suffering – Mandibelle16

Poem: Free Verse “Silent Memories and Loss” #amwritingpoetry #remembranceday

Credit: Stijn Swinnen via Unsplash.

Iron bent, prehistoric post and lentle,

Chrome victory or metallic battle;

Savage men in armour, shields n’er enough,

Swords to slice, injure, nick.

Poison arrows that traverse an arc,

Death-calls rung, arrows afire still —

Burn nightmare orange in the macabre battlefield.

Perhaps, a wish that this’ s but an ancient scene past?

Worn soldiers, and the dead silenced;

Truth learned: War’s never glorious.

It doesn’t matter the treasure –bronze, iron, silver, gold, life, death, chaos, peace.

Nor the weapon or uniform, be it —

Silver earrings clinking, breastplates buckled, bulletproof vests zipped close.

Bracelets clashing with gauntlets, brass knuckles;

Swords swift, daggers, and cannons turning all to fodder.

Bazooka’s, rifles, flamethrowers, land mines, poison —

Worn or pointed with lion-courage, an ice gaze;

Amongst the looting of houses, alters, churches, and vaults.

Every tragedy in the trenches twisted,

Dirt flying, limbs, and bodies buried,

Explosions, napalm death, mustard gas;

Crushed with tanks, blown-apart —

Shot with machine gun-terror, fright of blitzkrieg warfare.

Each November we seek to remember, to recollect the horror;

To not only romanticize —

With letters of love penned and lost, last videos streamed from afar.

To justify the ‘why’ behind the pinning of honours,

To recall the terror cold dark, too real — as to never forget.

Horrific thoughts, memories weighted, vivid nightmares that never die.

Somehow we remember, but the memories blur —

Time passes; we wear our pins, poppies, cross our hearts, close heavy eyes —

Hold silent minutes.

Knowing that we can never know the loss — the cost,

Never know–know what is and was.

For most of us weren’t there, and never will be,

But then, pax is n’er forever not anywhere.

#NaPoWriMo Day 20: Free Verse – “Get Away, Get Away” #amwritingpoetry

For NaPoWriMo Day 20, the prompt is:

“Try to write a poem grounded in language as it is spoken – not necessarily the grand, dramatic speech of a monologue or play, but the messy, fractured, slangy way people speak in real life. You might incorporate overheard speech or a turn of phrase you heard once that stood out to you – the idea here is to get away from formally “poetic” speech and into the way language tends to work out loud.”

Based somewhat off William Blake’s, “The Chimney Sweeper: My Mother Died When I Was Very Young . . .

Credit: Google Images

Get away, get away, no scraps to eat,

Get away, get away, vile chimney sweeper.

Squirrel down the fireplace with hacking cough,

Get away, get away, tiny three-year old son.

Get away, get away, clean the soot well,

Treated as vermin, you know not nor why.

Get away, get away — two-hundred years passed.

And many hollows, still haunt chimney sweepers;

The dogs are fed, cats cradled, but somewhere —

The little chimney sweeper’s weep,

Broken spirited, choking on ashes, soot.

And modern toddlers cough, hurt someway else.

Get away, get away, we’ve a thousand things to do,

Get away, get away, nuisances only God sees as deserving.

Perhaps, some grandparent’s of a toddler, yet . . .

We’ve still forgotten. William Blake’s Chimney Sweepers.

Pretence and poison, do we value things, experiences over young life?

‘Get away, Get away,’ words unheeded not remembered,

Think they better, know they not;

None of us are better via religion, ethnicity, nor sense of reason,

If we don’t love the little children.

Get away, get away, let the chimney sweepers breath,

Let fresh air carry giggles, chimes in the wind,

No more work, not ever,

Only golden pathways to freedom.

#OctPoWriMo 2018 Day 1/ Sunday Writing Prompt/ #PhotoChallenge: Poem – “Death’s Twilight” #amwritingpoetry

For OctPoWriMo Day 1 the theme is surrender. I’m combining with MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie Sunday Writing Prompt on the poem, “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath. Also, using a photo prompt from NEKNEERAJ of MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie.

