"epitaphs" poems
cemeteries worn
delicately fall on chests
like grandmother's old necklaces
and inscriptions from headstones
draped in cold bronze
bought and sold, their epitaphs
like grandmother's old word
her lovely verbs
swathed in gold,
and ever were costly rhinestones weaved in
until every meaning to her lovely words were lost.
Oct 5, 2015
Oct 5, 2015 at 5:29 AM UTC
In the cove where the forest and seas met.
Lies a hut abandoned, but twas never forget.
The vines and moss that crawls and slither—
and the rust of chimes and roses that wither.
Two alike creatures’ dwell within the crest—
and can be found, broken epitaphs lie at rest.
Wings with tail as their ebony feathers trail,
—beaks like gold, a bond that could prevail.
Fly up and below in anywhere they would go.
To unglass windows, scratches on tealish walls.
The hollows of trees that covered with snow,
melts away to crystal-dew as springtime grows.
Rain came pouring, filling the tires off the roof.
Two had a dream, only to raptured by enmity.
With webs that weave the age of their misery.
Both resided the ceiling for heaven once more.
With growls of the wind and cold swiftly blows.
It came strong as the hut is almost unknown.
Both hold on to believe, but one choose to leave.
thinking of nothing, but its own selfish greed.
As skies were cleared onto a rainbow sheer.
Lonesome, broken, one black dove weeping ill,
Breathe, a voice came to the lonely dove's ear.
"Come fly with me, I am God—don't be feared."
Nov 22, 2017
Nov 22, 2017 at 9:46 AM UTC
I've got poetic licence
So I can right however I want.
Even if whatever I right doesn't make sense
I kan right with whichever font.
I use my poetic licence in whatever I right
An sometimes, de thins I right does not look write
I have de power power 2 repeat rhymes
Over and over countless of times
I use abbreviations in de mst unusual ways
My, commas, and!!!!!, escalations, marks come!!! as they may!!!!
I've got poetic licence cos I am a poet
I use it in odes, elegys, ballads, epitaphs, and sometimes in sonnets.
I am never rong.
And with my poetic license I will remain strung.
Apr 4, 2015
Apr 4, 2015 at 3:54 PM UTC
Drifting in the shade
of Hello Poetry's long lost grave
In archive (a kingdom's history)
the past that has been made
Stepping on the bleached out bones
The pale parade of long dead dreams
Crunching fragments of sentenced themes
burning books , poems stuffed inside the reams
Epitaphs to their honor
2010 comments to poets
Vickey , Fix , and O'Connor
Poems to praise lost in time
I hold in hand the words that bind
Great poems whose eyes
were never shed
In a broken aspiration
now lay dead
Cruch , crunch ,
the landscape littered in 2012
Oh what sacred feelings
not forthwith
Here ! lay my poems
to rest here
In 2014 my poems
of yesteryear
Aug 25, 2025
Aug 25, 2025 at 1:20 AM UTC
Down by two
the bruised-blue flesh
of the bronze butterfly's
escape through sacrifice,
flays the emotions..
Unwholesome the silence
that goes before her,
a sound like the heart
bound to beat like butterfly wings...
Gently her absence quick
upon me, inhales the night
and swiftly, the dark
sees only ease to relinquish
her candles sheathed in glass
epitaphs that collapse like veins
to fill the fluent air with the spare
embrace of the blue elements...
Down by two in the bottom of the ninth,
two out, two on, two strikes,
the soul's too tragic abhorrence of details
fails to deliver the impossible syntax
of apocalypse, on the lips
of a courteous Christ, crucified
by light, the night fades
far into the furthest exile...
Under a tropic of cancer,
her un-obscured brilliance
pierces the vault of heaven's vast
gathering of angels,
and their illegible scripture...
Shatters the soul in one primal
instant grand slam dream, quicksilver
through her midnight moment's landscape,
every cherished feature in flight, the light
of the bronze butterfly's escape
through sacrifice, to the silver flame
of moonlight's crucial adieu....
Feb 5, 2013
Feb 5, 2013 at 1:08 PM UTC
After a great while the paper elephants march
In their sparse herd they lumber along
One by one, their thick legs slam into the earth
Like pennies on a timpani
Leaving slight imprints in the dust
No one is quite sure where they come from
All we know is they just are there
Some raise their children before witnessing the elephants
A lucky few will even see them a second time at the end of their lives
It is not uncommon for generations to pass without the paper elephants
Sometime the periods between their journeys are so long the elephants are dissolved into folktale
The paper elephants are bestowed an almost supernatural quality
The stories are birthed in secrecy between the lights of candles
In the ears of the men in the corner
From the hushed lips whispered in acquiescence.
