"mortality" poems
Basketball stands for war or battle.
That's why I think about the players'
personalities, in my foxhole or squad.
Danny and Ben are fast and smart. Dan
especially can pass making him master
and commander. To defeat them as we did
is pst satisfying. Ben's five year old son
disdains to answer my question
Why are you you?
But I'm not here
to catalogue the men's personalities.
I like them. But each of us has moved on
many times, when ___________ suddenly died
the games went on with hardly a mention
and his name has since been forgotten.
But even this, absolute mortality
of not just our bodies but our names
and souls is not what I came
to talk about. Yesterday, between games,
I asked Joe how Molly his daughter likes
the high school. He mounted an impassioned
defense of reading as the indispensable skill
when I suggested math, the scientific method
and history are essential too.
Also between games
Bob diffidently asked why my kids are bald.
I was moved by the care he took to satisfy
his curiosity, concerned the subject might be
difficult. He's a political science teacher so
I took the opportunity to ask What ails
the republic? Of course I answered myself
wanting mostly to hear myself talk about Iraq
and how empire is self-correcting. For once I was amusing
I thought, treating the subject with a light touch
heretofore lacking.
But none of this is what I came to say.
A new guy, long quick and strong, a
bulldozer under the boards with a good
outside shot if needed got into a dispute
with the other Bob who likes to tell people
what to do sometimes, about an offensive
foul Bob called which we almost never do.
The new guy said If you can't take it don't
play under the boards which is what I say
when I'm ****** and don't give a ****
Bob said You've been pushing and shoving me
all day. I said He doesn't want to be
pushed and shoved which got a wry
smile out of Danny as I put the ball in play.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 8:59 AM UTC
My death will be liberating.
And I do not say that in the sense
that I am going to find a cliff
and take a good jump off.
No.
I am just trying to find a
clever way to tell you
that I do not know what is going
to happen next.
You see,
there is a
fine line
between
dreaming and
mortality
and
I am finding out for myself
that being in love
does not always
involve
being awake.
And for my sake
I fall in love with daydreams,
nightmares,
hazy realities
and
the hung-over idea
of not being enough.
It is all out of my hands.
It is all out of time.
And the only thing I have left to do,
now,
is decide.
May 21, 2018
May 21, 2018 at 5:46 PM UTC
1260
Because that you are going
And never coming back
And I, however absolute,
May overlook your Track—
Because that Death is final,
However first it be,
This instant be suspended
Above Mortality—
Significance that each has lived
The other to detect
Discovery not God himself
Could now annihilate
Eternity, Presumption
The instant I perceive
That you, who were Existence
Yourself forgot to live—
The “Life that is” will then have been
A thing I never knew—
As Paradise fictitious
Until the Realm of you—
The “Life that is to be,” to me,
A Residence too plain
Unless in my Redeemer’s Face
I recognize your own—
Of Immortality who doubts
He may exchange with me
Curtailed by your obscuring Face
Of everything but He—
Of Heaven and Hell I also yield
The Right to reprehend
To whoso would commute this Face
For his less priceless Friend.
If “God is Love” as he admits
We think that me must be
Because he is a “jealous God”
He tells us certainly
If “All is possible with” him
As he besides concedes
He will refund us finally
Our confiscated Gods—
28k
I am unsolved, I am a statue in mortality, my smile has had an impact on society but my life has never been absolved
All I wanted to do was entertain, but instead, someone betrayed me and let my blood fall like rain and with nothing to gain
Before and after, my eyes have always been open so while you figure out who's the killer wheather it was Rob, Ed, or that guy Hansen, I have to wait, invisible to the world and lost until then
I've been killed, tortured but you all just talk about which side they cut first or how my body tore, the name is Black Dahlia and that name has become a media *****
My smile has been smeared ear to ear, my body severed in half, my veins drained of every quart but I am still proud to say my name is Elizabeth Short
Jan 21, 2016
Jan 21, 2016 at 3:05 PM UTC
We know the world is a crazy place
and that is it easy to give up, throw in the towel.
The idealism of youth gives way to the cynicism of middle age
when we realize that despite our best efforts, change is very difficult.
To be a parent and, in particular, to be a father....why bother?
Some say fatherhood is driven by ego,
the child providing the ultimate selfish representation of oneself.
Others say driven by fear,
the fear of mortality and the unconscious and genetic need
to propagate and maintain our lineage, our species, our world.
While both can be true, I believe the best manifestation of fatherhood
is driven by tikkun olam, a Jewish concept that we all have an obligation
to better the world, to move it to a better state than currently exists.
