Poo
jt Oct 2015
No one, not even the trees, or the flowers can then say that there is nothing more beautiful than falling in love, and nothing crueller than having your heart broken. I used to think falling in love was no big deal, it was just exchanging whispers and kisses that didn't really mean anything. The folly of youth, really.

I kind of hate you, for being able to make me fumble with my words so easily around you. I hate how you make my very insides burn with warmth whenever I see you. Is it a blessing or a curse, to be so attached to someone?

As the saying goes, "All good things come to an end." Sure enough, it did. You got tired of me and it was no surprise to me that I woke up to an empty bed and a half-empty closet and a hurriedly scribbled note on the coffee-table saying, "I can't do this anymore." It was scary, how five simple words put together shattered me into fragments so tiny.

But ******* it, I should have known from all those red flags that were so obviously waving in front of my stupid, dumb face. It was so ******* obvious, how you were so much more distant (red flag), how you rolled your eyes and clenched your fists every time I complained about a little thing (red flag), how you never worried about me anymore (red flag), how a scowl found its way onto your face whenever I asked you how I looked (red flag). It wasn't any surprise when I found you gone and far away from me that morning.

It's raining now, and I’m cold and sad without you. I'm staring into blank space, the occasional clap of thunder brings me back to reality for a while, and I drift off again mindlessly. It's horrible, feeling like this. My throat is dry and sore, and it's somewhat like you are my water. Or my light, because I'm blinded and you are (were) everything I see (saw). Come back. I don’t understand. Please, just come back. Please.

This rain gets heavier and harder, and true enough, there is nothing crueller than having your heart broken.
There was a saviour
          Rarer than radium,
     Commoner than water, crueller than truth;
          Children kept from the sun
          Assembled at his tongue
     To hear the golden note turn in a groove,
Prisoners of wishes locked their eyes
In the jails and studies of his keyless smiles.

          The voice of children says
          From a lost wilderness
     There was calm to be done in his safe unrest,
          When hindering man hurt
          Man, animal, or bird
     We hid our fears in that murdering breath,
Silence, silence to do, when earth grew loud,
In lairs and asylums of the tremendous shout.

          There was glory to hear
          In the churches of his tears,
     Under his downy arm you sighed as he struck,
          O you who could not cry
          On to the ground when a man died
     Put a tear for joy in the unearthly flood
And laid your cheek against a cloud-formed shell:
Now in the dark there is only yourself and myself.

          Two proud, blacked brothers cry,
          Winter-locked side by side,
     To this inhospitable hollow year,
          O we who could not stir
          One lean sigh when we heard
     Greed on man beating near and fire neighbour
       But wailed and nested in the sky-blue wall
Now break a giant tear for the little known fall,

          For the drooping of homes
          That did not nurse our bones,
     Brave deaths of only ones but never found,
          Now see, alone in us,
          Our own true strangers' dust
     Ride through the doors of our unentered house.
Exiled in us we arouse the soft,
Unclenched, armless, silk and rough love that breaks all rocks.
Edna Sweetlove Sep 2015
I can't ******* believe it
it's enough to make you want
to blow your own ******* head off
it really ******* is.

Crueller than cruel are the women
who make my life a living hell
lurking like Lovecraftian monsters
in internet chatrooms and forums
waiting to break my poor purple *****
on internet site after internet site
hiding their ugliness
under a ******* bushel.

I must be a dumb *******
but I really thought yes maybe
this time yes maybe just maybe
finally after more ****-ups
than a cut-price ***** has per year
and I one more time fell for their lies
and another date went wrong
and my poor bleeding heart
is broken like a duck's beak
hit by a twin-bore shotgun cannonade.

It was a warm summer's evening
with a humid atmosphere guaranteed
to make my nuts sweat freely
and we had agreed to meet
at a quiet spot in the city park
down by the old public lav
where the **** frolic after midnight
leaving the place littered
with filled ribbed condoms
after indiscrimate **** love sessions.