Every story is different
Every story has the same ending
Every story has the same moral
You do not touch the paper elephants
Perhaps the stories have some truth
If anyone knows the validity they have been dead for quite some time
No matter, man’s superstitious nature will see to the protection of the elephants
The paper elephants are called “paper elephants” because it describes them quite nicely
From a distance they look just like normal elephants
Lumbering over from side to side
But their skin is like paper
Their essence is like paper
They travel together
Even the old and young
When it rains the young hide under the larger elephants
Lest they get wet and melt into the earth
It is not uncommon to find the soaked remains of an elder elephant
Crumpled by a sad consequence
It always serves as a reminder
The old exist to protect the young
Most likely the elephants can be found roaming through our graveyards
Here their pace noticeably slows down
Often enough, they can be found sitting next to a tombstone
Resting their trunks over the epitaphs
Strange things happen when the elephants are in the graveyards
Sometimes laughter can be heard
Sometimes sobbing
As the elephants rest the blue mist rises from the graves
The blue is the most reassuring shade
The misty fog rises and fills the entire yard
Until it is absorbed by the paper elephants
With a long sigh the elephants continue their journey
After many such stops
The elephants arrive at the tree
Gnarled and ancient, it welcomes the elephants with silence
As it has for years and years past
It is here the elephants have yearned to arrive
Under the knobs and strikes of its branches
They bend the knee
The young watch to learn
The adults look up to the sky
And release all that they carry
The hopes, dream, and memories of those long gone
Ascend to the heavens
The paper elephants collapse exhausted but content
And look upon their children one last time
They weep before leaving this world
Not for their children’s sorrow
But because there are no paper elephants to carry them to the next world
Jan 16, 2012
Jan 16, 2012 at 3:37 AM UTC
Aeolian dour fire meridians
Unfettering enlightenments will
Together Scylla with authority
Howling, Charybdis in oblivians wake
Shenting spindel meandering;
The schism termagating sirens
Repasts (diabolic manna)
Refracting ambrosial in the
Lap of Gods eye sophically conjecturing
Ephinany- times charioteering,
The nocturnal triunes discordance
Contemplating consequence thistling
Opothecaric sigels permeating lots
Obstruse lathed cerebral skies
Ruthfully roil whittling indelible
Epitaphs of serpentine repositories
Woefully dawning eternity castening
Harmoniously asunder truths
Deifying yen die.
ELEETE J MUIR.
Jan 13, 2012
Jan 13, 2012 at 11:14 AM UTC
Strumming the untuned strings, he stares drunkenly into the setting sun of yesteryears songs, sung of lost dreams and the birthed ambitions of the dark, dark days to be.
Happily, he tears up in the fortunate tragedies, of the reclamation in his dreams, as he seethes out the damnation of his steeds, galloping gallantly through his being.
All seeing, in the finite fleeting when he sings, of strummed dreams to the rhythms of heart beats lost, embossed on the epitaphs of kings.
Sad songs of dreams once had.
Be glad for that, which does not **** you, only to bestow upon you, the gratitude of the weirding ways, in passionate display for us all to play nice.
Shake these dice and jump aboard this bus of wandering poetry, from the porches of poets singing to the sun.
From the morning Moet, to the afternoon beer run.
we sing of dreams
of better things
we blaspheme
and spin the scenes
of our murdered dreams
and just clean the guilt away
I am so awesome as to be devoid of fault.
I am a god that cracks the asphalt.
I am the angel signing the clause, of deserved harm.
I am the indentured servant sounding the alarm, with the charm of a Trojan horse, forced to adhere to the most righteous path.
The first
The last
Laugh of inevitability
Honing in on the ability to capture the longevity of dream warriors, in the lock of predators, in the employ of a senator, from the center of the heart, to impart on you the fear from thieves caught in the plight of those fraught with the graces of an exterminator, exterminating the pro-creators of your world. Soldiers unraveled in the lavished gavels of real criminals drowning in their own subliminal theories of the self imposed heresies of intention.
Free will
A fragile blessing
I cracked, all so long ago, as i gently bestow my belligerence upon your innocence and **** it all away.
I'm the ******* son
Strumming for the only one.
Once.
Before the lore of the storm.
Born of the swoon of a gun.
More than one.
Once.
As the day faded into night, his strumming turned plucking, as he slightly eased from reprise to silence, in the whisper of nights words, easing him into the blur, of sleep.