We do what we can when on this earth to love our family, friends,
and be as righteous as this world will allow.
Our genetic legacy is not nearly as important as
our obligation to pass on what we know, have learned, have experienced,
and enable our children
to carry the mission to an always higher level.
No matter what our belief in the afterlife, and what the future may hold
we are here now in THIS life,
and as long as we move the ball further and further
in the right direction, there can be hope.
Truly being a father, a good father, enables hope. Maybe that is enough.
Jun 19, 2011
Jun 19, 2011 at 7:17 AM UTC
The boxes
which keep my blood clean
are stacked as tall as I,
a monument
in the spare room
to past battles.
Too many words,
too many thoughts
tied up in the
hand-to-hand combat
with mortality.
No more.
What life I have
will not be defined
by an indeterminate end.
I live to write poems;
I will no longer die in them.
Feb 28, 2018
Feb 28, 2018 at 11:54 AM UTC
Sitting next to Father Time,
Warm in comfort,
Tucked up in memories.
I can hear the ragged breath
Fading like a sunset,
Slow but sure;
The unthinkable
The inevitable.
A gentle hug
Of mortality
Reminds me
That nothing lasts forever.
Apr 4, 2015
Apr 4, 2015 at 6:03 PM UTC
You are the definition of ****
**** and cool lady
That’s you.
A nameless Goddess that sashayed into my circle
To stay only for a minute and vex my feelings
Then disappear as swiftly as you came.
You must have been blown by the breath of beauty
And modeled your movements after the Goddess of seduction
How else could a mere mortal achieve such poetry in motion?
Such fluidity of grace is only found in the movements of oceans,
And
Goddesses of seduction
How can a mere mortal kick it to a Goddess?
Words seem so trivial,
And my voice so inconsequential
For you I would have to speak with the voice of thunder,
And allow lightning to spell out my passions for you in midnight skies.
Allow natures songbirds to sing my odes to your beauty.
And a valley of Jasmine’s to intoxicate you with their fragrance.
For a Goddess
Such things as mundane chariot rides through man made streets will never suffice.
For you I would capture a Phoenix,
That it may take you to the ends of the world,
And speak to you of things deep within my heart that my mortal tongue knows not the language of.
To kiss you with my mortal lips would result in spontaneous combustion,
And although I could embrace this fate
For such a taste,
Goddess
I want to kiss you for eternity
So I would call on the rising and setting of the sun for the rest of my life to do this honor.
If love is jewel,
Mine is the largest-
Most magnificent-
Ever fashioned by the human heart,
And in my mortality it is my greatest possession.
To you Goddess I offer my heart.
Jun 1, 2014
Jun 1, 2014 at 8:00 PM UTC
To each their own form of bravery
For though this life is an individual test
It is not a challenge of rivalry
All have their hardships
Struggles of pain and unfairness
Working to rise again once being tripped
Do not judge another by what is seen
For bravery is often quiet
Keeping hidden where they've been
There are struggles that you
Will never, ever know
That may be very real to those around you
From physical limitations and disabilities
To emotional pain and despair
Life shows us our certain mortality
The goal is to still appreciate the gift of life
And become a better person
Becoming refined through our strife
So at points when you're low
And especially at points when you're high
Never judge someone, for you never know
Someone you see could be fighting
The fight of their lifetime, so think
Before you assume it's weakness you're sighting
Their fight may have just begun
Or maybe it's been going and going
And they can't last, they're done
No one has the right to judge another's bravery
Mar 12, 2014
Mar 12, 2014 at 11:17 PM UTC
My heart I bequeath you
O’ stillness of my universe
I bequeath you my sanity
Spreading this cloak of being in your dust
I bow to your twinkling stars
To the waxing sun and scented grass
I bow to your springing rivers
To the parched grain and blossoming flowers
I bow to the warmth of my lover
And want of my beloved
I bow to your saccharine figs
And honeyed nectar in chalice filled
I bequeath my mortality to your transiency
Blinded by this light in game of ruse
Into your cohesiveness, I fuse
In blinkers to win the race
Espying a king in glass
Presage of being a slave
Yet when darkness falls
I furl my cloak and solemnly rise
For I bow not then
To your barren fields and waning suns
I bow not to your garish colors,
To the cloying drupe and wilted blossoms
Bracing my feeble transience
With my tenet and trail of faith
I bow to the King of kings;
Whilst I beseech for emanating hope,
In my tigers clasp, my God’s rope
I beseech,
Till the noise becomes music again
And as I gaze in the glass now,
All I espy is a beseeching slave
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 2:17 PM UTC
*"This is but once an end to us,
A single blot upon our page.
