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Dan Filcek Apr 2015
controlled intellectual tolerance,
considered Golden Age,
became first exchange, wars took their toll
turning point called second Age.
seaside expanding new suburbs
food shortage, riots, rooms had fallen
city invaded, concentration camps
some lived, one girl died, bookcase covered
scarce citizens, countryside foraged
spaces provided improved conditions
restoring entire city
city centre has reattained former splendor
buildings have become new millennium,
flat man is city inhabitant
city limits of foreign origin,
large wave settled asylum seekers
social projects make up the population
eight windmills summarizes open society,
increased influx has strained nationalities,
widest varieties share immigrant ancestry
city centre forms the foundation
Canal boats most popular
million visitors flood inhabitants, travel freely through
only staying for illuminated red lights.
This year for Poetry Month, I decided to post a "found poem" every day. If writing a poem is like painting, a "found poem" is like sculpting. source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam
Blair Griffith May 2012
I

A Genesis! The Exodus, the Exodus!
A departure from all terrestiality
Always immoral and depraved, bathed in filth, in self-loathing
Abattoir of our souls, it entrenches us

Also, we too must be of the same make
And bear with our corpses the same proceedings, the same caliber
Allowed to their subversive candor,
All that broke the Carthaginians upon their own passage
Across the peninsular pathways

S'il in our conquest we find, however, that the pachyderms have run aground,
Vous must aggregate our conscious thought
Plaitcate the ravenousness within the heart of victory.

II

Bring victory, the winged harbinger of the conquest,
Beg for tyrannical proclamations: the end of man, the end of men,
By now, the greater of the concepts is lost to its own devices, devices,
Belching out smoke, that bend the corpses upon their backs.
By wrenching from their life a sense of purpose,
Byproductively, they feed heroic romanticisms of combat.

Brought yet upon these fields, there lies no stranger enemy
But that of the tide
Being self-effacing, masochistic,
Belittling, She breaks herself upon the shore, ravaging the bodies of
Both, Playing as ******* and as subservient

III

Come! Wave upon Wave upon Frothing
Crest, to shores of golden enfrenzied ******
Calmed by the liquid of our ***** *****
Charging forth as we
Charge forth armies upon the field of slaughter
Callously, for you, our gilded monarch
Can you see? They cannot see, and we hope to elucidate your presence, they
Cannot comprehend or fathom what they
Cannot see.

IV

Ceaseless now the charges
Come further upon the front
Crashing 'gainst the openings of each
Clangor and madness
Coalesce to form death

Dripping anew with sanguine libations
Drawn fresh from naked lambs, freshly cut for their country
Dionysian warriors return,
Desire forming their mental undulations

Effortlessly they overtake their feminine fortunes
Effacing their identities, removing from them with their clothing, the
Entirety of their selves.

V

From carnal conquest they rejoice,
Flaunting the destruction they wrought
Flinging husks of women about the room,
Foisting these shells on other patriarchs

Given no choice, they return to fields of battle
Godspeed, gods' will, and god-granted
Gaian soil is retreaded by their sodden flesh.

VI

Hellish, infernal is their presence
Having lost no measure to revelry or rest, neither
Halting nor slowed, the march quickens in time with their lustful bellows
Hastened to madness by infinity
Harkened back to prisons of mental anguish by their creators
How proud they are, the Old Gods,
Hacking away the pounds of flesh to reveal the
Haphazard construction to their instruments of torture.

VII

Into the bloodshed, into the fiery cavernous opening of the crusade
Ignited by righteous scraps of cloth and metal
Ignobly formed into crudely significant, textured shapes
Iconoclasts to their own ideals
Idyllic in their self-mockery.

Jabbering like hellbeasts, the warriors drive into the flesh of the conflict
Jettisoning armaments in the process, their
Joie de vivre having been lessened by mechanical limits.
Jocular slaughter synthesized with demonic cries.

Kapellmeisters to the symphony of death,
Keeping in the rhythm of mutilation, counterpoints of steel clashing against breastplates, giving shape to a
Kleptocracy of life.

