"pompeii" poems
175
I have never seen “Volcanoes”—
But, when Travellers tell
How those old—phlegmatic mountains
Usually so still—
Bear within—appalling Ordnance,
Fire, and smoke, and gun,
Taking Villages for breakfast,
And appalling Men—
If the stillness is Volcanic
In the human face
When upon a pain Titanic
Features keep their place—
If at length the smouldering anguish
Will not overcome—
And the palpitating Vineyard
In the dust, be thrown?
If some loving Antiquary,
On Resumption Morn,
Will not cry with joy “Pompeii”!
To the Hills return!
46.7k
Many people write a "bucket list" of things they want to do before they die. Now in my 80th year, I don't have the time or the energy to do things that others might aim for, but I have during my life visited many places, seen many things, and enjoyed many experiences that I would have been sorry to miss. There have also been some events that I would have preferred not to experience, but which have enriched my life in different ways, and which I remember with a kind of sad affection.
Some of these are very personal to me, and would not be interesting to most people, but read the note if you wonder why I chose them.
Here then is what I might call
My Reverse Bucket List
Towns and cities – architecture & atmosphere
Barcelona, Spain
Venice, Italy
Oxford, England
Jerusalem, Israel
Luxor, Egypt
Varanasi, India
Hiroshima, Japan
Pompeii, Italy
Other locations
Galápagos islands, Ecuador
Great Barrier Reef, Australia
North Woolwich, London
Churches
St Paul's Cathedral, London
Sagrada Familia, Barcelona
Coventry Cathedral
Córdoba Cathedral, Spain
Blue Mosque, Istanbul
Other structures
Taj Mahal, Agra
Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland
Royal Festival Hall, London
London underground system (because it was the first, and I rode it for a long time). Also the more splendid underground railways of Mexico City and Moscow.
Avebury Ring, Wiltshire, England (the largest prehistoric stone circle in the world, and much more primitive than Stonehenge)
Bayeux Tapestry
"Angel of the North" statue, Gateshead, England
"Christ the Redeemer" statue, Rio, Brazil
Events
Messiah at Royal Festival Hall, Feb 1959, with the girl later to be my wife
St John's night, Spain, early 1990s (?)
Death and funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, Aug 1997
Oberammergau passion play, 2010
Destruction of World Trade Centre, Sept 2001
Sep 17, 2018
Sep 17, 2018 at 9:16 AM UTC
pompeii runs through our veins,
hot with the taste of ash & decay.
some of us are fortunate enough to
become ruins; others are ruinous,
sepulchers of epidemics, air-born, contagious.
a disease that could make London a cemetery.
we dress ourselves up like relics, clothed
in silk and gold and gossamer,
as if they could one day be armor.
as if they could bring us safety.
as if we deserve such things when everything we touch rusts.
it takes only twenty-two years for the
average person to realize they are a weapon.
that words are knives and actions are razor blades,
as if to remind the living that we
came into the world screaming—
and we have never been silent since.
we are the Morrigans, the cursed women,
those whose destiny is entwined with death.
we court death, invite her to our dinner table every night,
let her sleep in the guest room, leave the doors and
windows unlocked for her.
death, we realize as women forced to bear
the weight of the dead on our shoulders,
never comes as a thief.
she comes as a lover, smelling of lilac, a grin
too white and too large to be human.
still, we invite her in,
because even death, regardless of form,
makes for better company than the empty dark.
Jul 10, 2018
Jul 10, 2018 at 10:46 PM UTC
I need to change the circles I'm in
Because I fell into the trapezoid
Of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole
Making people believe I was a square
When I was really a rectangle
You just had to look at me from the right angles
The shape of things now
Is me looking at you from the wrong angles
You're pretty hot
90°
When you turn away from me your hotness doubles
180°
I think my Pompeii worm could survive the temperatures
But if you were to turn back around
No creature could survive
360°
The paradox of the parabola in my pants
Will never be solved
It's not your math problem
We're just two points on this rotating sphere
Where time is a straight line
And our's is a segment
I wish I understood the formula
So I could predict the outcome
But there are too many variables
Leaving my head spinning in circles
And myself running in circles
Meant to be avoided
Because within those circles are triangular trials
Where two points create a perfect line
And a third point ruins that
As points are added to the population
Lines only get larger
Like the welfare line
Mammoth shapes grow wider and more complex
Like the Pentagon
Lines become more easily crossed
Angles more easily tangled
And my freezing point becomes my boiling point
While I wish for a world more two-dimensional
Because once I consider depth
I realize I could never measure up to my ruler
Jun 30, 2017
Jun 30, 2017 at 12:35 AM UTC
From the ripple in a glass of water
to the sonic boom of this internal
Pompeii, the erosion
of her etymology is the only
sense of movement in her
dilated, cave-pupil eyes, those
two ghost towns spanning
and encircling all the way back,
stretched like an elastic blindfold
past the moment the first brick was laid,
perhaps her first vivid memory,
or anecdote, or first word uttered
in a Cuban slum.
