"shelling" poems
For nine days the artillery barrage
rained down on us
that June of summer in the Somme
machine gunners like me waited
in our concrete bunkers deep in the earth
When the shelling stopped
we rushed to the surface
and began our job of mowing down
the slow walking British Infantry
stoically advancing as if in another war
in another time where they might choose
to die bravely and with honour
a hero fighting for his life
his king and country
But here he dies unknown
by the chance turning of my gun
in his direction at that one moment
and the random number of bullets
left to fire.
© M.L.Emmett
Nov 10, 2015
Nov 10, 2015 at 12:26 PM UTC
To the Master, glory!
To the Buckler, glory!
To the Sovereign, glory!
Oh, how grateful to be alive!
The hell shelling like atomic bomb
But lose not sight of the rainbow
Off the curve of hell is the heaven
Oh, how grateful to be alive!
The night’ll not endure
No matter the hell fiend
Heaven‘ll outpace its space
Oh, how grateful to be alive!
To the Almighty God, glory
To the Miracle Connoisseur, glory
To the Alpha and Omega, glory
Oh, how grateful to be alive!
The sun coming to delete the night
Conquer the brute dark by faith
And see the stars in blooming petals
Oh, how grateful to be alive!
The moon is coming this ogre night
This ambushing danger‘ll break
To the sunrise of glory
Oh, how grateful to be alive!
Turn not your back
On the forward march to glory
Shoot hope infinite to the dim horizon
Oh, how grateful to be alive!
To the King, glory!
To the Love, glory!
To the Glory, glory!
Oh, how grateful to be alive!
Nov 23, 2018
Nov 23, 2018 at 5:17 AM UTC
I
I see the boys of summer in their ruin
Lay the gold tithings barren,
Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils;
There in their heat the winter floods
Of frozen loves they fetch their girls,
And drown the cargoed apples in their tides.
These boys of light are curdlers in their folly,
Sour the boiling honey;
The jacks of frost they finger in the hives;
There in the sun the frigid threads
Of doubt and dark they feed their nerves;
The signal moon is zero in their voids.
I see the summer children in their mothers
Split up the brawned womb's weathers,
Divide the night and day with fairy thumbs;
There in the deep with quartered shades
Of sun and moon they paint their dams
As sunlight paints the shelling of their heads.
I see that from these boys shall men of nothing
Stature by seedy shifting,
Or lame the air with leaping from its hearts;
There from their hearts the dogdayed pulse
Of love and light bursts in their throats.
O see the pulse of summer in the ice.
II
But seasons must be challenged or they totter
Into a chiming quarter
Where, punctual as death, we ring the stars;
There, in his night, the black-tongued bells
The sleepy man of winter pulls,
Nor blows back moon-and-midnight as she blows.
We are the dark derniers let us summon
Death from a summer woman,
A muscling life from lovers in their cramp
From the fair dead who flush the sea
The bright-eyed worm on Davy's lamp
And from the planted womb the man of straw.
We summer boys in this four-winded spinning,
Green of the seaweeds' iron
Hold up the noisy sea and drop her birds,
Pick the world's ball of wave and froth
To choke the deserts with her tides,
And comb the county gardens for a wreath.
In spring we cross our foreheads with the holly,
Heigh ** the blood and berry,
And nail the merry squires to the trees;
Here love's damp muscle dries and dies
Here break a kiss in no love's quarry,
O see the poles of promise in the boys.
III
I see you boys of summer in your ruin.
Man in his maggots barren.
And boys are full and foreign to the pouch.
I am the man your father was.
We are the sons of flint and pitch.
O see the poles are kissing as they cross.
3.4k
So desolate, I walked onward
An expanse of sand running mile after mile
In the distance the sound of thunder
Then as if a mirage at sea a village of ramshackle homes
Single story on a sandbank all with gardens of the strangest design
A flea farm, gooseberry bushes and butterflies in net cages
Children playing, the voices of grandparents
The sea now lapping at my heels and between their twisted porches, where on earth could I be
In reality?