She rises, you think she’d shrink,

Lose her footing with knobby bones, bloody footprints;

But, she’s a miracle and survives despite —

The annihilation of her heart.

No surrender, no train cars full of the sick and dying;

No camps of death will kill her.

She won’t surrender, she’ll paint you a dream,

A masterpiece of despair and scribbled features.

A portrait or less, no seashell rocking shut;

She rasps, vapours of her lost innocence.

Herr who?

With battered purple sockets.

Herr who?

A dream or nightmare trawling.

I have no dreams of innocence, only a suffering spitefulness for your hate.

Words that shattered the cracked mirror,

Seventy times seven bad luck.

Herr who?

Miss Plath, your words are riddled traps.

Herr who?

She fakes death, blood and bone snapped;

Flesh from hands shredded.

Your terror camps and eyes of sunken sin,

Can’t make her alive, though she’s not yet, dead.

Be on guard for those caught in-between;

Those who aren’t afraid as the breath in their lungs rattles.

Beware of those who see death and leave life;

The exact meeting of one leaving the elevator, while the other travels home.

Beware of hair as hellfire, she the angel of death;

No surrender, for none was given her.

Beware her yawning grin,

And hollow eyes as she devours men like air;

Destiny with her twisted wings,

Her opalescent fluttering, a sheen that hides the bitter.

Her charcoal hands twitching as they sketch the twilight of death.

“Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath

*****

I have done it again.

One year in every ten

I manage it——

A sort of walking miracle, my skin

Bright as a Nazi lampshade,

My right foot

A paperweight,

My face a featureless, fine

Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin

O my enemy.

Do I terrify?——

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?

The sour breath

Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh

The grave cave ate will be

At home on me

And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.

And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.

What a trash

To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.

The peanut-crunching crowd

Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot——

The big strip tease.

Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands

My knees.

I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

The first time it happened I was ten.

It was an accident.

The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.

I rocked shut

As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying

Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.

It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.

It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day

To the same place, the same face, the same brute

Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’

That knocks me out.

There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge

For the hearing of my heart——

It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge

For a word or a touch

Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.

So, so, Herr Doktor.

So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,

I am your valuable,

The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.

I turn and burn.

Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—

You poke and stir.

Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——

A cake of soap,

A wedding ring,

A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer

Beware

Beware.

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

Photo Challenge/Tale Weaver: Poem – Free Verse – “Stairway from Forever Winter” #amwriting #poetry #TaleWeavers #PhotoChallenge #MLMM

Thanks to NEKNEERAJ from MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie for hosting photo challenge #220. Also, thanks to Michael from MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie for hosting the Tale Weaver prompt on the them of a voyage of discovery.

Credit: Silvia Grav

Shivering as if I’m shedding,

As if I’ll never know heat;

Or a belly without ache.

Crisp bacon and sausage sizzles,

French toast with cream cheese;

Clouds of whipped cream,

Maple syrup flowing in valleys;

Sweet strawberry jam,

Tart on my tongue,

The crisp-softness of toast;

Homemade bread devoured.

Orange juice with champagne,

Sweetness and fizzing bubbles.

Chatter, hands passing,

Sniggers and giggles;

Raising the bar; the bets are laid —

Who can eat the most pancakes?

There is plenty in this dream,

Richness and generosity abounds —

Reality’s barren and frosted.

No warmth of hugs or arms over shoulders,

Until a burning stillness settles.

The sensation of hovering above,

Until your firefly soul lifts.

The memory of family, breakfast with ice-cream,

Strawberry sauce and flaked croissants;

Of food so boundless that all gnawing hunger’s abolished.

No daydream with clawing pains,

Only serenity, path into a place —

Where loved ones suffer not.

Where there’s no war to justify —

No battle to survive;

Nor land that will not thaw to grow.

Above, there’s glowing prosperity,

A joyfulness that never pales.

No ice-white skin preserved in chill,

No forever winter.

A flame that flickers and overwhelms,

Sparks and heat spread,

As butter melts on fresh bread.

Reflecting on golden streets,

A feast as none knew before.

Temporality extinguished,

The relief of a forever home

Not hunger nor strife.