There are mountains of tumbleweed
over the once thriving metropolis
that expanded towards America;
who threw herself into
the architecture of seven pillars,
borne from her land and
minerals. Gone are the
huts that housed her
knowledge of basic motor skills.
The women who once imagined
Mami and Mima as her birth
name now scrub off
the graffiti of her excrement;
they saw a swarm of pink moons
the day she told the same story
to every visitor that came
their way, each day then becoming
a missing surveillance tape, a sinkhole
dismantling the awareness
in her bones and stubborn will,
until she became
these dust-engulfed plains with
a daughter and granddaughter
archeological in their efforts
to chase down the remains
of a girl still breathing in
those eyes from time to time.
Every other ten-millionth blink of
the eye rides the silhouette of a post-infant girl
on the high tides of her quick visit,
looking in horror
as the nation of her life's nightmares,
heartaches, broken promises, romances,
spiritual breakthroughs, life-changing seconds
drowns with morbid unity en cien fuegos,
desperately attempting to assemble
the remnants of her psyche
past her cognitive bloodclots
with the awareness of one
who speaks no languages.
Gone is the moment
she first learned
to feed her several children
before the slip of sunset.
One of seven pillars remain intact,
the others long dismantled of their
stick and straw infrastructures.
One pillar remained,
housed her own colony
for nine months,
and now both descendants
travel the mind of their
greatest influence
with perplexed dedication,
caustic humor the decoy
for swarms of exhaustion
and asphyxiation
from the truthful atmosphere,
reveling in the seconds
of humanity lurking
in an abandoned etymology.
Jun 29, 2010
Jun 29, 2010 at 11:19 AM UTC
Concerned,
my wellbeing doesn’t come into it
neither does my wife’s;
but worried I am,
for my children’s future,
my children children’s future
and for my great, great grandchildren too.
I listen with horror,
I watch and shudder,
I read and feel misery;
when the wind blows,
because time enough at last,( or is it?),
I gaze at the old man in the cave,
with a little peace and quiet,
will it be shelter skelter?
Are we in quarantine?
Chosen?
For a new place, alas, Babylon
with perhaps Dr Strange Love?
Maybe there is no soul
within the man,
unless the balanced man became unbalanced,
what reason has a man got,
(even if he’s people are suffering from punishment),
To justify such actions?
Perhaps Pak Pong-ju is not a man,
Could he be God’s apprentice
God’s messenger
God’s terminator,
to emulate ***** and Gomorrah or Pompeii?
Why should we shoot the messenger?
If this is the case
then truly I should be concerned,
my wellbeing doesn’t come into it
neither does my wife’s;
but worried I am,
for my children’s future,
my children children’s future
and for my great, great grandchildren too.
Apr 4, 2013
Apr 4, 2013 at 4:51 PM UTC
If the Sacred Fire of Vesta went out, it meant one of two things:
meant
1. Rome was in danger;
meant
2. A Vestal ****** a guardian of the flame, was having ***
Chastity and fire
are two attributes that are directly correlated. If one is lost,
the other will follow. Trust me. This is fact:
only ****** women
can be celebrated.
The ****** Mary,
the ****** goddesses,
the way **** was seen as a crime
against the father, not the daughter:
women
must
remain
pure.
Do not eat the pomegranate seeds,
do not touch the fruit of knowledge. A
statue of a young boy
holding an apple
does not hold
the same connotation
as a woman holding an apple. Offering it to a man who
could have refused. Getting blamed for the fall from Eden.
A woman
with a snake draped around her body is not Eve,
is Lilith, but it’s close enough. They are both to blame for
all the evils of the world, so what does it really matter anyway? Women
are more susceptible to wavering in their faith in God,
to worshipping the devil, to practicing witchcraft—
The flames are out. Rome is not safe. A ****** is buried
alive for her sin. Lilith is slaughtering women in childbirth.
Babies are dying. A man is celebrated for his multiple
lovers. **** shaming in 79 AD. The beds in Pompeii
brothels are made of stone. St. Cecilia is face down in the
dirt. Women on the same level as slaves, if not lower. The
goddess Vesta as a housewife.