I eagerly re-read the print-out
from the new internet site
(www.fuckabroadforfree.com)
where kindly ******* fate had brought us
together like lost souls in a hurricane
seeking solace in hot ***** *******
and I felt sure your byline
'I love banging ugly strangers'
coupled with the open-crotch photos
could only lead to good times for all.

I hoped you would be a looker
even though the snapshots
you had boldly posted tended
to concentrate on the other end
where your twin holes
were in evidence big-time
so my readers can imagine
my intense ******* disppointment
when I finally saw you
with your tiny bald pointed head
peeping hopefully out
of the ****** rags you were wearing.

I think I was probably justified
in using the claw hammer
I had wisely brought with me
just in case and I must say
in my own ******* defence
love isn’t just a matter of aesthetics
and maybe I'm no raving Adonis myself
but you really have to draw the line
somewhere and you were on the other side
by a very long chalk
so very sadly and reluctantly
I gave into anger and let you have it
and please believe me when I say
that the sound of your death scream
will probably not keep me awake at night
as I drown my sorrows
in solitary *** and single malt whisky.
*******, brave new world!
Stanley Wilkin Oct 2016
1
The sun was maliciously hot that day in June.
The heat swelled his dusty wounds
Still raw from crawling-
He circumvented the Taliban
Dragging his rifle through the grass:

Who’s the soldier now my son,
Who is carrying a gun?
Don’t be afraid, the war has just begun.
Go out there and have fun!


From where the river ran
Closer to the camp the insurgents crawled
Lugging their layered forms over rock in the gristle-dry
Moon-dry landscape,
****** on by goats.

The sun’s grinding rays
Scraped his eyes like brillo-pads
Week-old grease.
Pulling his hat down, he settled behind the tumbledown scree.
He adjusted the sights.
Across his outstretched legs lizards scurried.

The mortars fell like hiccups exploding from the gut.
The mortars tore up bodies throwing them before the wind.
The mortars cried burrowing through the air.

Who’s the soldier now my son,
Who has a gun?
**** beneath the leering sun-
Get out there and have some fun.


Darkness before midday-
Of mind and intent.
The mountains hold their own soulless
Secrets that only religion can shape-
The soldier who murders for religion
Is crueller than the soldier who murders for money.

He knew who to ****.
Not why. He knew *******
Not the reasons for refusing!
He slowly, quietly, pulled the trigger,
The bullet burst out whining across the crumbling landscape, its course pre-ordained, its end
As complete as death. Death was its end
In a soft cry of expiration.

No heaven met, no god examined, no concluding prayer, no final evaluation, no joy, no experience!
A dead man in the dust!
A dead man-dust to dust!

By dinner Dave had reached the camp again
Without much trouble.
He’d been spotted once by a woman washing clothes in a mountain stream, her eyes fixed upon him
For a moment, full of contempt.

A gun, my son, a gun
Have some fun,
With the gun, my son, the gun.
Pop, pop. Yet another gone!


“Got him with one shot. Well done,
Old son. Got him with a single shot.”
The colonel was full of praise. Downing a *****, he
Picked at the pineapple cube on his dish,
And crushed it between his busy fingers.
An intelligent man, but a soldier too,
A poet at times whose words clawed at his memories, paying pale homage.

“You are a marvel, young man.
Four this week. Well done.”
The overhead fan twirled noisily,
Clashing with his redundant pride,
Giving meaning to a pointless war
In a torrid land full of becalmed ideas and underlying prayer.

“I’ll write a commendation for you,
Young man. You deserve it.”
The colonel continued, basking on olives.
“Your skill with the gun
Is astonishing. You deal death like
Other’s write poems. You destroy
With a well-balanced phrase. There is beauty
In your honed and natural talent.”

Others slapped his back as he passed
Beaming with approval, lavish with praise,
Expressive with congratulation. At that point,
In that shell-tight room, he felt himself a hero
An Achilles, an Odysseus, a haunted Vietnam veteran.