Sep 9, 2012
Sep 9, 2012 at 3:46 PM UTC
we are nothing but corporeal beings
tangible, earthly, and most of all, perishable
we are passengers riding in our own trains
in a seemingly perpetual motion
but we are doomed by our expiry
which could already be looming in the distance
it might already be standing by the door
ready to bury us beneath our tombstones
we get reminded by our impermanence
only when death himself shows at our doors
when we are already beneath our tombstones
emblazoned with our own epitaphs
we fade into dust, and become one with oblivion
but all is not lost, you can still see me looming there
in the blooming flower fields, in the open skies
out in the ocean, the wilderness
i fly with the birds, flow with the breeze
and swim with the fishes beneath the sea
in all your searching, you won't find me
but i am here, now one with the earth
Jan 4, 2018
Jan 4, 2018 at 10:22 AM UTC
Candle!
Life after death in the after life.
Here ever afters penned in epitaphs.
Scratched deep into ancient church rafters.
As a candle deprived of oxygen.
no longer burns.
A deleted issue of stifled love.
Love with which was trifled.
Brightness in love was once given.
Forgiveness for nothing.
Not been received.
The love has gone,
Gone to another soul.
Waving the lover fondly goodbye.
Tears are all wiped.
Face is bone dry.
Her love got stuck inside a sows ear.
Made a purse of love now lost
Maybe a curse.
Tears wasted for fear.
Her memories in tears will no longer drown.
Too expensive to replace.
By ladylivvi1
© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)
Dec 14, 2013
Dec 14, 2013 at 8:49 AM UTC
If you prophecy the end of kings you are wrong.
Write no epitaphs, dig no graves, taste no grief.
The new czar, a rough and worldly killer firmly fixed
this very day stirs the cauldron of war to reset empire
Still, foxly friends of tyranny, who stab at weak democracy
praise the czar's autocracy, and mock free speech with treachery.
As modern judases, riding limitless swells of fortune, tease simple mobs
our old republic stagers and fades, mortally wounded by hypocrisy.
Perhaps, someday, freedom’s autopsy will show what transpired,
but if you prophecy the end of kings you are wrong.
Feb 22, 2022
Feb 22, 2022 at 7:14 AM UTC
I. That summer the radio
Played nothing but Cat Stevens
While I hummed harmonies
In my first car
It was a wild world indeed
when kudzu overtook
The cornfields
All the ears were foreigners
The leaves basked in light
That dead-ended on route 15
II. That fall we spotted UFO's
Shining over the municipal
Park
We chased them across the
Ballfields
To the high school cross country course
A dirt track running
Through the woods
And when there was nothing
Alien lurking there
Our hopes fell
Faster than the stars
III. The following winter
Three inches of ice cut the powerlines
Impounded our school supplies
With the outtages
And the temperatures plummeting
Seventy percent of our hearts froze
All the parts that were water
Expanding our chests
Like balloons
Expanding our vision too
We thought this was the beginning
Of the end of St. Clair county
We though we'd all get out someday
IV. By spring the graveyard smelled
Like lilacs
And dead town elders
Came out to dance in the scent
We played capture the flag there
On school nights
And the cops could never catch us
Behind the headstones
Of our family plots
We wrote our own epitaphs
"I was water and I could have been
A fine wine"
I fell asleep in sweet green clover to the sound of smalltown sirens...
Aug 30, 2013
Aug 30, 2013 at 10:03 PM UTC
so there's no more laughing
at an evening fire
no more the crackle of flames
to echo our desire
for summer is on its way
yet all i feel is the cold
sat staring at the dying embers
of a love once known
your reasoning remains certain
and so easily evoked
those moments i recall now
mere epitaphs i wrote
what of that first kiss or
that walk upon your stairs
the warmth of our breath
as i slide through your hair
cast aside as mere memories,
lost shadows in this game
as the ashes burn out
through the endlessness of blame
summer does beckon as you
heed its call to take flight
redefining your season
escaping my darkness to light
alone to search deep inside
and what will I see
complicated and broken lives
but only one truly free
for no mirror will ever conceal
my self inflicted lies
decisions and failures welling up
in these guilty grey eyes
a sentence delivered through
the coldness of silence
yet I will appeal to take solace
in some other summer dress
to mask the responsibilities,
to seek shelter for this shame
it is I that must carry the burden,
bear the endlessness of blame
Apr 13, 2017
Apr 13, 2017 at 5:44 PM UTC
-for Easter, on a body appearing in the melting snow
You can see now...
you can breathe, freely:
nothing can touch you now.
Cry, suffer, die ...for a brother
- by brothers you may live.
Every person has his breaking point,
I turned to drugs to ease the pain.
Do look down on me, a mirror,
having you reborn, a man again.
Innocent like a still-born child,
faithful like a sleeping foetus,
ready like a falling seed.
Today it's me,
tomorrow... you.