For I no longer walked the earth
The thunder was the howitzers shelling the beach
The vilage, that of my childhood
For my mind in its last throws had given me a thought of memory, that of childhood and family that of loving not war
The sea and sand being of beauty
Now limbless, face down on a Normandy beach drowning.
Then darkness
Silence
Peace
Nov 4, 2013
Nov 4, 2013 at 8:09 PM UTC
I
Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Whom no compassion fleers
Or makes their feet
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The front line withers.
But they are troops who fade, not flowers,
For poets' tearful fooling:
Men, gaps for filling:
Losses, who might have fought
Longer; but no one bothers.
II
And some cease feeling
Even themselves or for themselves.
Dullness best solves
The tease and doubt of shelling,
And Chance's strange arithmetic
Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.
They keep no check on armies' decimation.
III
Happy are these who lose imagination:
They have enough to carry with ammunition.
Their spirit drags no pack.
Their old wounds, save with cold, can not more ache.
Having seen all things red,
Their eyes are rid
Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.
And terror's first constriction over,
Their hearts remain small-drawn.
Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle
Now long since ironed,
Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.
IV
Happy the soldier home, with not a notion
How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,
And many sighs are drained.
Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:
His days are worth forgetting more than not.
He sings along the march
Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,
The long, forlorn, relentless trend
From larger day to huger night.
V
We wise, who with a thought besmirch
Blood over all our soul,
How should we see our task
But through his blunt and lashless eyes?
Alive, he is not vital overmuch;
Dying, not mortal overmuch;
Nor sad, nor proud,
Nor curious at all.
He cannot tell
Old men's placidity from his.
VI
But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,
That they should be as stones.
Wretched are they, and mean
With paucity that never was simplicity.
By choice they made themselves immune
To pity and whatever mourns in man
Before the last sea and the hapless stars;
Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;
Whatever shares
The eternal reciprocity of tears
2.8k
i have
locked myself
into a cocoon.
a shell, a
crescent moon.
wind
is battering
against the
walls, shelling
seeds into husks.
the day feels
long and this
song will
have to wait
until the sun
comes. till it
enters the
cracks
in wood
and skin and
allows me
to imagine
again how it feels
to be human.
Jan 13, 2018
Jan 13, 2018 at 9:21 AM UTC
A shadow cast over days past,
like a mast spread for a wind blast
hailing from the wintery north.
Don't think it done until the day's won.
The mistake was made,
the spider web spun over a grenade
that landed on our shores.
They attacked our backyard,
yet we don't act scarred,
we brush it off despite
their continued shelling,
like we can refuse what they're selling.
Telemarketers don't send tapes yelling
that we're all gonna go to hell.
Only enemies that know
we have already fell.
Aug 8, 2015
Aug 8, 2015 at 1:16 PM UTC
Meet me under the 'Clock Tower'.......’you said’ cold....
The missing sun hibernated, could not melt your denial
Your promise smudged, felt its docile absence
And I knew....gathered in moss, under the stone of lies.
Mistrust hung itself, swung above the entrance....rivalling
My happy cove. It creaked to a heartbeat....b-bump, b-bump
Shelling out memories like peas. I recalled the very first time
I captured your eyes, the hesitation we felt......to blink and turn away
A thief stole and robbed the essence of you ......no stone
Unturned...I absorbed the waiting, dragged my heavy soles
Where is your foot print? Your imprint prescribed for my wellbeing
Two to be taken each day....preparing the cradles that rock my feet
Absurd, now I look back, that your word of promise...pretended
You named her "Constance", or was that the 'She woman'
I glimpsed you attached to last week. When huddled
Together under your 'love' umbrella, soaked in one another
Mar 11, 2013
Mar 11, 2013 at 9:10 AM UTC
Outraged by indifference,
On the streets, neighbors once friendly Now stand in opposing lines. Propaganda posters cover the walls, Spreading fear and dividing minds. Ukraine or Russia, Isreal or Palestine. Capitalism or communism the greediness and division funding all wars
In countries once united and with the hope of, now torn apart. Hopes and dreams dashed, shattered like glass. The future once bright, now a dark unknown. How can we navigate our way into a peaceful world
Blue and yellow flags, now stained with blood. A nation once united, now torn asunder. The echoes of shelling, ringing in their ears. The land of golden wheat, now a barren wasteland.