There is still much we will discuss.
In another time; another age"*
**Her palm went weak within my grasp,
As her soothing voice began to fade.
And like the biting of an asp,
There was no bargain to be made.**
*"I cannot breathe this wretched air--
Made toxic by her extinguished breath--
And were I to feel I could not care,
I'd follow her into her death."*
**A plague upon mortality!
A curse 'pon all the gods!
And yet the binds of morality,
Will maintain all uneven odds.**
*"There is still much we will discuss.
In another time; another age"*
**It repeats and rolls--a cursed chorus,
Set 'gainst a melody that dances up a rage.**
**Nothing left to discuss; no other time or age.
No longer can I breathe her breath; there is no other way.
The world is not a picture show; we're not born on a stage!
Life exists for pain and loss; there's no grand scheme we play!**
*"I cannot live this wretched life--
Made empty by her extinguished flame--
I'd hoped that I could make her my wife,
But not all plans are laid the same..."*
**I drag myself into the street--
Away from the memories of her--
And fall 'neath the current of marching feet.
I try to forget all that we were...**
**Then I sense a figure there,
A silhouette among the crowd.
And all I'm left to do is stare,
With what little strength I'm left endowed.**
*"There is not but once to any end,
No singularity to the times.
Though it will not repeat, my friend,
The past works well in rhymes."*
Mar 13, 2014
Mar 13, 2014 at 1:10 AM UTC
The blue Arabian sea, the towering Western Ghats
This then is Kerala the most beautiful Indian state
Lush green hill stations, lowland paddy fields
All are in Kerala between the mountains and the sea
Fourty four rivers flow so water here for all
Exotic plants in abundance beside the waterfalls
Enchanting emerald back waters put here for your delight
The days are never long enough to view each wonderous site
Kerala is called gods own country, the reasons very clear
Wildlife abounds, exotic birds and sika deer
Here you will live longer than in any other state
Fresh food in abundance and low mortality rate
Why don't you come and visit this paradise on earth
And take away the memories that you will always cherish
Feb 20, 2014
Feb 20, 2014 at 3:22 PM UTC
If want was water,
I would be drowning, my head under completely
and my oxygen quickly depleting.
If confusion was cold,
My fingers would be numb and I wouldn't even
have a coat to ward off the freezing.
If youth was you,
It would be slipping away by the second,
And I can't get a hold to stop it.
Now,
my air is gone,
I'm shivering to the bone,
and can't keep a hold on.
But, this is only a poem:
I know I'm not suffocating, subzero, or slipping.
But I can't help but feel like the more I write,
the farther I get from reality
and the closer I get to metaphor mortality.
Sep 6, 2018
Sep 6, 2018 at 10:25 AM UTC
She came home and said
something like
Hey how you doing
But I didn’t tell her
that I have been
indulging in a
sweet and sour
strawberry string
sadness
there is a living ghost
on Facebook
and I can’t decide if
it is wrong to unfriend
the dead
so that I am not reminded
about the countdown
of my own mortality
or of my family
like a sordid experiment
so she said something
about the weekend
which produces guilt
for a spoil I haven’t committed
in the spot in my mind
that is addicted to
a strawberry string sadness
where Netflix plays
and the dent on my side
of the bed becomes more
pronounced
While I try and decide
about a living ghost
what is wrong and what is
right in this media induced
******* that develops from
beta to final release to a total
sadness 2.0
Feb 24, 2015
Feb 24, 2015 at 5:01 AM UTC
On failures I rejoice
pockmarks on the skin that is my being
Beautiful reminders of my own mortality
A slave to the Romans spoke:
"You are not a god"
Failures to me speak the same
I am not a god
I am above no one
To failures I owe humility
To failures I owe will
To failures I owe life
Because without them
I might be everlasting
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 1:12 AM UTC
Ashen doves float within the waves,
slinking like silent demons in the night.
They curl around my body,
jaws operating like steel machines,
gnashing at my limbs.
I begin to scream for help,
but they ****** my breath,
they drag me under their tides of black,
unleashing my unremitting fear of water predators.
their teeth, sunken into my flesh,
gnawing at my mind,
painting me my new mortality.
These are my demons,
the sharks in the bath when it comes to hygiene.
the fear of the below and the depths of human mentality,
the untraceable percentage of human worthlessness,
the detestable attraction to the demise of our minds,
I float lower into the aqua,
pressure building,
unforgiving and foreboding
I close my lids, and dream of the sand,
praying it to be underfoot when I open my eyes,
but when my lids open, the doves loom closer.