When the wind broke, rivers sidled up the canyon walls
Immersed in the valley. The sun glowered
Scorching lungs.
  2.    
Scattered around the shattered jeeps
Expelled their contents-
Broken and dismembered.
Triggered mines exploded one by one
In hellish sequence,
Flames of cooked air
Tearing wantonly into flesh.
His rifle lay embedded in his hand.

Time, my son, time for fun
So pick up your gun
Pick up your gun and run
Time for fun!


The colonel wrote sadly
Of an incident sparing all ugly details,
Of those who died that day
In a minute of ****** confusion.
He spared the ugly details
Vividly describing heroic deaths in the wadi
Of men he’d known well.

The Officer’s Mess was silent-
No jokes were cracked, no backs,
Slapped, no congratulations expressed.
In contemplation the soldiers read, studied form, thought about their families,
Trying, even in solitude, not to die.
Outside the camp walls, demolished by the heat,
Caricatured by flies,
The child’s motionless body lay
The child dispatched by a ******’s clean bullet, slumbering
In the dirt.

*Leave the gun, my son, leave the gun,
You’ve had your fun!
Leave the gun, my son, leave the gun
Your short life’s work is done!
Ben Jones Feb 2014
Nestled in a pencil case
And snuggled up in fluff
There snoozed a tiny pirate man
Of legendary stuff
He'd spied the hidden secrets
And trod the haunted shore
Blu-tack Beard the buccaneer
Scourge of the open floor

He stole a shoe-box galleon
And sailed the carpet blue
With pencil mast and paper sails
And crayons as his crew
They forayed on the crooked tiles
And crested every ridge
Blu-tack Beard the scallywag
The raider of the fridge

When moored up in the kitchen
With all his crew around
The captain showed to one and all
A treasure map he'd found
It bore a chart of distant parts
And quite a course it plot
It pointed to the bathroom lands
And tip-ex marked the spot

They crammed the hold with cornflakes
To feed them on their trip
They pulled ******* the piece of string
And weighed the paperclip
The crew they dragged their boat aloft
On neatly woven hairs
Blu-tack Beard the privateer
Surmounter of the stairs

They heaved their vessel restlessly
Atop the final brow
The crayon pirates caught their breath
And leaned against her bow
Then scaled tiny ladders
And each took to their post
Blu-tack Beard was at the helm
And watched the foreign coast

Through countless minutes voyaging
There loomed the bathroom door
They slacked the sail and went below
And each took to an oar
They pulled a mighty rhythm
Till their waxy arms were numb
And Blu-tack Beard the plunderer
Was beater of the drum

But though they pried in every nook
And each last inch of grout
They skirted round the skirting board
They tapped each silver spout
Illusive was their bounty
And they grew ever the crueller
They took their skipper angrily
And made him walk the ruler

He landed glum and ruefully
Amid the ***** socks
He heard the merry spiteful sound
Of laughing, taunting mocks
And saw the sight of mutiny
With waxen little smiles
Blu-tack Beard the cast-away
Alone among the tiles

He commandeered a washing cloth
And weaved himself a rope
He scaled the dreaded washstand
And stole a bar of soap
He carved himself a coracle
And set his sights on home
Blu-tack Beard the wanderer
Awash amid the foam

He slithered down the stairwell
And landed with a plan
For warmer climes and restfulness
A cocktail and a tan
And so he met his final port
Right then did he retire
Blu-tack Beard the pensioner
Of the warm spot near the fire
Edna Sweetlove Sep 2015
I can scarcely bring myself to tell the tale
of how yet another internet date
went tragically wrong thanks to
shameless deceit crueller than I can say.

I suffer so many sadnesses as I seek true love
via internet site
after internet site
but I really thought yes
this time yes this time yes
finally after so many ****-ups
of one sort or another
so I foolishly imagined I was onto a good thing
but would you believe it
another date went wrong
and my poor heart breaks.

I recall 'twas a a cool autumn evening
with a hint of hail in the sky
but we had agreed to meet
perhaps optimistically
at a secluded spot in the municipal gardens
down by the victorian fountain
where the queers congregate by night
leaving skidmarks on the paintwork
after deep **** love therapy.