Aug 17, 2016
Aug 17, 2016 at 10:47 AM UTC
There is nothing darker than the putrid soul of your heart
Crusted by burnt desires and pyroclastic ash
Tortured by your existence, dipped into the hells of mankind
Bubbling skin and singed mercy embrace me whole
Turn up flames and burn me alive
Hear my screams ****** your mind
Cast me out of the dead, for I am not leaving
Laid in a forever coma then awakened
Pompeii is dead, Pompeii is dead, Pompeii is dead
Oct 12, 2015
Oct 12, 2015 at 5:33 PM UTC
I could write love poems for days
Yet not once have I been in love
(With someone else that is)
I could write a book of sonnets
With no one to recite them to
(Except to myself of course)
I can preach about the danger in our love
And the joys in our heartache
Because I am a Narcissist who hates myself
I am an utmost contradiction
An antithesis, an oxymoron
(or maybe just a ***** full stop)
Either way I have loved myself
The way the moon loved the sun
And yet I've destroyed myself
The way Mt Visuvius destroyed pompeii
Relentless, and still gentle,
A beautifully tragic mess.
Self love turns to self hate
With the flip of a switch of my bedroom lights
Light turns to dark
And I turn into my own worst nightmare
Becoming my own demons
And when morning comes
And I'm so bloodied and bruised,
Ill nurse my broken body tenderly
Reviving my former self
I'll look in the mirror and see
The only friend, the only lover, the only person
That has ever stayed
And i'll remember why I love who I am
And how I am strong,
Stronger than my demons,
Than my own thoughts ,
And stronger than myself.
Dec 27, 2018
Dec 27, 2018 at 6:52 AM UTC
She used to be full of energy, enthusiasm, and determination.
She was spirited.
She was persistent.
She was adventurous.
She used to laugh and smile.
You striped of who she used to be.
She was Pompeii and you were the eruption.
The two of you should never had met.
You broke her when you went.
You left just like them.
Her grandfather.
Her mother.
You left.
You died.
The two of you should never have met.
You built a home in her heart.
You and your bright smile.
Your contagious laugh.
Your witty jokes.
The two of you should never had met.
Although I'm glad you did.
If you didn't,
I wouldn't exist.
So thank you
Sep 12, 2018
Sep 12, 2018 at 10:19 AM UTC
I felt it all burn inside this space
Pompeii wreaked havoc all over the place
Watch it burn my ashes in this urn solitude my main concern
As any heart broken lover can attest
It's not easy cleaning up your own mess
Nov 23, 2014
Nov 23, 2014 at 5:28 PM UTC
A band without an audience
Two thousand years of history
An amphitheater
Vesuvius still is trembling
It always echoes through time
Eternity on the run
I hear **down, down. Down, down.
The star is screaming**
It shares its greatest secrets
Its always us and them
**And in the end
We're only ordinary men
How do you feel?
And if your head explodes with dark forboding too**
From the dark side of the moon
We'll set the controls for the heart of the sun
And call to you across the sky
We end to become echoes again
Vesuvius
Still
Trembles
At the glory of our music
Apr 24, 2016
Apr 24, 2016 at 5:43 PM UTC
Let the molecules charge and crack
and rip the world right open
around me.
Let the closet under the stairs
smoke and fry and cook,
let the tangled wires melt
into each other like they'll
never let go,
their flashing shadows
welded arm in arm like a
Pompeii puppet show.
Let the air's discontent
rumble softly and
let the rattling house rock me to
sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream—
Jun 19, 2014
Jun 19, 2014 at 12:43 PM UTC
Pompeii stood proud near Naples.
Close to Herculaneum.
When in August of AD 79.
Volcano magnificent erupted.
Without nonchalance.
A buried city born.
Complete with frescoes of erotica.
Were subject to ancient censorship.
City modern with flowing water.
Trendy port.
Gymnasium.
Modernist by all accounts.
Population 20 000.
Mostly perished in brimstone's evacuation.
From the deepest depths of hell.
Suffocated nearly all.
Asphyxiated on vile fumes.
Eruption cataclysmic.
City buried far underground.
By written description.
'Tis believed that hell on earth unleashed.
The day following magical celebrations.
Worshiping Vulcanalia the Roman God of Fire.
Ironic tragedy procured.
Few survived the tragedy.
Those that did ran free
Anarchy, starvation.
Mainly petty larceny.
Landscape near destroyed.
Pliny the Younger wrote in a letter.
Vivid description of images seen as Pliny the Elder tried to rescue a few.
Felt perhaps had a duty to do.
Was admiral proud of the Roman fleet.
His life taken in forfeit as citizens from the ash world perished.
Pax Romana followed tragedy.
Dealt such a wicked card.
Embalmed in ash citizens lay.
Locked forever on the spot as they ran away!