The irony of a hydrophobe,
dying at the hands of the sharks.
Oct 31, 2017
Oct 31, 2017 at 8:20 PM UTC
My Insanity
Written by Adam M. Snow
Falling weak, I lay my head;
resting now I feel dread.
A ghost am I,
forever nigh;
a mute yet blind;
this world, my mind
held insanity,
my humanity,
lost to eternity,
by mortality.
Apr 12, 2014
Apr 12, 2014 at 3:06 AM UTC
Superheroes inspire us all,
superheroes make us marvel.
Superheroes are adored
from Beijing to Washington D.C.
But superheroes don't wear capes,
they wear a '96 Olympic shirt
and loose-fitting pants
you would never catch me in.
They don't have x-ray vision,
they've worn glasses
for as long as you remember.
They cannot fly,
and yet they seem larger than life.
They never seem to lie,
and they still say "I love you"
in the exact same way
almost sixty years after they bound it to eternity.
They don't have super-strength,
but they are your super strength
and they lift you up
until you can do it on your own.
They seem invincible,
but life has a way of reminding you
that even Superman has Kryptonite.
They are stubbornly steady
even when the bill of health
isn't clean.
Just as they are your strength,
you feel your aching mortality
when you find out
even superheroes get cancer.
Yet somehow,
after their greatest battle is fought,
there they are in all that remains
spreading an unyielding light
upon whoever sees them soaring by.
We wear an "S", a bat,
or even a spider
to pretend that we are our heroes
and emulate their image;
but I won't wear that old shirt,
or those terrible, worn-in jeans.
Instead,
I'll harness that unbreakable spirit,
and maybe one day
I'll be a superhero too.
Sep 4, 2016
Sep 4, 2016 at 3:31 PM UTC
The next to empty train
Roars through the mist of dawn
As it passes the lakes and elves
The dark and mystic pines
-forests that once told of horrors
To keep the ones like me
From crossing the line-
This box, this crate
A testament of the modern man
To whom which it serves
It is somewhat of a time traveller
When it breezes the land
That years have made its own
And yet there are scenes from my window
That I know are proofs
Of exceptions to the rule that reads,
“time will take its toll”
All the brooks and oaks
And even more so
Every bolder and stone
Convinces my heart and soul
That I need not be marred and scorned
Broken and torn
By the thistles and thorns
And all the bourdons that the lions
Of this glass world
Convict me to *****
Since there is a side
To the manic and indecisive puzzle that is I
A side of realism and cynicism
Thus I am well aware of my mortality
And the scarcity of the time that is mine
My existence is an indirect unwritten vow
To never bend my back and bow
To never fall in line
And receive my share of coals
To fuel this machine down the rusty tracks
In a race against nature or God
A race to prove one or the other
Or even both wrong
A race we’ve already lost
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 11:43 AM UTC
Sunshine,
Birdsong
And children drunk on
Lemonade
And laughter.
That Welsh picnic
Has lasted forty years
And will last forty more
In daydream
And nightmare.
The stream babbled
Over pebbles,
Fern fronds
Brushed our sun-browned shins
Till the dead sheep
Slugged us in the guts.
Bloated and bulbous,
The body dammed the stream,
Its lifeless eyes
Crawling with life.
Those pearly marbles were
A child’s looking glass into death.
The rocks we hurled at it
In reckless revulsion
Were the screams
Of violated youth,
And those empty dead sheep thuds
The dawning of our mortality.
Mar 21, 2011
Mar 21, 2011 at 3:20 AM UTC
I will always think fondly
Of the park bench
Near the sad man’s statue
Whose beard of stone
Was sloppily painted
By a bunch of overenthusiastic pigeons
That silly park bench
Where we first kissed
And had our first public argument
About nothing at all
And at the same time
About everything we thought we had
At first our memories
Turned the grass greener
And the skies bluer
And sometimes it seemed
That sad man smiled
Though it might have been an malevolent grin
But soon it became tainted
A symbol of fleeting love
Of passion’s mortality
Its habit of swiftly disappearing
Like cagey, distrustful pigeons
And illusions fuelled by sentimentality
Now I understand the sad man
And consider his faith to be cruel
To want and crave and hope
Yet to be sentenced
His life writ in stone
Near an empty, broken bench
Oct 27, 2015
Oct 27, 2015 at 7:18 AM UTC
Oh, how I delight in the taste
of my lover’s scent
as she cries out my name!