So the streets are filled with chaos and fear, And the violence rages on without cease. Bombs and bullets tear through the night, and civilians cower in their homes, bereft of peace. The loss of life and suffering is great, And the scars of war run deep and true. The conflict rages on without end, And hope seems hard to hold onto.
A home, once a dream of safety. Now a battlefield, a place of terror. The faces of loved ones, now distant memories. hearts, once full of hope. Now shattered and broken.
Amidst the chaos and despair, we search for a light. The occurring wars, the reasons to unite, for a glimmer of hope is a reason to go on. So they cling onto the small moments of joy, like the laughter of a child, or a flower in bloom. In the darkest of times, they try to find strength in the small things.
Though the scars of war may run deep, the world can still heal. We can still choose love, choose forgiveness. We can choose to build a better tomorrow, Where peace reigns and hope abounds. May we never forget the lessons of war, and may we always strive for a brighter future.
May we learn to forgive those who have wronged us, and work to heal the divisions in our society. May we reach out to those in need, and work to create a more just and equitable world. May we never lose sight of the beauty of life, as we hold fast to the belief that a better tomorrow is for us
Oct 21, 2023
Oct 21, 2023 at 5:20 AM UTC
*I survived:
My father's death, who left too early,
My mother's trip to the land of forever fog,
The loss of a child,
A few years in the Pool,
Swimming with gentle crocodiles,
The mountain trail somewhere East,
An angry crowd in Musutiste,
On the same day, the shelling in Studencane,
A few disappointments,
One recent betrayal,
And the black cloud nightmares.
I will survive:
The daily headache,
The selection at the Academy
The fading love,
The obsessive longing for Someone,
Yes, I will survive
It all.
So help me God.*
Mar 18, 2015
Mar 18, 2015 at 1:33 PM UTC
Meditations Over the George Washington Bridge
For Tyler Clementi
1.
I could hear the faintest of notes crying in the wind,
As if your fingers were still nimbly holding the bow,
Striking chords on your violin,
As my car rolled over the George Washington Bridge.
I think about how beautiful this is,
This feeling of suspension, how life is held
So taut on these wires, how simple it is to find
Weightlessness over all this water. My mind questions,
Did you second guess yourself? Did you know you
Were worthy of being held, cradled in more
Than just cool air and metal grates and wetness.
But I guess some higher being knew you better,
Than anyone did or could. Knew how those fingers could string
Harps and violins and heart strings, and you,
You were more than all of this, this wasteland
Where desires and kisses are taken for mockery,
And your love can be twisted against you
To make you feel light enough to float away into sleep.
2.
You flew that night. I could tell. Spread your arms like wings
Like a firebird descending into waves, looking to extinguish
Itself, and to take the world with it, to burn out the innate
Inhumanity of human beings. What they found floating
On those waves was a mere carcass, the shelling of your being,
You shed the unholiness of your skin off to alight yourself,
And blaze us with our ignorance.
They were too blind to see you flew that night, let yourself
Unravel into the sky, ripping through the darkness like a seraph,
Like some holy being, some light meant for a higher calling,
But I know what you did, I could see the shadow of you in the night
Gracefully floating. You, you are a testament to language spoken
And silenced, to the words stuck on tongues prying themselves
Through gritted teeth, you birthed meaning to the need for some sort of justice.
3.
You served your time well,
You messenger,
You,
You young,
Holy creature of God,
And I wonder as I pass over
Your take off spot,
How long you will string
Your notes over us
And how you would have fit
Into the Philharmonic
And looked walking up
For your degree
And how long your memory
Will haunt me
And how long your memory
Will stay a lesson learned
For us all.