It’s unimaginable,

But after all the misery —

This stairway’s an easy flight.

100 Word Wednesdays/Sunday Writing Prompt: Poem – Decuaine – “No More Rough Currents” #amwriting #poetry #100WordWednesday #MLMM

Thanks to Bikurgurl for hosting #100WordWednesdays and also thanks to Michael of MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie for hosting a Sunday Writing Prompt based on a Watery theme and one of the topics: Up the creek without a paddle, Wading Upstream, The River Flowing Up a Hill, and When the Fish Stop Biting.

Credit: @Bikurgurl

Caramel and cantaloupe burn white,

The sun setting, in fiery depths it gleams.

We struggle ‘gainst the current, it’s our plight,

A journey many take wading upstream.

We fight not to slip, sweat-stained body’s heave,

Then, deltas and islands draw near, take form.

In felicitous breezes, drenched clothes dry clean,

Acrid earth bears us, we tremble on shore.

Caramel, Bellini sky’s, rain pours —

We clasp tight hands waiting for the ‘morrow.

*****

Another night in the grit of sands touch,

We dream of skyscrapers, our souls believe;

We’re past the current, our fingers bold clutch,

Memories, hopes, the warmth of home found breathes.

No more suffering in past with disease.

A butterscotch sky, fresh peaches, tall palms —

The sun rises — a gift, fresh view point now gleaned.

The beach busies, children run as waves fall,

Tumbling sandcastles near shores, claiming walls;

The peace of our Home, no rough currents, at all.

*****

Photo Challenge: Fiction – Hung Out to Dry #photochallenge #fiction #MLMM

Thanks to NEKNEERAJ of MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie for hosting the Photo Challenge Prompt. This is a piece from my writing class, as well.

Credit: Bleach Film

“I tried, but I don’t love you. I hate hurting you. I’m sorry I cheated.”

“Are you? How do you switch your emotions off like that? Like a light-switch?” Jen’s voice was shrill.

Michael met her eyes but refused to answer. She stumbled into the living-room deaf to his begging. The back door slammed and his admissions ravaged her heart. These new wounds bled, sucking the life from her body. He’d hung her out to dry.

Dizziness overcame her and Jen lay on the couch, head buried in a pillow. She tried to absorb her ex-fiancés words, but her stomach was queasy and a strange ache grew inside her. It clenched and tightened, a fist squeezing her heart. Michael’s insidious behavior, shocked her. Her thoughts circled and her conscience hammered until she couldn’t stop them from revealing missed clues.

Jen was overcome with a sense of hollowness. Tears stung, traveling down the plains of her face as she peered into the fireplace mirror eyes flared-red, swollen with flat-gray irises; she felt emotionless and weary. There would be no more sunrises in life, not now, not ever.

Her heart ached, and the tangible throbbing pulsed and amplified until she couldn’t hide. Sobs wracked Jen’s body. She shivered, even when she pulled over a thick throw. Michael’s festering splinter of betrayal infected her heart and savaged her; nothing could ease Jen’s suffering.

Saturday Mix: Poem – Alouette – ” Waterways, Rubies, and Light” #saturdaymix #poetry #dVerse

Thanks to Sarah of Weejars on MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie for hosting Saturday Mix. Here theme as ben homophones and this week’s homephones are: straight – not crooked, strait – narrow waterway, and discussed – talked about, and disgust – sickening. I’m combining Sarah’s Prompt with Lillian from #dVerse Poet’s Pub birthstone Prompt. My birthstone or a ruby from July.

——

—-

Roads aren’t all straight,

They’ve crooked places.

Thin trails where water travels,

Areas you trip, fall.

Afraid to be mauled,

Waterways fast cause rabble.

—-

Trapped at a strait,

Sharp-toothed bears await,

For you to give in and cry;

Say, “Life isn’t fair,

And you weren’t aware,

Of suffering,” safety’s lie.

——

Waters bring life, save,

They can also enslave.

Us within straits to suffering,

You’ll drink fresh water,

You’ll can drown, falter.

But often, whirlpool’s they bluff.

——

Your mind discusses,

Escapes; swim through roughs.