I can still hear the tweety-birds singing
their oh-so-nice chirping song
in the trees where they perched
trying to **** on passers-by
especially the handicapped
(who could less easily dodge
their good luck messages
without toppling over).

I ran headlong down the path
and my little ***** wobbled
with eager anticipation of love
innocently carelessly naively perhaps
for I felt deep in my trusting heart
that at last with a bit of luck
I might score for a good hard poke
on our first date or at least a right deep feel-up
and a copious exchange of mouth fluids
at the very very least.

I read through the print-out
from the new internet site
where serendipity had brought us
together like lost souls in a storm
(www.******-poking.com since you ask)
and I felt your comment
'I love *******, ******* and more'
was probably good sign
all in all
bearing in mind its implications.

I thought you might be quite a looker
from the photo you had posted
especially since I could
just about partially see
the wicked grin on your face
whilst you were ******* on
two obese men's knobs
(in the photo I mean)
and then you appeared
with your huge mongoloid skull
peeping excitedly out
of the filthy rags you wore
oh dear jesus I cried out in joy
I could smell your ****-drenched ******
from seventy-five yards away
and one of the swans on the lake
drowned itself to escape the pong.

I stared at the diarrhoea oozing from your pants
in romantic dollops
we strolled through the park
(well I strolled but you hobbled)
chattering away the way lovers do
when they are up for it
against all the ******* odds
and as I have observed on other occasions
love isn’t just a matter of aesthetics
after all animal attraction has a lot going for it
but you have to draw the line
somewhere
and you were way out of order
so very reluctantly
(but firmly and resolutely)
I gave you a gentle push
toppling you into the swollen stream
as it exited the decorative lake
and believe me when I say
that I will always remember the sound
of your aquatic scream
as the fast-moving current
took you away from my sad eyes
down to the millrace
and merciful release
from a life of disappointment.
Wk kortas Feb 2018
April is the cruelest month, so some poet said,
Likely vexed to the breaking point by its coquettish nature,
Alternately promising and withdrawing
Sweetness of the warm sun, rustling green blankets of leaves,
The flirtatious, intoxicating perfume
Of the violet and lily of the valley.
For all its coy fluttering of eyelids,
April may delay but never denies,
Yielding its lover’s bounty and then some
To suitors ardent and otherwise.
Its forerunner of two moons prior promises no such delights,
No flora-and-fauna maidenhood as recompense for devotion;
It is the time of purification, of the purge,
A time where light is at a premium,
Often coveted but rarely apprehended, its fleeting manifestations Matters of obfuscation as opposed to illumination,
Soon to be supplanted by fierce meteorological harpies
Short on subtlety but long on effectiveness,
Carrying away those not equipped to resist its peculiar charms
(The too-early runt calf, the aged and nearly-blind collie
Trotting to an unfamiliar field or wood lot,
The newly-solo grandparent acquiescing to the song of the abyss),
The unfortunates consigned to some crypt
Or undisturbed corner of barn or basement,
Proper farewells set aside for some indeterminate time
When it is feasible to block out the knowledge
That the springtime is promised to no man or beast,
Especially at such an interval
Where so little seems to separate one from the other.
Robs Mar 2016
I hear cruel laughter, I run and run,
Trying to get away from it,
Not wanting to hear it anymore,
But I still hear it,
And it's getting louder still,
Then I hear crying,
Is it my own voice?!
No, it is not,
Instead I see another man,
Who is wearing a red hat on his head.
He is crying, and begging for them to stop,
but they don't, they only act even worse,
toward the defenseless old man.
Then I see so many people spitting on the crying man.
Yet again, he begs for them to stop their cruelty.
Yet again, he begs for them to give him a reason.
But they don't stop, and they don't give him a reason.
In fact, it seems like his pleading inspired them to act,
Even crueller towards him, a frail old man.
Then they beat him, and torment him,
again and again. They use so many cruel methods.
And then he cries out in agony yet again,
Because he is afraid, because he is scared.
Because he wants to know why they are doing this to him.
Because he wants them to leave him alone.
And despite this,
No, because of this,
They continue tormenting him,
And then after a while of this,
He finally fights back,
And gets his revenge on one of them.
That tormentor's name is Antonio,
And he was one of the worst out of all of them.
For, to paraphrase this poor old man,
He, ie, Antonio, has disgraced me,
Sabotaged my bussiness, laughed when
I lost, mocked me when I gained,
Hated and mocked my nation,
The tribe of Israel, God's chosen,
The tribe of Judah, the Jews,
Thwarted my business deals,
Tried to turn my friends against me,
Tried to make my enemies act,
Even worse towards me, then they already do.
Why does he do these cruel things to me,
Because I am a Jew. Do Jews not have eyes?!
Do Jews not have hands?! Do Jews not have organs?!
