If Polyhymnia could be
a winter afternoon’s great beauty,
or night, as it fills the moon’s girth
with still translucence restored from earth…

If Polyhymnia could be like the sleigh
we got for last year’s Christmas day,
not so  hot for winter’s snow,  but good once spring’s
trapeze and high wire act started up…

If Polyhymnia could be a spider moved
up from creation’s mold to sewing skirts
for dandelions… Polyhymnia, who likes shedding gowns
for scales, who never sings, who never clowns,

who never tempts the winter’s night with a serenade—
Polyhymnia, disinterested, disinterred, delayed.

© Jim Kleinhenz

Gather him to his grave again,
  And solemnly and softly lay,
Beneath the verdure of the plain,
  The warrior's scattered bones away.
Pay the deep reverence, taught of old,
  The homage of man's heart to death;
Nor dare to trifle with the mould
  Once hallowed by the Almighty's breath.

The soul hath quickened every part--
  That remnant of a martial brow,
Those ribs that held the mighty heart,
  That strong arm--strong no longer now.
Spare them, each mouldering relic spare,
  Of God's own image; let them rest,
Till not a trace shall speak of where
  The awful likeness was impressed.

For he was fresher from the hand
  That formed of earth the human face,
And to the elements did stand
  In nearer kindred, than our race.
In many a flood to madness tossed,
  In many a storm has been his path;
He hid him not from heat or frost,
  But met them, and defied their wrath.

Then they were kind--the forests here,
  Rivers, and stiller waters, paid
A tribute to the net and spear
  Of the red ruler of the shade.
Fruits on the woodland branches lay,
  Roots in the shaded soil below,
The stars looked forth to teach his way,
  The still earth warned him of the foe.

A noble race! but they are gone,
  With their old forests wide and deep,
And we have built our homes upon
  Fields where their generations sleep.
Their fountains slake our thirst at noon,
  Upon their fields our harvest waves,
Our lovers woo beneath their moon--
  Then let us spare, at least, their graves!

Sequestration by  other means
A railway line its salient  claim,
running sleepers  into the distance.
Steady  reminders -
a segment of canal
whose older self
ultimately gave birth to snaking hamlets, now mature.
A verdant nature trail coursing the disinterred bank side,
a feeder reservoir now yachting  waters
shaping the geography.

shaping the geography.

Alice and I were fudged fruiting inside Falstaffian freakish fleur–de–lys:
She inside a quack–aztec–tattooed tank,
Me inside a pendulous magenta harness with polydactyl–perverted plumes bespattered into it.  
In the ****** **** of that kaput flophouse
We creosoted our conks all the cockatrices of the gorge–de–pigeon,
Inside crotches, Jacuzzis and homocentric Action Men.  
Alice, with the pornographic bend sinisters in the teeth of her poltergeistish fajita crocodile,
Smacked of the plug–ugly poofter of a south–south–west by south sackful sandbank.  
I cemented the jaundiced dangler of an ostrich to my *****.  
With that and my uncut fiddlestick of knobs
I was the idiosyncratic and wholehogging sadomasochistic slapper!

We banged the bush streaming proboscis in tentacle
Through smorgasbords of hermaphrodites and high muck–a–mucks
While Ravi Shankar’s idioglossias and cockchafers juddered our titbits.  
Our Moonies were classically cracked flabelliform by the time we disinterred them.  
Alice managed to fornicate incognito white elephant on behalf of myself
And we were passionately on the back of the dingdong, naked as our Moonies.

We kept one’s pecker up wrapped up in the shadowgraph
Athwart ever-strangling girdles of formaldehyde, ozone, fomenter and widow’s weeds,
Athwart polytetrafluoroethylene–pricked precipices and then down to the butts
Where we both came to a sticky end on our jockstraps and leered at the ballet dancers
That we then penetrated rhythmically by elongating tumescent our gang banging tentacles.  
Through comfortable French knickers I burped, “Thank you for ****** me everywhere, Alice”.  
In the soporific honeypotspunk, aped on the ooze,
I could smell that her **** had made her ******* type soap flakes break the sound barrier,
Splashing out a ***** whale seed skirting her jowls.  
“You’re fragrant, flypaper”, she rapped.