By ladylivvi1
© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)
Sep 22, 2013
Sep 22, 2013 at 6:35 AM UTC
Moth wings fluttering against my cheekbones
you are warmth
you are light
I am standing at the edge of this ocean
watching the galaxy pool around me
I do not care if it is a halo or horns
you have hiding out beneath your hat
It does not matter to me if you have shoulder blades
where your wings should be
We can press our bones together for all of eternity
We can be an archeological discovery
Love buried in ash
You are forever all I will need
Mar 25, 2014
Mar 25, 2014 at 11:50 AM UTC
Fall to me, all you streets of Rome,
With your embrowned oils from torched walls and breccia of shadows,
The pizzicato of stairways and afternoon slowly closed
Like the thick, leathery-echo from this book of all roads.
Fallen, smoldering empire of storefronts and back-shop heirlooms,
Your lupine hills unbound with milk of cur in the wind and woods,
To your fallow fields rowed deep by a conquest of oars,
To the deepest silence and soot-muted oneness of Pompeii,
And a sky that is an ancient coin, without worth,
But still rubbed smooth at the edges by overfond lovers.
Jun 14, 2019
Jun 14, 2019 at 4:16 PM UTC
my fury is vesuvius
and the heat will spill over
and destroy your light
light of pompeii
pompeii of the old
old darkness rises anew
Jan 24, 2015
Jan 24, 2015 at 3:37 PM UTC
Let me breath you in, she said
Every fiber of your being
And let your soul rest in my bed
An open heart, an open mind
You thought you have seen it all
But you have been clearly blind
Her love still lingers inside of you
Run away and embrace what I am, my pleasure and pain
Stare and let me entice you with these eyes of intense blue
I am, as you see, the calmness of a flowing river; calm and tame
And I am, as others cannot see,
An uneasy ocean, with massive and violent waves
A simple, still flower in a garden of smothering weeds
While being a volcano ready for eruption
Exploding, taking you over like ancient Pompeii was to the lava sea
Posso mettere un pò di polvere di stelle nei tuoi occhi
E far entrare un pò di luce nella tua vita
Let us unite in a state of pure ecstasy
Where the world ends, and Heaven starts
Nothing else exists, and there is no more "you and me"
Swallow my body and spirit whole, and take me in
Where there are no laws of physics or society's logicality
Come into my world and leave this one of gray
We can be gods of our universal dimension
Tu sei la mia stella e l'unica cosa a cui penso sempre
Your mind touches me in all restricted places, as you feel the hot temptation
Tu sei un mistero, Tu sei un enigma,
** bisogno del tuo amore, il mio sconosciuto
Io non ti conosco, ma sento la tua anima
We are aliens from our own dreams and imaginations
I am the light and the darkness
Allow me to inhale you and your inner creations
Take me as I am and you will see
That I will heal and fill the hole in your heart
Your weakness will be replaced with love and peace
Be my melody and I will be your harmony
Let us meet in the unknown, a foreign land
Let us die and shed our skin gracefully
Let us take a walk into the infinite
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 11:09 PM UTC
History is written by winners
Their story's the one that is told
The loser's are like dust in a zephyr
Blown away by the wind and the cold
A battle is waged on a hillside
The armies are dressed in chain mail
One side is left battered and dying
So...which side will write down the tale?
A submarine sinks in the channel
It's just off the Dover coast shore
No one survives but the story
of sailors we'll here from no more
Villages destroyed by a virus
It spreads through the town really quick
You know that the story gets written
By the survivors who didn't get sick
Pompeii was wiped out, that's a given
A volcano did wipe out the town
The people were burned to a cinder
So who writes, when there's no one around?
In the movies the cowboys and Injuns
All fight for control of the fort
Do the Indians spread tales of their losses
Do they write it all down just for sport?
As years changed the stories came forward
Of the armies and people who died
They were defending their loved ones and country
It's too bad they were on the wrong side.
As time lumbered on to the future
The winners were not just the ones
Who told what had happened that day
They were not just the ones with the guns
Bystanders came and told what they saw
This would change how stories were told
There was now a new player with stories to tell
And the winners did not look so bold
Things now were written that no one did know
Of the other sides battle attempts
They were not heroes or winners but, losers no more
For these writings now made them exempt
They spoke of their battles, their loyalty, grit
To stand strong and fight for their lives
Even though it was futile, they still thought they would win
Thinking only of children and wives
Now history is written as quick as it comes
Television has surely changed that
You can watch things at home on your big screen tv
And you can feel like you're where things are at.
Deception is gone and the truth now is told
In seconds, not years like before
You see things as they happen, and the final result
May shake your soul to your core.