Are Jews not human beings, like Christians?!
(They were already laughing, but this makes,
Them laugh even harder, for to them, the thought,
Of a Jew being a human being, just like them,
Is a joke to them, and a very funny one too.)
Do Jews not have senses, afflictions, passions?!
If you ***** a Jew, does he not bleed?!
If you tickle him, does he not laugh?!
If you poison him, does he not die?!
So if you wrong him, he isn't allowed to get revenge?!
What would you do, if you were in my shoes,
And either I, or any other Jew, wronged you?!
I know, you would get revenge on that Jew?!
So if you wrong me, I'm not allowed to do the same?!'
No, I am going to get my well deserved revenge.
The villainy you show me, I will repeat, much to
Your hypocritical outrage against it."
There is also another reason why,
He is so angry, and rightly so,
They also stole his daughter, Jessica from him.
Even worse, Antonio and Bassonio helped them do it.
So, with the law that he reveres,
He tries to get his revenge on Antonio.
Sadly, the law is biased against him.
Then he gets condemned,
And beaten, and punished.
Then, after taking everything else from him,
They take his faith from him, which was all
He had left that he loved. They force him to,
Convert to Christianity. He then cries out,
He then weeps, and this,
Causes them to laugh at,
That poor old Jewish man.a
Then they mock him,
"Silly Jew", they say cruelly,
"You don't have rights, only people have rights!"
They may not be using the same words,
But it's the same meaning,
Then the Jew says,
In his own words,
That he's a person too,
This makes them laugh,
Aw, he thinks he's people,
They seem to be saying,
In their own words,
And then I get upset,
How would you feel, I yell,
if he did this to you.
However, despite that they can't
Answer me, I feel like they have,
And they're telling me that,
he's a Jew, and they're Christians,
so he's an Alien, so they can be cruel,
Towards him, while he can't do anything
About it. What cowards those so called
Christians are, they bully an old man,
Who isn't allowed to do anything about it.
I want to cry.
I want to scream.
I want to stand up,
for him, for that old Jew,
who has nobody on his side.
But I know that they will never hear me,
For I am looking at a mirror,
A storybook, it's just a story,
About an poor old Jew named Shylock,
Who tried to get revenge on his
Worst tormentor, Antonio by
killing him, so Antonio wouldn't
Be around to hurt him anymore,
But he failed. And all because,
He's a Jew, just like me.
I'm looking at the past,
I'm looking at a storybook,
A world where Jews are aliens,
Second class citizens.
It isn't my life.
And that is a thing,
I am very grateful for,
And I cry for him, for I know,
that he won't be okay. For he is
plagued by those cruel Christians.
I cry for him, for I am a Jew too,
But I was lucky enough,
To escape being born during,
The time that story was in.
I won the lottery of time,
By being born in the
Modern day, the 21st century.
I was fortunate enough,
To be born in a time,
Where Jews are allowed to be,
Citizens, instead of being an
Alien, subject to Alien Laws.
As was the fate of poor Shylock.
It was a lucky accident,
For me to be born,
in my country, in my time,
And If I wasn't as fortunate,
As I am, as I truly am,
I could have been born,
Back then, in the story's time period,
In the Venice of his time, in the story,
Where I would have been treated so cruelly,
Without even being allowed to defend myself,
Thank goodness I wasn't born in the story,
For I have rights that poor Shylock,
Can only dream of, and longs for everyday,
Thank goodness that I'm not in the same position,
As poor Shylock, but I must study that time,
So it will never happen again.
A poem about the contrasts between my life, and Shylock's life. I have rights but he doesn't, it's really sad.
Akemi Apr 2015
She held him within her. A coiled mosaic, whirling on the precipice. His frame shook tumultuous, his skin the colour of autumn grey. The wetness from his eyes spilled against her soft fur. He pressed his lids tighter, as if to keep his tears from the world. Warmth pooled beneath their paws, a thick ichor that smelled of iron and salt.
The dusk receded, and he breathed his last.
Night left the world a husk. A slumber, cessation. In the still, she felt a chill gather within her, cruel and implacable. The forest stirred, with a restlessness only the dead knew. The barrows shrivelled to their skeleton frames. Death lurked in the furs of the pitch beast, in the mottle snares of the witherfang.
She ****** them all.
Her howl tore through the air, bright and gleaming. It thundered beneath the earth, reverberating through the bones of the long deceased. How had she once felt pride in that sound? A bitter rage roiled in her blood. It twisted the vessels of her body, and set her muscles to stone. She moved and shattered into a thousand shards, each one sharper than the last.
She grieved for two days. The soft contours she’d held his dying body against grew lean and taut. The hollows of her ribs had closed themselves around a seething stone, that filled her flesh bitter. She rose a new beast on the third day. Smarter, but crueller; wiser, but filled with rage; and with only one thought on her mind.
She would find the deceiver, and devour all he loved.
1:41pm, April 29th 2015