VIII

Languishing now in the refuse of the struggle,
Laden with corpses, the warriors remain restrained by fatigue
Lurching through the mud, calling out feebly with voices
Long since bellowed to pulpy masses of throat tissue.

Masses of flesh crawling across the fields of strife,
Macerated ground, weak and shifting, struggles to support the
Multitude of half-corpses now in eternal respite upon the bloodied pasture.

IX

Now broken with regret and shame they collapse
Nestled into the marrow of the fallow earth,
Needing only rest in the cooling tendrils of dirt and blood that trickle across them.
Né de nouveau, their trek leads them towards the grave
Necrosis having taken hold in their limbs,
Nascent corpses, they subside with grave finality into a dead collective.

X

Opaque irises await those who uncover the un-burial mound
Oafish sockets containing them like marbles
Open to the elements, decaying with their corporeal encasement, shaded by
Oaken leaves that remain unfallen, while
Obsequious maggots go about their task of cleansing the remains

Paralyzed in the final moments of their mortal coil, the bodies lay stagnant,
Pacified only by the removal of sentience.
Pagan rituals surround such corpses, and the intrepid discovers
Patiently await the arrival of some necromantic spirit.

Quasi-instinctively, the pioneers of the superterranean mausoleum
Quell their fears and remove the bodies from their conclusive locale,
Quantifying their deaths by the armaments and metal carapaces upon them.

XI

Reeling across the path, weighted by the bodies,
Returning, the archaeological presence brings a pall over society, which
Remained reticent despite the presence of such suffocating solemnity
Repressed by its own intent

Solitude is given no quarter, and the bodies
Strung up like scattered marionettes
Silently serenade the town with a deafening cacophony.

XII

To Hell their souls desperately charge, frothing about the shackles of undeath
Torn from corporeal existence, yet unable to
Transgress the mortal plane
Torturous paradox!
Torment the fallen of Carthage's vestigal might no more
Traducer of the human condition
Tragedy is loosed at thy whim
Try not the patience of demi-gods of wrath and bloodshed.

XIII

Undulating by the beckoning of the wind,
Un-beautiful, un-ironed, the shrouds of the coffins
Under grey sky hang softly like leaden sheets
Unaware of the gravity beneath the few inches of oak
Un-aesthetically masking the dead warriors' forms

Visceral is the movement of the procession,
Vermicular, they wind a course to the peak of the foothill
Vehemently the priest urges them onwards, although he is
Visibly ill on this occasion of the anti-hero.

Warlike, the battle up the ***** claims the lives of those already claimed
Wastrels left to rot in the carcass of a long-dead conflict,
Wanting nothing more than solace eternal.

XIV

Xenophobes of the Inferno fear the inevitable presence of these
Xoana, false representations of humanity.
Xanthic is their fear, for inside the malebolges themselves
Xanadu is sought for those of the fallen soldiery.

Yet funerary proceedings dictate descent for these souls, and the coffins
Yaw slightly in the wind, disturbed by the
Yanks of the ****** rabble who bear their weight.

XV

Zeus himself presides over the ferrying of these souls,
Zion awaits them, their final collective fate at hand,

Yet slowly it turns its back upon them,
Xenophanes mocks from his post,
Wailing, they fall
Velocity increasing infinitely,
Until they see no more the lustrous light
Trapped eternally in dark
Stabbed with betrayal and fear, their souls
Run amok, fleeing from the source of their anguish
Questioning existence.
Periodically in the abyss, the helpless aggregate conscious is
Overwhelmed with memory of Paradise
Now to them denied for eternity.
Mephisto remains, their only companion,
Leeching from them the final vestiges of hope now left within, once
Kept hidden to protect the warriors, now
Jabbed and pummeled to death.
In this state of perpetual umbra
Heaven so distant, now only faded, as if on parchment,
Gained by the souls is a sense of locality, once
Forgotten but now reattained, and
En masse, the group instantly
Derives that they have returned from beyond the mortal plane, the terra once again
Collates beneath their soles, and the collective decides they must return
Before the open sun, to bear themselves
Against the gods, against sanctity itself, and thus they cry:
Derek Pascarella Mar 2013
A self-arranged route.
Ambitions led me forward.
Every step was to gain my adolescent aspirations.
I was confident.