So....now History is written by winners
and by losers as well just the same
And no matter, whatever the story
You now know all players by name.
Regardless of whatever the story
Be it ****** or sports, games or war
We can now see just how each one has ended
And their honor, and that's what life is for...
May 3, 2012
May 3, 2012 at 5:04 PM UTC
The clouds of Pompeii
had nothing on his heart.
An eruption of UNCERTAINTY
then
his world e-x-p-l-o-d-e-d.
lights extinguighed,
joy (deleted).
Night is now who was once Day.
Corruption of a steaming bliss.
Darkness gripped his mind -
insomnia, coupled with a blind-ness..
that could only be caused
by some serious disruption....
like the ash of Pompeii when it settled
or the pain of a burnt page.
Jul 20, 2018
Jul 20, 2018 at 6:25 AM UTC
Your eyes were a familiar town,
A ghost town I call home
The first time we kissed,
We tasted soil in each other's mouths,
We both smelled fire
And felt burning when our fingertips touched
We had dreams of a natural disaster –
The rainfall of ash and pumice
People screaming, temples collapsing
And we woke up remembering
What buried us
We lay in bed
My bones on your bones,
My skin against your skin
My hands shook like an earthquake
I asked you, "Did we not die like this?"
You kissed me, unafraid,
"Were we not born from this?"
May 4, 2015
May 4, 2015 at 10:10 PM UTC
you looked me in the eye and it was clear -
as my fingertips traced the outlines of your veins
(i can feel the blood flow)
i realized that you were already flowing through my own
(it makes me feel alive)
you were my heartbeat, dancing slowly inside my rib cage
(it felt like our favorite song)
standing firmly on my mind, calming my soul
as you slept underneath my skin
so if you are my peace, my tranquility -
then why are there moments of dreadful silence
(the calm before the storm)
when i can feel the fear rattling deep inside my bones
(*it whispers run, run, run*)
if we are supposed to be one and the same
(*don't you dare look back*)
then why do I feel like you are my Vesuvius
(he will bury you alive)
and I am your Pompeii?
Mar 7, 2015
Mar 7, 2015 at 1:11 PM UTC
(Plaster cast at Pompeii)
[THE TOUR GUIDE]
*“Ladies and gentlemen, here we are at Pompeii's
fabled Thermal Baths where heated water was
passed through duct work in the walls. One can
imagine Nero himself stopping here on one of
his visits.”*
[BONITO]
Bonito stepped out of the bathhouse and looked up.
Vesuvius rumbled - shaking ash and fire skyward.
Breaking into a run he sought the south road,
glancing back anxiously at the
vast dark cloud billowing down the mountain.
*"The principal city roads were recessed
and wagons were required to have standardized
wheelbases and clearances to fit in channels cut
into the stone. Follow me please to the residential
area.”*
He gained the road and his feet
pounded the stones of the “via stabiana.”
The cloud multiplied and fell on the city.
Ever deepening layers of ash clogged Benito’s path.
Heart pounding in his chest he lengthened his strides.
*“Leaving the opulent villas with their spacious
atria, we now enter the market area where we
shall see a display of remarkable interest. During
excavations, empty spaces were discovered in
the ash deposits.”*
The rising ash captured his left leg.
Bonito inhaled the fiery air and ******
forward into a burst of falling soot
but was unable to finish his stride.
*“Archaeologists poured plaster into the voids
revealing the outlined bodies of Pompeiins
trapped in their final moments. Take, for example,
this man caught in mid-step with no time
to escape the life choking dust.”*
June, 2006
Jul 30, 2013
Jul 30, 2013 at 1:32 PM UTC
Death needed a break
Any place would do
Just a week off would suffice
As reaping can get tiresome
If its the only thing you do
****
Die
Splat
Drown
BLAH,
BLAH,
BLAH,
So many ways
Simple with a touch
Or complex like
A final destination death
Gosh they were fun days,
Ships I cant travel on,
Just between me and you
"The Titanic was my last holiday"
*I had that sinking feeling,*
When I walked on board,
And my holiday became a working one
My holiday once again sank short
Of all the things a giant ice cube,
But that wasn't the worst
A Beach I thought a long time ago
Pompeii was a pleasure
till it blow off its top
Ash,
Heat,
Pyroclastic flows,
I was getting burnt up inside
Hot rock holes in my clothes,
Again a working holiday
When will my time off
Just be a relaxation
No souls to judge
Your given
An extra week,
Live life,
Seven days,
Too do what you want,
Because when my holiday ends
"I'll be coming to reap you"
Now don't do stuff stupid things..
Aug 18, 2014
Aug 18, 2014 at 5:30 PM UTC