Nov 8, 2011
Nov 8, 2011 at 5:31 PM UTC
Summer is
bikes and rollerblades
and go-carts and skateboards,
kites and frisbees
and ***** and gloves,
rainbows and suncatchers
and white fluffy clouds,
blue skies and green fields
and sunshine and flowers,
bare feet and sandy toes
and waves on the shore,
tan lines and sunburns
and goofy tourists,
yellow and orange
and summer rain,
butterflies and gardens
and fresh vegetables,
smiles and funny faces
and silly conversations,
smirks and giggles
and big belly laughs,
playing outside until the streetlights come on
and picking flowers for the dinner table,
building sandcastles just to knock them down
and shelling so many peas your finger go numb,
staring at a sky so blue it hurts your eyes
and running barefoot through the cool grass
and laughing so hard you can't even breathe.
Summer is.
Oct 3, 2009
Oct 3, 2009 at 3:29 PM UTC
Encroaching satellites
High voltage saturation and shade
And an obtuse synopsis of cognitive psychology
Condensing your threshold
Searching for hand outs
Ripping the railings out of the walls
In the stairwells in the doctor's office on the way to your colonoscopy
Laying on the futon with and your therapist writing down everything you say
"Go on"
"Mhm"
"I see"
"How does that make you feel?"
Skid-marked underwear
Delving, dumpster diving for food
In the lonesome twilight
In the rippling rainstorm
People shelling out gripes
Squinting, doing a double take at you
Followed by a wavering tumult
They're gonna have you capped
That is, unless you purchase this love seat
-Tommy Johnson
Jul 15, 2014
Jul 15, 2014 at 11:04 PM UTC
A leaf, a leaf, how queer to think
That trees discard their precious leaves.
While people fear their thinning hair,
A tree’s lifeblood glides through the air.
A child awaits the coming fall,
“The leaves, mommy, they’ve lost them all.
I’m bald and bare, these trees are me.”
In silent death, she grins with glee.
A leaf, a leaf, how queer to think
These trees release frond in a blink.
A mindless shelling to the wind,
The Trees of Winter, **** and trimmed.
That child finds herself a friend;
In naked bark, she can pretend
A tree can shelter her from rain
That showers down in forms of pain.
A leaf, a leaf, how queer to think
These children’s minds form paper links
Like leaves that twirl through steady breeze.
A little girl with brown eyes sees
A future where tree branches sway
In Barren Land, an air’s melee
With wooden fingers shaking hard.
A tree so scared to break in shards.
A child’s dream is soon realized
To be her life; unauthorized.
“These trees, mommy, they shake like me.
Why must strong leaves from these Trees leave?
Why does my hair fall from my head?
Did God make me so sick I shed?”
Dec 2, 2016
Dec 2, 2016 at 9:34 AM UTC
Blades may cut me,
the bullet shrapnel bludgeon me,
it's but the apocalypse bomb shelling
that's going to **** me,
a godly hell of nuclear bluster.
It's the kiss of Death,
a *** of demon and savior,
I’m no son of man,
but this boy's doomed to die
under the batter of Armageddon.
It's not postmortem till blood's but vapor
and atoms are melting,
I'm tolling the Ferryman
not till it's Hell on Earth
and my birthday candles are eradicated
in nuclear holocaust and human DNA dust.
Aug 28, 2011
Aug 28, 2011 at 12:20 AM UTC
Hi Syria,
How are you feeling today?
I've heard so much about you
How strong you are
Enduring six years of illness
And counting
Of how high spirited you've remained
Watching children play in the
Midst of turmoil;
Indiscriminate shelling
Heard of the many chemical baths
You've been subjected to
Assad believing you have
Cancerous cells
Needing to be exterminated
Not realizing HE is
The cancer and you;
You the victim
How I wish I could help you heal
From your trauma
Yet I heard an injection
Was given you today
With the hope
The chemical baths can end
Because it is killing you
Slowly rotting
Destroying your body
Taking away your beauty
The side effect of corruption
How beautiful you once were
How long will it take you to heal?