When life was array,
The goals became my crutch,
My vitality,
The only reason to move, progress.

Idealistic and naive.
Blind and hopeful.
I meandered swiftly,
I gallivanted unsuspecting.

If I was to truly exist, I had to control my haste.
Oblivious to true adversity,
I needed to digest the lesson,
I needed to understand the complications.

Unexpectedly, the caveat stared at me.
I fought and clashed,
To only raise the white flag of surrender.
The battle was lost.

Who I was eluded.
I struggled through a sea of self-impediments.
I allowed myself to drown in the agony.
I did not have the armor to save me.

Through the fog, I heard songs that healed.
I held on to the words as they began to stitch me together.
I started to crawl,
I knew I would never be the same again.

I knew I had to start a crusade,
An onslaught against myself,
An onslaught against the organization.
I knew I would never be the same again.

As I raised armaments,
With the reinforcement in my ears,
I began to evolve.
The person I was became more substantial.

I had further tribulations ahead,
But I was more prepared, more capable.
I was humbled, yet proud.
The person I was became more unobstructed.

Through the misfortune,
My identity became solidified,
I reattained my dreams,
And I made efforts to get a steady hold.

I told myself I will not founder.
I told myself I could not relinquish.
For this was the war that would define me,
And I knew I must persevere.
Blair Griffith May 2012
XV
Zeus himself presides over the ferrying of these souls,
Zion awaits them, their final collective fate at hand,

Yet slowly it turns its back upon them,
Xenophanes mocks from his post,
Wailing, they fall
Velocity increasing infinitely,
Until they see no more the lustrous light
Trapped eternally in dark
Stabbed with betrayal and fear, their souls
Run amok, fleeing from the source of their anguish
Questioning existence.
Periodically in the abyss, the helpless aggregate conscious is
Overwhelmed with memory of Paradise
Now to them denied for eternity.
Mephisto remains, their only companion,
Leeching from them the final vestiges of hope now left within, once
Kept hidden to protect the warriors, now
Jabbed and pummeled to death.
In this state of perpetual umbra
Heaven so distant, now only faded, as if on parchment,
Gained by the souls is a sense of locality, once
Forgotten but now reattained, and
En masse, the group instantly
Derives that they have returned from beyond the mortal plane, the terra once again
Collates beneath their soles, and the collective decides they must return
Before the open sun, to bear themselves
Against the gods, against sanctity itself, and thus they cry:
Black Jewelz Sep 2016
Where has the fire gone?
Extinguished by exhalations of exhaustion.
Cut down like grass on a lawn
Is a once lush poet-tree of creativity.

Did I heed the signs of caution?

Drowned by disappointment and shame,
I emerged alive, I survived,
But my hopes could not say the same.
They settled with the sediment,

Oh, how I miss when they thrived!

When did it occur,
The moment my heart was drained?
And who was the one to procure
The passion with which I was fashioned?

From stained glass to broken glass, stained.

The inventive ambition has waned,
The glowing spectrum has faded.
I pray all will be reattained.
For I am overworn and forlorn;

Once sculpting precious gems, now just simply jaded.
Hank Van Well Jr Feb 2018
Over again

What I would do just to see your face once more
Even though I know you’d hurt me again
To hold you and love you all through the night
I do anything to have that moment reattained.
So many poems , affection and heart
Put into everything , and “everything you “
The glowing moon has lost its magic
The morning horizons lost its hue.
Although I wish your arms around me
I know it’s not for very long
It would be wonderful for a while
But then back to the same old song.
I’d love to kiss you over and over
But I know sooner or later , you’d you’d only hurt me all over again.

— The End —