Wolves have sad lives.
Akemi Jun 2013
Dream your peace
Whilst the world rages
Go lie in your steel-walled sleep
Let the crueller men deceive
Let better men bleed

A sleeping mind for sleeping times

What’s another casualty?
Doesn’t affect me
So you let deflections become reflexes
Unknowingly

Happenstance you came to live
In first world palms, with first world eyes
Never looking back at second place
Least of all the third in line

Whatever gets you to sleep at night

With such birth rights,
With such languor
I will rule the world in my own mind
With such circumstantial, beneficial, superiority
I will turn a blind eye

To everybody’s suffering but mine
11:18pm, April 26th 2013

So many selfish people, so little time . . .
"It's a girl" they said
Ooooooh think of all the pink things
Like booties and bows
Dolls, and toys that aren't for boys

"Sweet sixteen, and never been kissed"
Blow the candles out love
Your mother spent hours baking
Your mother spent hours labouring

"She's a woman now!" They cried at her 18th
"We'd better watch them boys!"
But what about the girls?
Why aren't you watching them?

Is it because those girls are at the kitchen sink ?
Awaiting a boy's wink of approval?
Through buttermilk sweetness these
Pink girls think.

You men are ******
Full of tricks
That send half these girls to a shrink
But it's time to have a rethink

We fair maidens view you
Through basilisk eyes
We fairer *** are
Crueller than you

It's time to drop kick the pink
Permanently into the kitchen sink
And slink behind you
With a candlestick

After all I'm just a pink girl
Who would believe that the
Pink mess on my dress
Is your brain?
© JLB
Elise Apr 2015
Life is getting harder
The kids are getting meaner
The jokes are getting crueller
And it's getting hard to brush off*

My name appears on bathroom stalls,
facebook walls,
and most of all
voices in the halls

People glare,
Girls stare,
All the boys are aware
Privacy has gotten rare

They say it's gone to my head
But they won't listen to what I've said
It's not the school that I dread
But the people who have read

The people who think they know me
to a tee
think they all agree
that a ***** is all they see

They think I care
About their hair
And who they kiss
That their downfall is my bliss

I wish they knew
It isn't true
I don't care about who dates who

I couldn't care
About what they wear
And I wouldn't judge
Based on a grudge

I would never hope that they would fail
or that their life becomes derailed
I smile not because I'm fake
But because being unkind is life's greatest mistake

