Fruit like green oranges,
Small leaf-shedding thorny tree,
And sticky wood pulp.
No one eats Osage.
No one tastes these hedge apples.
The thorns make barbed wire.
A sharpie--clutched in an iron fist.
Backed by barbed wire justice.
And noose-tight legislation.
Masked police… across the nation.
Surveillance towers.
And military powers.
Voices stifled.
Bayoneted rifles.
Distrust.
Fear.
Both--far and near.
A Republic—shattered.
Her people--battered.
Liberty--locked and chained.
A Constitution--so profaned.
Justice…locked neath bureaucratic bars.
Political corruption--leaving scars.
Across the land I once defended--
My heart is broken.
And unmended.
Lay me down in a field of barbed wire,
I’ll fulfill your noxious fantasy;
It is mine too;
Let the messenger speak,
The broken arrows on your letter
I assure you were received;
Now lay me down;
Pierce me the way you want to;
Let the scratches bleed me;
Mingling with our scarlet telepathy
desire marries us by blood oath;
Forever miscible;
Let your latent paroxysm indulge,
I assure you it’s rough healing;
Meant to rupture false rapture;
Lay me not onto petals
but barbed wire, this is noxious;
Your message is my fantasy too.
Dark eyes peer through freedom's grate
squinting in a spotlight glare
lost between a fear's folly
and bloody fingered courage
Escape - denied the body
freed the passion of the mind
a visage in the twilight
dark eyes challenging their fate
10/17/2020
IMPRESSIONS Poetry contest
sponsor - Nette Enclaud
Barbed Flowers.
I would write this all down to you
If i thought you could read.
If your hand didn't cast a shadow
on what i would author.
If only you had seen what i saw,
What i can only chalk about now
but not here - Afterall...
Listen? You can't do that, one of two!
Not for yourself, not even momentarily.
Patently, not for me nor for others.
Not for our girls who have ears
that listen and seesaw.
Your noisy darkness grasps the heart,
plays it like a theremin.
This is how i feel
when you feel the way you do...
Like something always does.
Better left unseen, unheard, unread.
Put to rest the thread,
it comes unraveled
when the needle is un-minded.
The scent of October,
it's windy fragrance,
i scribe this to myself.
Saptaparna etched in color.
Holding the muddle together,
a little while longer... with rusted wire.
I nurture beautiful, barbed flowers.
Little men will always invite
maelstroms of venom into your life.
They pleasure-peck vulnerable beings.
Never caring that a heart needs freedom to beat.
At their core is selfishness of the purest form.
However, you're not the cure and never will be.
There's no balm for this color of rot; never will be.
But you're a fiery young, wide-eyed doe.
Until living strikes with barbed wire slaps to the soul.
I wish you and Mr. Little the very best.
Wish I could have steered you far, far away.
From that little reef that planted sirens in your head...
Sometimes love needs to step aside.
Then offer unconditional triage
till the mental bleeding subsides.
Everytime I move they dig deeper into my bleeding heart.
Ripping, tearing, gashes...
New scars become old scars, until you can't tell them apart.
And I'm left with shrapnel, cold, alone, and dark.
I'd do anything to make the bleeding stop.
But you can't put a tourniquet around your heart.
The only way to heal is another round of darts.
So naive, you think you'll win being honest from the start.
None of us are that smart.
It's all barbed wire around your heart.
Take me out to the kill people game
Turn me loose on the crowd
Give me some kidneys and backs to crack
I don't care who it is I attack
Let me bash, bash, bash as they scream loud
If they don't die it's a shame
Cuz it's one, two, three strikes you're dead
In the old kill people game.
the barbed butterfly
she shimmied onto a barstool
looking for a nine to five reprieve
a fight or a night
which ever came her way
black pencil skirt pulled up so far
jacket slung across the chair
says I don't care
it's Friday.
g and t with a slice of lime
melts her
slick cocoon.
In caged fury
Many belong in a padded cell
Now I have a great story to tell
There once was a mission from a prison
For two guys named Amos & Andy
In carpenter class they stole a file
At night they worked on the tile
Although many days have passed
They still had every reason to grasp
A reason to escape call it fate
Then one day Andy broke the tile block free
Off went Amos and Andy
Crawling through the corridor
The pair managed to find a door
It was then they saw the lights of freedom
Slipping over the barbed wire
Amos cut his foot
Dripping blood he managed to make it to a nearby stream
There he washed his wound clean
So they went on there journey free
Later Andy got busted for selling whiskey
As for Amos he lived a life of a king down in Mexico
Andy never told the authorites where his friend would be
Another fast break from the penitentiary
When the barbed wire is rusted away
And the wooden huts have fallen to the earth
When the whistling wind no longer carries their cries
And the pitiful survivors as those also who tormented them
Have returned to the earth as the dust from whence they came
Who will remember the vile injustices done to the Jews
And those others whom didn't fit into Nazi ideology
Go tell the world so that it will never happen again.
© Paul Warren Poetry
Behind the barbed wire
Behind the barbed wire a cherry tree blooms:
bustling petals in the land of death.
Behind the barbed wire a gradient runs
between the scent of flowers
and the omnipresent stench
of burning flesh
wafting from the crematory furnaces.
And I wonder:
if there are pillars of clouds by day
and pillars of fire by night
and loud cries
and pleading prayers,
then where is God ?
Where, behind the barbed wire?
Does he know about žthe walls of Treblinka
and Osvetim?
Does he know that Arbeit macht frei?
Does he know about the Final Solution and
forced labou
and the horror of the Holocaust Trains?
Is he, too, in the gas chambers
gasping for breath?
Is he, too, starving to death,
wishing nothing more
than something to eat?
Is he, too, behind the barbed wire ?
And I wonder:
despite the machinery of brutal killing
in staccatto of bullets,
could they not kill humanity
to the mass graves
could they not bury hope
Because cherry trees bloom
even behind a barbed wire.
Wind caresses like approaching death
last years wool trembling late
on rusting wire above the wall
little tortures of twisted fate
Standing on the narrowing road
I counted memories in my mind
touched by blade of rains revenge
not needed here, but there defined
Blue-grey cloud sailed on more
some reaching gently to touch the earth
its fingers wrought to kiss the grass
and rain from west and bitter north
I finally turned on down the lane
and buried my hands deeper still
the darkening sky is shallow cover
but devours the day for evening chill
My heart bares many wounds
that will not heal
mementoes of lost love
and heartache time hasn't heeled
I have cried so many internal tears
that burned inside me
as deep as the deepest sea
but still no one understands
or knows the pain that festers deep inside me.
So I place barbed wire around my heart
and barbed wire around my lips
build a brick wall around me
that no one can strip.
I've raised the drawbridge locked the gate
being a loser in love
was my curse my fate.
''An old poem, the drawbridge is now down!.''
Peter Dome .copyright.2013. Dec.
Rusted wire against a tree, year by year recedes
The countless rings of outer bark enwrap the wire within.
I mark the circles choking me. I’m taut, stretched thin.
Thus Time is so absorbing me. Consumed. The oak tree feeds.
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