I wish for peace of mind
And a healthy future for you
Syria
From JM 4/7/17
Apr 7, 2017
Apr 7, 2017 at 1:57 PM UTC
we’re the cool girls of this generation,
the ones with the words ‘i .cannot. give. a. ****
slashed across us in bold red,
the little lies we tell ourselves to go to bed,
instead of spending midnight hours strung on the edge
unable to seek behind or storm ahead.
the ones who fell asleep
to the sound of constant yelling, artillery shelling; bitter bullets exploding
into ugly bruises splattered across still skinny limbs,
shifting stories of anger and frustration, guilt and regret
expressed across inches of innocent skin;
the ones whose clothes were just a little bit frayed on the edges
the wear and tear of secret battles
fought behind sunset alleys,
behind midnight tea stalls
or on bright Sunday afternoons
at the bus stand,
desperately fighting hungry eyes and hungrier hands.
we’re the cool girls of this generation -
the ones with the
*red tips red lips
red ribs red wrists.*
we’re the cool girls of this generation -
the ones that house boys in our hearts and
smoke in our lungs,
the ones who spend way too much time inside their own head,
asking a hundred questions before every step in this game of wizarding chess that
never seems to slow down -
we’re the ones that can be found
wandering insomniac across sulphur-sodden streets,
wisps of distant wishes
settling into the foggy vestiges
of a high mind longing to soar higher.
we’re the cool girls of this generation
the one that are still allowed just the right rationing of
action emotion expression complication communication
while wearing a constant resting not-so-bitch face
head sorting information in a frenzied daze,
heart swinging between your fingers and a suitcase -
the ones with one foot in the present and
other parts traversing through parallel dimensions,
searching for a back up plan if your hearts refuse to allow us home;
the ones whose mouths became graveyards
for all the words that went unsaid,
for all the words to which we came undone,
for all times your eyes asked us questions that we shunned
we’re the cool girls of this generation -
the ones that belong to roads unknown and bodies untouched,
the ones that find stories in shipwrecked planks
that ride stormy oceans only to find homes
or perhaps even build them -
amidst the crumbling sand castles on the sea shore.
because we’re the cool girls of this generation -
the ones with the
*red tips red lips
red ribs red wrists.*
Jan 11, 2016
Jan 11, 2016 at 10:31 AM UTC
Is that God or Desperation
That gets us through the night?
Are the faces in the ceiling real,
or figments of the light?
Do we fill our minds with banal thoughts,
to help us on our way.
Do we mark the time thats slipped and gone?
To live in fear of that final day.
An argument is meaningless
to the one who lives in faith.
Though all of us are faithful,
and in that faith so few will sway.
Yet still the act of lashing out,
seems to have it’s own relief.
Is that God or Desperation
when we question those beliefs.
Is that God or Desperation
that keeps us shelling money out?
In the quest to find some meaning
are some willing to sell out?
Is the “truth” that some are preaching,
worth the solace that it gives?
Even if that comfort irritates,
and causes other men to ****
Is there truly any way to live,
when the fact is we all die.
Or is the truth what makes the soul,
feel vibrant and alive.
If we embrace our own mortality,
is it then that we really shine?
Is it God or Desperation,
that leads to a novel life.
Aug 10, 2012
Aug 10, 2012 at 3:45 AM UTC
Dmitri Shostakovich woke up feeling sad
In his home town of Leningrad;
The naughty Nazis were shelling his lovely Russian city -
So, for consolation, he ****** hard on his wife's left *****
Jun 12, 2015
Jun 12, 2015 at 12:01 PM UTC
at standard cruising altitude
sipping my digestive
after a quite decent hot lunch
on the flight from Vienna to Athens
I gaze through the scratched
double plexiglass bulleye
shielding me from the outside world
and try to pierce the blinding haze
of a lazy spring afternoon
hiding from me
the people shot by snipers
the shelling of suburbs
the burning houses
the crowded hospitals
of Sarajevo, Gorazde, Mostar, Zadar ...
