Best Barbed Wire Poems
Barbed wire seems a 'thorny' subject on which to opine,
But there arose a need for such for people and beasts to confine!
Cowpokes cussed as they worked with it mutilating their hands.
Sheepherders fussed with cattlemen as it spread across their lands!
'Tis said back in 1874 Joseph Glidden, who 'bristled' with the idea,
Was awarded a patent for barbed wire to provide a cure-all panacea!
Split-rail fencing to outline boundaries was rapidly becoming passe',
To keep neighbors' straying goats, horses and other critters at bay!
Sheriffs found barbed wire handy to enforce a judge's firm dictates,
To confine hoss thieves, cattle rustlers and other such reprobates!
Inmates trying to scamper through the wire were apt to rip their pants,
Or worse, might end up in 'boot hill', caught trying to scale the fence!
Alas, sinister uses for barbed wire were found beyond bucolic meadowlands.
'Twas used to enslave thousands of innocent souls behind its menacing strands.
Thousands of men, women and children were consigned to death at Dachau,
Triblinka, Buchenwald, Ravensbruck and Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Among its many other diverse uses it has even marched off to wars,
To protect gallant American soldiers on far too many alien shores.
Mister Joseph Glidden was doing mankind a great favor, he thought.
Were he alive today he might say, "My gawd, what hath I wrought!"
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
© All Rights Reserved
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.
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.
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.
A heart wrapped in barbed wire.
it shouldnt beat, it shouldnt pump.
it shouldnt make the faintest sound,
of a little thump thump.
but its there, and its cold.
all the pain, and the hurt
is realy getting old.
how long can it beat, wrapped up in wire?
it cant be much longer, till its done and im free.
but wait, it gets tighter. hurting more and more.
cant it just be done? can my misery be over?
someone pleas just pull it out.
what ever happens then cant be worse then now.
i wish i could scream, i wish i could shout,
but no sound escapes these lips.
these lips, once so warm and tender,
now sit cold and forgotten,
just like a burnt out ember.
pleas just make it stop!
no longer can i bare it!
pleas just make it stop!
that way, i wont have to share it,
this misery that surrounds me.
tighter and tighter, the wire holds its grip.
its slashing and ripping,
like its being whipped.
how long can i stand it?
please tell me how!?
its impossible to ever feel, especially now.
its been cut, its been beat,
no longer is it usefull.
cant anyone see that it would be better off gone?
i cant do it myself! i need someones help!
will no one come save me?
will no one come help?
feelings burn, no longer pleasent.
i waited and waited,
focousing only on the present.
to late! im gone. to lost in the past.
my life is speeding by, all to fast,
but wait, now it stops, mooving by like a snail.
the hammer has once again found my heart,
pounding in the nail.
and so its no use, my fate has been sealed.
this heart wrapped in wire will never be healed.
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.
'Cross the lot there was a golf course
Where the fancy people play
You always wanted to get in there
I wanted to get away
Can I get myself a witness
Should I get myself a wife
When you and I were children
Were the best years of my life
That barbed wire sure looked dang'rous
And that fence was way too tall
From where you and I were standin'
Could've been the Berlin Wall
We would run around the grass field
Lord I never felt so free
You would always venture further
And then come right back to me
You said I've got to get ov'r it
And find a way you did
I said I'll be right here waitin'
When you've had enough of it
You went off to college
And made some nice new friends
I stayed in Pike's Creek County
Inferring meaning from the ends
You came back to me as always
I saw in your gleamin' eye
A look of determination
That made me want to cry
Should I take a job in Charlotte
At that bank too big to fail
Or sleep another night off
In the Pike's Creek County Jail
I knew you'd roam for longer
And I'd have to let you go
Down the roads this life would take me
Just one thing I truly know
Should I drive across the country
Do you think your husband'd mind
If I showed up on your doorstep
And you left that life behind
You'll be in my arms again
One day you will see
That the ends they don't mean nuthin'
If there 'aint no You and Me
December 3, 2017
Laying in the morning twilight, yawning, my head nods down and I jerk it up again,
The barbed wire faintly twitches, someone has touched it, will it be a friend or foe,
Shadows float across a near dark landscape then fade away into nothing, an early start,
Machine guns begin rip the earth, and rips the last turf, then rips all the shadows away.
I've had enough and more, I have stopped talking to anyone, I just cannot be bothered,
The daylight makes me angry and people talk to me, I just stare way over their heads,
Some think me strange I don't bloody care, just leave me alone, get on with your day,
Don't comfort me, keep away, let me fight my own darkened demons in my confused mind.
Sudden sharp cracking noises and an odour, a stench of gunpowder, a sour smell of bitter death,
Head pointing directly forwards having no eye contact with anybody, just in case they want to talk,
I sit on mud soaked ground and someone shouts something at me so loudly and I just ignore him,
An N.C.O. running, splashes his way towards me, shouting, swearing and screaming I take no notice.
He pulls me up off the wet ground shouting abuse, why? but I can no longer understand him,
He lets go of my soaked lapels and I sink back down to where I was, his face an angry red,
I hear the word insubordination and that makes me laugh wildly out loud, it makes me stand up,
Then I decide to climb the ladder and walk onto 'no mans land', again the barbed wire faintly twitches.
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
It cut, I bled
It spoke, I listened
It commanded, I obeyed
It laughed, I wept
Dirty things were done to me
All painful and all true
My body became a battlefield
My mind split into more than a few
Meanness, nastiness, anger and rage
Toppled me over, time and time again
Weapons formed, used against me
Oh my mind so torn, lured me to the insane
Taken for granted, used and tossed aside
What was wrong with me?
Quiet, stilled from the pain
Screaming, yelling on the inside
Years the disease roamed within
Took me for a ride, round and round
Let me out, take me off
Remove these chains keeping me bound
Stars shine, moon glows
Father’s hand has touched my soul
Standing near, watching close
Fills my heart with His heavenly host
Raising me up, renewing my mind
Releasing the spirits, tormenters no more
Casting them down in a pit of fire
No more cutting, no more 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
Rusted wire against a tree
Year by year recedes
Inside of the circling bark, invisibly
Consumed. Relentlessly, the oak tree feeds.
The countless rings of outer bark
Enwrap the wire within.
Thus Time is absorbing me. I mark
The circles choking me. I’m taut, stretched thin.
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.
barbed wire fence
framing
summer field
posted on February 28, 2021
Striking twofold, lightning bolts
from the blue chasm of adversity;
when in dead aftermath
ghostly buzzing in her ears,
echoed screams without end into her head,
sparked the bitterest deluge of tears.
Weeping, head in hands, heart
scarring and skipping in seizures of pain;
playing Exit and telling herself
over and over it isn't my fault,
then questioning why the corpse of love
was kicked to death again.
Ages, dreaming she was mad,
the frail belief it was all fantasy, all in her head,
became the straw, the rationale to cling to;
breathe, keep breathing,
I can't do this alone; the knife driven
and stabbed the fantasy dead.
The first cut may be the deepest,
but the last hones a sharper dawn,
and the world seems a colder place;
trust, a mug of hemlock;
talons of sadness rip up her flesh,
claws of betrayal cruelly drawn.
No dignity now in silence,
no purchase in anguished screams,
only deadlocked continual scraping and scratching
at love and faith and dreams;
all that remains is to sift through the mess
and be the girl in the barbed wire dress.