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Open Poetry #49
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icebox
Member Elite
since 2003-05-03
Posts 4383
in the shadows

0 posted 2015-09-10 12:06 PM





Still, I hear the pipes sing
Amazing Grace
I hear them in my dreams
I hear the screams
every day,
months of cadenced march
out of an open pit mine of souls,
all day long
and through the night
in and out of mind
until my heart ran out of song.

Today
bells ring,
performers sing
and everybody's priests
ask gods for treats.

Each name a moment held
in all solemnity
on edge
to slip into eternity;
pomp and circumstance,
a ceremony's tears and choking
fears that this will mean an end
to the beginning of the years
we mark remembering the dead,
living dead
names all run together,
labels on one giant
blended bleeding soul.

If one more plastic politician says,
‘Let's roll,'
I think I will be sick.
The dead can sleep,
where is peace for heart and soul
that could bring quiet to the living?

We mourned a year.
We buried buttons
and a watch,
a rock,
handfuls of dirt and ash,
a shoe
or two,
some bone fragments,
photographs in empty caskets,
memories in sleepless nights
full of empty arms and empty beds,
tears in empty hearts.
It's time to leave the past.

For some,
we became as Death
in a time to stalk revenge
cold and crafted with precision
in deserts,
fields and mountains,
where we are hated for existing,
where gods are left with questions,
where evil breeds in men,
where each victory brings two graves
and self-serving politicians bend the world
back into their greed.
So, the need,
there are no answers
and so, the killings never end.

There is no grief beyond the love
of that which death can steal.

There is no deal to make,
no memorial to shake the monstrous memories,
smell,
taste
of human flesh and blood in ashes mixed with fuel
melted steel
vaporized concrete,
grit that clogged our eyes
a blessing in disguise;
shame
of hoping winds would change,
the dream's there every day,
turn back and turn away
run,
no where to go,
who died
when there is nothing left
to hold
but memories' deadly clouds
thick choking terror
floating wild in toxic air,
horror grown so full
that vision's lost,
sounds of bodies hitting ground
just beyond the reach of sight
within the sounds,
quick claws of fright,
no where to hide.
No where to hide.

©2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 by icebox
(written, September 11, 2002; edited as above)







© Copyright 2015 icebox - All Rights Reserved
nakdthoughts
Member Laureate
since 2000-10-29
Posts 19200
Between the Lines
1 posted 2015-09-10 08:18 PM


In deep thought this eve of...
JamesMichael
Member Empyrean
since 1999-11-16
Posts 33336
Kapolei, Hawaii, USA
2 posted 2015-09-11 09:53 PM


fine writing...james
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