Don’t permit whirlpool’s giant waves —

Their narrow streams ire.

Hard days don’t linger,

Swim for your life, you’ll escape.

——

Many times we see,

What we think, believe —

Is an end, ’cause beginnings —

They disguise themselves,

Self disgust us tells.

We’ve not an ending, so swim.

——-

We can fight despite,

Life’s times of great spite.

We are survivors living,

To see another year.

Monthly birthstone here —

Once more; rubies mark swimming —

—–

Through, surviving dark.

Bright vivid lights hark.

Another year not unfulfilled.

A year we that we thrived,

Sadness subsiding.

With Ruby’s energy, strong will.

——–

Tres on through life’s thin,

Narrow straits to swim,

In glorious lakes and oceans.

In heat of hot springs.

As life always brings —

Light; healing not to bemoan.

——

“The Alouette, created by Jan Turner, consists of two or more stanzas of 6 lines each, with the following set rules: Meter: 5, 5, 7, 5, 5, 7 and Rhyme Scheme: a, a, b, c, c, b.”

See Shadow Poetry for more details.

——-

Three Line Tales: Poem – Lunes – “Tremendous Harm” #amwriting #poetry #3LineTales

Thanks to Sonya of Only 100 Words for hosting #3LineTales.

——–

——

Floating near, pink and bright,

Bubblegum tips that,

Sting, bite, cause such suffering.

—–

I only wished to observe,

How pink goes,

Unseen, un-attacked within jewel-blue oceans.

—–

Then, I felt your unforgiving,

Stings, realizing then,

Bubblegum jellyfishes cause tremendous harm.

——-

Notable Quotes: May 2017 Part 1 #quotes #pinterest

Happy May. Hope you are all loving spring and the coming of summer. It’s a busy month for me, how about you? What’s new? Whatever is happening, here are some more quotes for your thoughts.
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Photo Challenge: Poem – Free Verse – “The Healing Touch” #amwriting #poetry

Thanks to NEKNEERAJ of MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie for hosting this week’s photo prompt challenge.

——–

———

Many faces have I, but don’t let me evaporate.

Too many masks I wear within to cover the scars that bind,

The twisting vines of ruined skin,

Not even plastic surgery could heal.

And the whispers of the dreadful night,

They haunt me in my sleep.

Each nightmare worse than the last, entrenching me in madness.

Crying and shaking, in a world I cannot escape.

My screams echoeing from the domed ceiling,

In St. Peter’s Basilica, my heart a kindled pyre.

Does God hear me, my fervent prayers without pride?

I know if He did, he would answer what I seek,

Provide relief from the cruelty of my suffering;

Of the ache and the burn in my skin.

He’d be a cooling gentle wind to end the burning flames,

I hope in my meekness for God as Elijah knew.

I try to forget. to move on, hiding behind masks so I’m safe.

My scars are not physical but they hide beneath skin,

Where plastic surgery cannot salvage a broken soul.

I’m a wretched bloody mess and my stomach is churning,

Why are the worst injuries, the ones you cannot see?

Why do people only see skin deep?

Not many will peer beneath the perfect layers of white ivory,

To see the layers underneath charred and scorched.

Many will not look past the words on your lips,

They are not interested in how a person says certain words,

Or why they say what do.

Many people hear only what they want to hear,

And if you choose to scream,

Than you’re the crazy one seeking attention.

But many screams are silent,

Before they are ever heard out loud,

This is why we need listeners and those with empathy,

To overcome those overflowing with ignorance and apathy to life;

To realize there is meaning in helping your neighbor out.

For we all have hidden scars and screams,

And most of them are dug deeply within our souls.

They wind around a person’s heart, a choking vine envokes —

A cry for help, so please hear it, long before we shout out loud,

Be still for a moment and listen well.

Respond before the masks hide many other faces and mine;

Act before you start cutting into our hearts,

Doing much more harm than good.

Watch your words and carefully avoid —

Assault and battery, for refusing to help those in need —

Refusing to help those lost in their pain.

Heal with laughter and conversation,

A piece of your precious time.

Do not forget the meek and lowly,

We all need help discovering pathways into stardust.

——–

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