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icebox
Member Elite
since 2003-05-03
Posts 4383
in the shadows

0 posted 2018-09-10 11:20 AM




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.

In today's Remembrance
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?

For those who then were yet unborn,
lessons of hopes and dreams torn
from the living and the dead,
should not be lost to time;
rage still cries for reckoning
and should not be forgotten
as just untidy memories,
of lives lost in the moment and,
of those who raced to help
only now to find death still hunts them
from within its toxic cloud.

We mourned a year.
All that was allowed.
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,
but never to forget.

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,
the questions linger empty,
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
reduced to 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 poisoned 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, 2016, 2017, 2018 by icebox
(written, September 11, 2002; edited as above)


© Copyright 2018 icebox - All Rights Reserved
2islander2
Member Ascendant
since 2008-03-12
Posts 6825
by the sea
1 posted 2018-09-10 09:33 PM


I have no words, your words are a blessing for those who suffered or suffer, the poem means a lot, thanks


yann

Paul Wilson
Deputy Moderator 1 TourDeputy Moderator 1 Tour
Member Elite
since 2002-07-07
Posts 4711
United States
2 posted 2018-09-10 10:54 PM


Icebox...Your words echo strong in my heart and mind. Very well said my friend.
I believe I will post my poem from 9-11 after reading yours, for those who forgot a terrible wrong done to America...Paul

~~To share my poems with you is to share my heart with you~~
Paul

LeeJ
Member Patricius
since 2003-06-19
Posts 13296

3 posted 2018-09-13 07:40 AM


yes, it was as you explain, so vivid and alive yet still in the minds of those who experienced that awful day....

Well done my friend.


suthern
Deputy Moderator 1 TourDeputy Moderator 1 Tour
Member Seraphic
since 1999-07-29
Posts 20723
Louisiana
4 posted 2018-10-04 09:01 AM


I've read this many times through the years and always end up reading through eyes swimming with tears. It never loses its power... and the memories never fade.
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