In my arms, a slender orchid
worshiped to soft placidity,
she murmurs
do I still yearn for my virginity?
And I whisper, my love,
ten thousand times
ten thousand times, no.
For what we tender feel in lost virginity
is not for lost virginity alone
Not for a shred of skin or a drop of blood;
what human being mourns this?
That small ***** we feel
is the eternal mortality
of all lost first experiences.
Then let us thank the Gods they spare us,
for now,
our last virginity.
Think now upon the family and friends
we have lost
to disease or hunger, to time
or accident, to addiction or war.
How shall we remember them
if not their names?
How shall we speak of them?
Will you remember me?
Or shall I become as dust in this temple?
Loudly, all my loves, hear me,
come now with me!
Let us leave this temple for a time,
walk with me to my secret garden
where we shall remove these robes
and look upon one another
with the gift of acceptance
and where
we shall place flowers in our hair.
Where we shall hold hands
and walk a bit farther
to the river and bathe one another
in the moonlight.
Then let us return here to celebrate
the memory of the fallen
as the Gods intended.
Let us remember the names,
let us speak the names and lest we forget,
cry out their names.
Oct 28, 2018
Oct 28, 2018 at 10:03 PM UTC
Like a male monkey you rises up
And thumps hard your chest-it is you and you only!
O Man! You forgets, who you are and what you are is Nature’s
She generously gives and she avariciously takes-
Just a few chances she is giving you to repent before she ruthlessly returns
She is a sharp, doubled edged sword-merciful and merciless!
Man, Humanity is not hostility: Humanity is humility!
Like Sheol that is never satisfied you want to swallow the whole world
Like death you want to take everything, big-small-you want to stomach all
Everything you want to keep to yourself, to be to your entitlements
You take and leave nothing at all for the harmless hopeless-the voiceless
Yet you easily forgets, when the angel of death calls it’s only you and your soul in burials
Your ill amassed pride, wealth and health is not with you anywhere in this your brutal trials
Man, Humanity is not gullibility: Humanity is generosity!
O man! O man! You fills the whole world with mortality
You have killed the sole essence of the soul’s endless immortality
With your undignified dishonesty, your free-will to filthy immorality
War you begins wealthy to get-war is a supernormal profiting business
Man, Humanity souls has never been subjects to severity but sanctity!
Innocent-as little as little children-you murders-they were inevitable!
Common civilians’ deaths are collateral damages-inescapable!
You forgets who you are-you are a little loaned, little you returns for judgment
Here no allies to look after your backs, no cracks to corruption kickbacks-
It is the fairest of all hearings, a ***** for a ***** it is not for a big spoon!
Man, Humanity is not ignobility: Humanity is dignity!
What you are given to govern you governs not
What you are given to take care of you pilfers all
For you and your lineages eternal legacies-the richest ever to have graced the earth!
Yet you forgets, Master a little while returns to put you to a rigorous account
And whoever much is given-that much is also expected, what will be your report?
Man, Humanity is not royalty: Humanity is loyalty!
Humanity is a community, not a sorority of individuality!
Humanity is not infidelity: Humanity is honesty
Humanity is not how wealthy: Humanity is how a loyal legacy
Humanity is not how large is your multinationals entity:
Humanity is how huge is your small heart-its hospitality
Humanity is a humble history, a saintly story!
© Kìùra Kabiri. All rights reserved.
Feb 17, 2017
Feb 17, 2017 at 1:23 AM UTC
I
The successive suns of summers
swim in me like a balcony of heat
I glow with the sol of sols
the pine cone of lava that
makes my cheeks full, white
the sun-drop of diamonds
have petrified in my heart
and I am creation rushing down
ii
On all that is below, these stars
know me and I among them
we are like water in water
ocean creatures of great adventure
vertigoes of light, layers of softness
suns of paradise, legends of golden noons
revolutions of princely sunspots
cliff of mortality, planets revolving
iii
Around a center, galaxies revolving
around a black-hole that was once
a great sun, time has pink candle-like veins
but she knows the sun, the sparkling rocks
the matter and energy of our destinies
caught up in a seabed of lights
the successive suns of summers
swim in me like an ode to sun-religions
iv
but I am here, drinking sun-wine
in the surreal view of full eyes
with a body of silver for the kaleidoscope
and a naked face dismantled by another eclipse
another wonder, another design of day.
Oct 15, 2014
Oct 15, 2014 at 9:19 PM UTC