The Government gabble that little green men who hammer out the sexagenarians weren’t on board.  
Inside spleen of the spliffs, inside spleen of my gangrenous Pollyanna, I will over one’s dead body evacuate.  
I will over one’s dead body evacuate.

Jack ropes and merriopes
In solicitous rhyme in fer derilious velope
envy implicitous insectuaryan harridannous
Ensole brodequins forbearing to lace
Trace elements of that remaining empoisonous

For failure interred
Is succes disinterred? And if so, form where?
Where derinferred strands failure unerred
By error masked muscovado coloured Breadth
Pneumonic, perhaps caustically mate
Aerial’d on the glib side of acoustical elimination
Veritable under pooh stick discrimination

Matte clouds of drab depression ove in
An area of low pressure
According to yon hypothalamic forecaster. Core has ter
Fail lently viola lapidavitious stretch so she as
fer ter rousse fer ter kamuskova. An epic
Scribbled on der calen.

Sole of brevity then being approximately an inch and a
Bit minus that
Torrent all yendergelpin cleaving
The very schism wit! It cynicism
Be as may be a pea, no spelling bee entrusted
Where? In there? In that jumble of line?
Barely knows his lime from his rhyme, or indeed
Lime from lime.
He’s just trying to fill up that calendrous space
And make some sense of it.

Jack Cornwell was a Boy, First Class
On the Chester’s forward gun,
There to relay the settings with
A pair of headphones on,
He’d turned sixteen just months before
Was trained for his chosen task,
And hoped for a life of adventure as
He sailed, before the mast.

The Chester sailed to join the Fleet
That had left from Scapa Flow,
The Grand Fleet with its battleships
Sailed under Jellicoe,
They’d intercepted the German codes
And knew that they’d put to sea,
Hoping to split the British Fleet
And gain a victory.

The Chester turned to meet the flash
Of gunfire, far away,
The light was poor before the dawn
And the mist was thick that day,
Three funnels of a German ship
Came gliding through the mist,
And the Chester turned to starboard
Ready to show the British fist.

But the German ship was not alone
And the shells began to rain,
From the following battle cruisers
Shattering decks, in blood and pain,
Jack Cornwell stood at his post while all
His gun crew lay there dead,
Ready to take his orders, though
The Chester turned, and fled.

The medics found him with shrapnel wounds
Steel splinters in his chest,
He wouldn’t desert his post, he was
As brave as all the rest,
The Chester sailed for Immingham
Disembarked the wounded crew,
Put Jack in Grimsby Hospital,
There was nothing they could do.

He died just two days afterwards
Before his mother came,
She’d hurried on up from London
Where she’d caught the fastest train,
They buried Jack in a communal grave
So many men had died,
Fighting for King and country
Steeped in duty, worth and pride.

His name was honoured from lip to lip
How he’d stood beside his gun,
Determined to fight the German ships
‘Til the Chester turned to run,
Such courage born of England
Where it was tempered at the forge,
Was so inspiring in one so young
Said the Navy, to King George.

‘For shame,’ then cried the ‘Daily Sketch’
When they heard of the communal grave,
‘Is this how we treat our heroes,
Jack deserves the nation’s praise!’
The coffin was shortly disinterred
And draped with the Union Jack,
Drawn on an open gun carriage
With the Navy at its back.

His name went down in the history books
As the boy who stuck to his post,
In the midst of dead and dying men
As they made their way to the coast,
King George conferred the highest award
That there was, for bravery,
Awarded him the Victoria Cross,
Jack Cornwell, Boy, V.C.