suspended in diffuse light
all I can see is
the silhouette of an occasional
snow-capped mountain range
there is no sign
of human suffering
May 1992
Apr 26, 2015
Apr 26, 2015 at 3:47 PM UTC
always in the fog, the klaxon sounded,
announcing another round of shelling
Tuck was terrified, for he
thought this was a hound
from hell, and it was
telling London to head
to the underworld--dank cellars
or shelters built for survival,
or mass burial
depending on where Gerry's
bombs decided to land
the lasses knew well the drill:
grab their favorite doll and say a
prayer,
going
down
the
stairs
Mum would grab Tuck--his shivering body
not soothed by her warm embrace
for when the hounds stopped their menacing moan
deeper doomed demons would begin their call;
the beast sensed this, and he had no god
to beg for salvation
he could only feel the rumbling of the ground
and not close his ears to the sound, which riveted
stakes through his bones
May 3, 2017
May 3, 2017 at 4:23 PM UTC
I played and was betrayed for a pittance
Stayed in the parade out of persistence
Gave up all charades of any resistance
This is how I earned my own existence
By selling myself by shelling my soul
One inch of survival a day for no self determination
One loaf of bread to let them make me hollow
One stream of **** to shovel from this hovel
I prayed for redemption stayed in this place
Strayed from my potential to maintain my space
Let them flay me alive till my empathy was displaced
And I became a clone of their perfect human race
Just a shadow self of everyone else with no voice
And no real face
Dec 6, 2014
Dec 6, 2014 at 10:13 AM UTC
we dont know his name
we dont know his family
the only thing we know
another child in Syria is in heaven now
another mother somewhere is sleeping with tears
another father somewhere is with broken heart
Unknown child was killed today due to Assad thugs
random shelling on Damascus suburb
Al fatihah... Rest in peace.
May 16, 2013
May 16, 2013 at 3:33 AM UTC
Rolling power:
Churning waves
Grinding shells,
Prolific evidence of life & death
Rising from salt depths,
Epic revelations from below.
Evidence of end games:
Shells, drilled, scarred, scored
By beaks of tendrilled monsters;
Occupants devoured,
****** through ravaged carapaces.
Fecund progeny:
Tiny messages, these shells...
Evidencing life,
Echoing death,
Generations grinding down and down.
My tanned bare feet,
Track tide-lined shells,
Seek forensic evidence and beauty,
Follow ribbons of shells
Cast empty from the pounding sea.
Apr 1, 2019
Apr 1, 2019 at 2:06 PM UTC
Check the twenty-twenty fission
Adam splittin' Eden vision
Bustin' caps in gas emissions
Spittin' written ammunition
For the first-world problem chillen'
Droppin' free speech bomb sedition
On the third-world problem villain
Grand old wizards' ku klux gizzards
All white **** meat chicken dinners
Suckin' Christian dictions'
Hissin' contests over spoils
House of Slyth'rins witherin'
The shale-shock sowing soil
With Satan seeds of ignorance
Still thirsting for indifference
From money hungry London royal
Global warming blizzards
As they're bleeding dry the rivers
Into liquidating oil
Treasure buried with a shovel
In oases brought to boil
Nine eleven popped the bubble
But with Jesus in the building
Turning metal into rubble
Smelting graces into gilding
From the melting *** he's spilling
Into off-shore power drilling
Making killings on the rigging
As Mohammed was displayed
As a scary, bearded, brown-skin man
Through tricks of terrorism's trade
And God's right sleights of winning hand
Pulled rabbits from Fatah's grenade
And cooked 'em in Afghanistan
For PTSD noise parades
And hot dog chugs for Uncle Sam
To waste the land, supply demand
For ol' Osama's unmarked grave
Obama hosted-masquerade
White-washing New World fear campaign
Them masks of patriotic acts
In place as they removed Hussein
Disguised the ethnic cleanse crusade
With bush league mass destruction claims
When the caliphate they made
Went Khomeini on Iran
A stand against the David camp
Shelling bibles to qurans
So the shah's Allah mirage
Put the profits in the pockets
Of the prophet's arbitrage
Camouflage the Green Zone spans
With pyramids of Reaganomics
Tricklin' into sovereign sands
Long before heathen jihadists
Flew their kamikaze plans
Into Trump towers' blacklist fists
Of modern warfare contra bans
Mar 18, 2017
Mar 18, 2017 at 12:25 PM UTC