Apr 12, 2017
Apr 12, 2017 at 8:44 AM UTC
I’ve sat with Silence
As she cast silhouettes
Moving in the likes
of Ballerinas across
My hair.
I’ve moved with them too.
That’s how I’ve come
To know their names
Or natures
As such:
1) The one who sold her soul to the Devil
For pennies and a dollar
So her mother could
Come off the
Corner
2) The one who put Fireflies and Rainbows
In mason jars and played make
Believe with running fingers
And a wounded
Moon
3) The one whose only trace of a father is
The bloodstain on the wall like a
Family photo with X’s over
The faces because he
Destroyed more
Than his own
Soul
4) The one who strung sorrow to the ceiling
To play its marionette with dancing
Shadows weeping and frightfully
Abandoned, hiding under
A candle in shameful
Bliss
5) The one who wandered though fields
Of whispering epitaphs that
Made nursery rhymes
From the likes of
Madness
6) The one who locked her heart in
A vault within ashen walls and
Wrote letters to stars that
Wrote it’s not her fault
She’s infinitesimally
Small
I told myself I would never return
To sleep
To dream
To surrender my mind to its own
Devices
Vices.
But here am I, Lord
Swinging with the wind
Under a purple tinged twilight
Making friends with twisted tongues,
and braided hearts slinking through the alley.
I’ve bore my heart like a cross,
Carried it past moratorium
Marching east for west
Until my frantic feet
Cease to move
Me.
Dec 3, 2012
Dec 3, 2012 at 12:11 AM UTC
he told me,
**you are the strangest creature
that I have ever laid eyes on.**
and what could I say?
I am a curator of slick thoughts,
cigarette thin and clinging
like mad to my small sense of resolve.
a stranger in a house of ghosts,
writing phantom epitaphs and
combing through scientific journal articles.
I am no mystic, but a logical anomaly.
stranger things have happened.
Nov 15, 2012
Nov 15, 2012 at 1:21 PM UTC
famished lychee
bent on treason
almost unknowingly furious/
dragging feet
all the way
to gather the fairest feathers,
now lumped under dreary
epitaphs.
Apr 28, 2012
Apr 28, 2012 at 10:32 PM UTC
out-seeking the world in
crave of ascertation. to
crave realization of know-
ledge, of others’ wisdom.
seeking experience via lack
of self-preservation, but
the sun rises for this land
of the Old Settlers.
[/thesis]
force settled the young to
drybed rivers. all with killer
statement epitaphs, that is,
words to remember as
darkness follow’d rifle blast –
white shame’s legacy.
images of barbarism as
a means of civilizing, of settling,
pioneering. and cowboy is
racist to the non-farmers of
Texas. (are farmers a race?)
doesn't matter when
they write the epitaphs.
Feb 10, 2013
Feb 10, 2013 at 10:32 AM UTC
May I write a Shakespearian sonnet on
the square inches of skin
between your thumb joint and elbow?
I’m a pretty good storyteller,
I can narrate in blank verse if you wish.
Can I write poetry on your spine?
Up and down in broken haikus,
tankas quilting along the curve of your sides.
Perhaps a sestina?
So be it.
I can work bay leaves into tea cakes.
May I write alliterations across your toes,
over finger bones and broken knuckles?
I have enough form poems to
paint my walls a matte black.
Gloppy ink blobs,
carnation stamps,
over raised red lines of a villanelle.3
Can I write poetry on your stomach?
I have soft ballad-dipped brushes
that leak cinnamon sugar.
Acrostic biographies written to a jazz tune,
papier-mâchéd into a handmade piñata.
Spider web hair pins
left in the bathroom sink spell out
another useless cinquain.
May I write a rondeau on your calves,
rising up into your knees?
Epitaphs in your running shoes
make limericks out of the hail in your back yard.
Don’t try super gluing petals back onto stems,
they’ll fall apart eventually.
Poetry is written on you like paper.
Jun 1, 2013
Jun 1, 2013 at 12:14 PM UTC
i am made of...
thought...
ink and pen and paper... and so much more.
scribbled phrases on diner napkins.
post it notes stuck to walls.
scrawled doggerel in bathroom pens.
phrased ideology in lined notebooks.
spinnered words on lazerprinted A4.
scraps of inklings, on ripped butcher's bags and wrappings.
condolences in funeral books.
ideas capital lettered on cards,
pinned to cork boards.
epitaphs stonemasoned
into granite blocks.
fury arranged just so,
on parchment.
newsprinted with loose blurry, black ink on broadsheets
scribed by pointed stick on
firm wet sand.
notes on heavy cards, of love
and light bright shiny stuff.