So no I'm not the high school witch
I'm not queen B,  biggest *****
I'm just a girl trying to get by
Wishing I got a shot to answer why
Riya Walia Mar 2014
For the longest time
I groped
In the darkness
Drowning
But hoping
For a sole breath
That wouldn't be
At the price of
My blood

For the longest time
I was sad
My tears
Carving
A trail down my cheeks
A trickle of blood  
Burning
Through my misery
Leaving a destruction
Crueller
In it's wake

For the longest time
I was at peace
With my broken pieces
The ragged shards
That cut me
And made me bleed
Acquainting me
With who I was
Who I was meant to be
I was in love
With my sadness

And now
As I look
Into your shine
My eyes
Are bruised
Wounded
By your light
I am blinded
By everything that I never was
That I could only ever pretend to be
If only you knew
What you think I am
Is just a reflection
Of your own brilliance

And now
I know
I am not meant
To be blithe
Living is not meant for all
Living is not meant for me
I was not blessed
With a chance
To freely breathe

It must be
At the price of
A cut
A scar
The scarlet beads
That will slowly seep away
And drain my veins
But fill my lungs
With the air I need

And so
I shall watch you
From afar
While your eyes
Dance in glee
I shall drown
In my own misery
Because this is where
I was meant to be
And not where
You were meant to breathe

I was never meant to breathe

~r.w.
LovelyLittlePoet Oct 2016
"You're fat and ugly."
"You're dumb and stupid."
"You should just die!"
Each word crueller then the previous.
But the victims face the pain.
And strive for strength.
Deep inside of them.
M Nov 2015
we all think all the same things about each other
the cruel irony is that it's all for the same reasons
and the crueller irony is that we still can't see each others' side of things.
it's funny that we all repost the same poems.
Khawla Frigui Mar 2021
I was pure and angelic
In a world full of satans
But he was alcoholic
And he still had many fans

I was beauty
He was the beast
I was cutie
He was the least

The least of his ex's worries
Because she was crueller than him
A relationship of furies
Is all what attracts men like him

Love *** and communication
That was what he said at that time
I think he must have said that I'm
Man of your hallucination

I will visit you every night
Oh! And without your permission
Only just to enjoy your fright
When I try to fair submission

Beauty and the beast can
Only fall in love in
A place just like Iran
Where you can make that sin

But we're in Tunisia baby
And you cannot dominate me
I mean I can love you maybe
But I will not sit on my knee
Thomas Wood Dec 2019
Is it harder to open or close a book?
Certainly at a look, seven PM
in September is somewhere to be.
The hardening light, the steady cessation,
the Southbound birds - gliding from the station.

April ages more subtly,
with a wholly crueller edge.
The ease of unfolding at seven AM
seems granted for everything new.
But not among these arrowing swifts -
are the Stones, and by degrees, you.
Hanging upside down on an iron beam underneath the bridge didn't seem that dangerous when we were kids, eighty feet above the river now sends a shiver through me, how we never fell remains the big mystery,
we did some crazy **** back then, long before health and safety came along, but we were healthy enough and felt safe enough to do stuff like that,

pinching apples from the Castles Keep, jeez, we could have been branded malefactors and would have been in the older days when they had crueller ways of deterring larceny,
still a ******' mystery to me.
There’s no crueller word
than goodbye

Until it’s accompanied
by the whys
Aaron French Oct 2018
it’s a strange feeling

to adjust a pair of eyes

to the sight of anyone else but you

when they’d gotten so used

to being wide awake

pupils sprawling

at every magic glimpse

so they start to look for you in spaces that you won’t appear

even though they know this well

too well

and sometimes

in their crueller moments they like to hit me

in the gut and tell me you’re there

and sometimes you are, nearly

and that’s the point

nearly

almost

but really, nowhere close

and that’s how it is now

nothing comes close

they’ll kid my heart again

and I’ll learn to laugh back

— The End —