David Lewis Paget

The former me was immature
Was ignorant
Was insecure
Would instigate
And derogate
And hate
And hate
And hate
Irate
At something always
In the way,
Some implacable
Dismay
As sullen as
The color gray
Torrential was
The constant rain
Despondence
I still can’t explain
A rabid beast
I couldn’t tame
In every smiling face
Was pain
Contained within
The joy we feign
And all escape attempts
In vain
Except an early
Ego grave

Down there in Knightsbridge where the dead rich rub shoulders with the dirt poor and the older I get,the more down there I am.
And I go bummin' around,around old Strutton ground and even with New Scotland yard on the doorstep it's hard to feel safe, and so I shave off a minute or two of my breakfast, so I can get through the turnstiles at the station (though they call them barriers now) they're no barrier for me,I like to travel far and free.
But I'm lost in this city where the people don't see me,don't talk,they disturb me,it's like living in a cemetery among the dead and the disinterred and I am disturbed by the lack of affection that's shown by some sections of society.

I am the cream of the crop and once was the best of the best that this country had got but then I turned sour
and every hour that passes,every hourglass amasses more ammunition to fire at me..and stupidly so stupidly I insist I am free.
Someone is failing me and I should be sailing someplace where I could be free but I'm rubbing shoulders down in Knightsbridge and getting older every day.

A congregation of homeless folk.
Sat on the kerbside.
It's no joke.
One man, his dog and straggling lady.
All struggling to survive.
They're just staying alive.
"Oh oh oh,staying alive"..in the words of the Bee Gees.
Somehow they thrive.
Just staying alive.
Slaves to government!
Disinterested.
Disinterred.
Dug up.
Another problem for babbling rabbling Britain.
Streets full of poverty.
Lovelorn strangers.
Never free.
(C) LIVVI

And even on my most
forgetful days
days when I can’t remember
what happened in an Austen novel
nor the last time I thought
of others before myself
you are still a poem
on those forgetful days
that I memorized several years ago
perched on the sill of my tongue
waiting
like birds
to take off into a
disinterred sky
waiting to be recited before a
disinterested crowd.

Riding along a bumpy road
stopping at a fork in the road
not by choice or design
but from disorientation
shorn of his map
unable to read the signs
still unwilling to choose
the narrower entrance ramp
that leads him home
away from the bright lights
of urban decay

Turning onto the road
that yields only to desire
the skeletal remains
of a spent ******
in death's throes
whose revved engine
constantly in overdrive
can never idle
fueled by lighter fluid
a high octane burning gas
and a hunger for speed

With quivering mind
careens towards the slums
with an indentured body
that once more swears fealty
to a toxic brain,
in his wake
nuanced shadows follow,
a self-less caricature
of a lifeless body
straddling the coattails
of a disinterred soul

Back gone wacky again and no poetry intended.

Pain
so they say is obsolete
so
why bleat about it?
****** if I know
backs come and go
and I'll go on.

(no pain was disinterred during the
commission of this post)

I may or may not sleep,
keep that in mind until
I find
the codeine.

“Now with an exiguous preamble,
In the CoronaVirus 2020 year,
Hands held aback in geniality,
No longer pugnacious sense,

Even amongst men there is fear,
Breathing’s generally wary,
As we know weakness breathing,
We will fear that an end is at hand,

But this is the everyday intake,
Of   the imperceptible life force,
Willed as plague settles onward
They say just be cautious stay in,

In the airs of the populous air,
Now has become the extant colloquy,
No longer an effervescent fricative,
While not to make that ebullient point,

But a new garner dewy of air space,
A new sense of boundary,
Galileo truths are easy to understand,
But will we ever understand this beast,

To another perhaps not in this germ war,
A gesture of limited distance is disdain,
Now sufficing a simple nod is fine,
A minor simper or a slightly hoisted hand,

No longer in search of   its correlative,
Just a systematic warning within,
The acknowledgment to stand back,
Beautiful strangers now merciless,

Affixed on the other side of that,
Until a cure is disinterred they are,
We are or may be forever bound,
Tween one another evanescent conduit”
By Andrew Guzaldo © 04/25/2020 #187

Just as he finished burying
the last of his unwanted memories
they were disinterred again
at the order of the coroner
His hands blistered
back sore
shovel still in hand
he was told
"Dig 'em up. Dig 'em all up
and when you're done,
bury 'em again because
we got to get your mind right”
It was then that he felt
there will come a time
when he won't need that ****** shovel