discarded sentence startings, left crumpled, lost in a bin.
loss, written with red wine on white table cloth.
art, etched on vellum anciently old, suprisingly relevent.
tapped into tablets both stone
and techview.
blue and red markers squeaked onto white boards.
daubed on canvas with a fine sable brush.
tatttoo-ed upon ones flesh.
carved into wooden school desks.
pressed into moist clay by delicate fingernails.
marked so deeply upon a soul.
chalked to cement,
to stay for...
but a short season.
written for some very, (un)important reason.
courage to speak, sing, whisper, shout, cry, laugh, observe and ponder.
this is me....
i am a word written down.. any word, any word.
i am undeniable, desirable often incomplete
always open always waiting
for some one...
......just like you ...
to open your heart let me in
to recognize a new start
to have a play, a scribble,
doodle, pen jive. to become
alive.... to thrive,
just begin with a single letter.....then another,
go on be brave...
..........grant me liberty....
Apr 19, 2014
Apr 19, 2014 at 2:50 AM UTC
i eat the wind and sky,
as i walk along the shifting sands.
the waves roar,
profane curses,
in my left ear.
and at my feet
leave, monuments and epitaphs
of their destructive fury.
to my right the sand
sails, from the dunes
in bereft drifts
leaving the long sedge grasses sighing
heartfelt goodbyes.
i head toward the
rusted hulk,
that howls and sings
a furious duet,
with the wind.
i stand with my hands
over my ears and lean backwards,
so my spine makes contact with the derelict ship's hull. my body vibrates,
with the power
of this angry world.
and i rejoice,
in it's soulful serenade.
May 22, 2014
May 22, 2014 at 2:43 AM UTC
The song played-- muffled, hesitant,
As if the tabletop jukebox
Seemed unsure of the tune’s suitability,
As out of place and time as ourselves,
It being Wednesday morning three A.M.
At the all-night diner on the Klondike Road
(The mills, going full-bore down the road in Montmorenci Falls
Making such a place viable, indeed necessary),
But we laughed loudly and nonchalantly
Between bites of nearly adequate cheeseburger,
Ostensibly unaware of all those inevitabilities
Which were tangible but unspoken, indeed unspeakable,
This being the last of the last summer not careworn,
Textbooks to be exchanged for neckties,
Plastic sandals swapped for sensible flats,
Other lives to take flight in other places,
A mere handful of evenings remaining
Before the clumsy process of untying
All that which had been loose ends from the beginning.
Would I go back? In a sense, it does not matter.
There was always a laundry list of reasons
That it could not be, cannot be, will not be:
Irreparably meshed gears of relocations and reconciliations,
Gordian knots of logic and desire.
Still, in my dreams, I often run like a madman,
Chest burning as my sneakers slap the pavement in the darkness,
Back toward the diner, but it has been razed to the ground
(Likely the case, for all I know,
What with the mills silent and padlocked all these years)
And I paw madly, feverishly through the rubble
In search of some remains of those vinyl chanteuses of love songs,
Those epitaphs of our failures,
Those three-minute odes
To our compromised and conditional successes.
Jan 30, 2017
Jan 30, 2017 at 10:07 AM UTC
The eyes behind a head inclined reflect a universe
Of shanty towns and kings in crowns and parties in a hearse,
Of heaping mounds of coffee grounds and pennies in a purse,
Of heart attacks in shoddy shacks, of motion in reverse,
Of reasons why pale kids must die, quite trite and curtly terse,
Of puppet people at the steeple, kneeling down averse,
Of ****** tones and megaphones with empty words and worse,
Of life’s begin’ in utter sin and other things perverse,
Of lewd taboos and residues contained within the Curse,
While poets blind, in gallows’ rind, carve epitaphs in verse.
Jun 10, 2013
Jun 10, 2013 at 4:25 PM UTC
A graveyard of souls
Remembering life as if epitaphs, joy and sorrow come together like one
And the light and the darkness meet in that dim place
To collect the meaning
To find the knowledge
Secrets of the universe
Revealed through whispers to the spirit
And in tears and the soul’s agony
No will to face the world
Aug 4, 2015
Aug 4, 2015 at 10:29 AM UTC
Death owns the mossed headstones
orphaned by time and muted stories
no longer spoken in mortal’s rockery.
Fallen epitaphs .... names surrender
to nature’s bloom and winter frost,
broken granite bouquets tied with wild roses.
Where pain no longer visits, peace speaks
poetry through meadowlark and aspen sigh,
souls long gone now rest as poems cradled
in the arms of Mother Earth.
Sep 15, 2025
Sep 15, 2025 at 5:37 PM UTC