Best Bereaving Poems
I've written of great longing while my teardrops flare
Rhyming lines of sorrow that were nested in my mind
Tomes of poetry that exposed the depth of my despair
Now, my heart lies withered; to its fate I am resigned.
My sonnets are all testaments to the love, now haunted,
decaying on yellowed pages, they make my heart bleed.
It languishes with pitiful sighs, ignored and unwanted
like my dust-laden poetry that I will never again read.
Verses were woven tapestries, a lovingly stitched story,
Remnants of us left threadbare, colors dull and faded.
Time cannot repair moldered love to it's former glory.
Ours lies buried in a grave; rotting because it's jaded.
Love spills its final drop as I gasp for another breath.
From this mortal wound, my afflicted soul is bereaving.
I've one last poem to pen, in refrain before my death
about the broken part of me, still mournfully grieving.
September 22, 2020
Quatrain Writing Challenge - Decay
Sponsored by: Constance La France
Three crosses stood still that faithful day
As the skies sadly wept a guilted grey
On the highest hill they would be seen
By Roman ruled eyes that did demean
The middle cross covered in rustic red
Where the calamitous Christ’s blood sacrificed shed
The lachrymal lamb dies for our shameless sins
As the whispering winds wind and the sky dims
The christened cross made thus Divine
For the Christ awaits Ascension to His Holy shrine
The weathered wood of dogmatic Destiny
Dexterously dismantled while bereaving blessedly
The Christ carefully put in a timeless tomb
With His Loving Light creates a new womb.
March.26.2016
A Happy Easter
From (:^WW^:)
Love is blind, deaf, dumb and stupid.
I blame it all on the imp called Cupid.
No warning shot fired over my head
His arrow struck and brought me dread.
The poisoned point of that lethal dart
Was the reason love grew inside my heart.
The toxin traveled within my veins
And held me with the strength of chains.
Love spread as quickly as a wildfire,
In heated flames of uncontrolled desire.
It left behind a heart he had torched,
Bleeding, torn and badly scorched.
I refuse to rhapsodize that love is grand
it can be washed away like words in sand.
Only a romantic fool will ever believe
Love brings only joy and no reason to grieve.
Of sad songs and tears, I've had my fill.
They've left me cold as winter's chill.
I now sleep alone in my half empty bed.
It's the price to pay when love is dead.
No longer reason for me to linger.
He'd removed the ring from his finger.
Without hope that he'd want to put it back,
Our marriage was shrouded in funeral black.
From the precipice edge I began to fall,
As high as a towering castle wall.
In fear, I trembled ever further down
Into a moat of tears, I fell and drowned.
Heart-wrenching, my decision to walk away,
But I could no longer risk my life to stay.
No words of regret would I have written
If by Cupid's arrow I'd not been smitten.
How different would be my thoughts
If he'd not taken aim at my lonely heart.
A reflective moment of bereaving.
A remembrance of love's deceiving.
Would I have wished I'd not been shot
And wounded by love? No, I think not.
Even though it's all come to an end,
My bleeding heart has begun to mend.
What good is there to live with regret?
Or in wishing that we'd never met?
What once was love is now in the past.
Cupid's potions don't always last.
Sometimes love brings too much pain
With more to lose than there is to gain.
Time has passed without a pause
And broke the hold of Cupid's cause.
I've taken away the hunter's quiver
Before another shot can be delivered.
Another love to tear me apart ~
Another arrow to pierce my heart.
....................................................
2-18-16
The Heart That Bleeds: Forever Malta
Lay me gently down on a cold wint’ry day,
While the fireplace sparkles and blue flames rise
A day when the sun shines not to brighten, nay
Snow cloud blankets denying warmth to the eyes.
So you know, death comes to me as no surprise
For too long have I waited, on this soft bed lay
Suffering intoning voices filled with hopeful lies,
Lay me gently down on a cold wint’ry day.
I can no longer yearn for the beach or the cay
For springtime will likely find me not, I surmise,
Nor fond visions of summer’s long hours at play
While the fireplace sparkles and blue flames rise.
Though mind will foment, as the tongue still tries,
My time will have come with nothing left to say
Time inevitably comes when a thing of value dies,
A day when the sun shines not to brighten, nay.
All has been accomplished, come what may
Little or no remembrance of the lows and the highs
No more time to relish things frivolous, or the gay,
Snow cloud blankets denying warmth to the eyes
Likely I shall hear the low keening and the sighs
The mourning sounds of sorrow, the bereaving way,
As last breaths accompany the end of earthly ties
May there only be one desire left for you to obey,
Lay me gently down.
Written May 14, 2022
Three crosses stood still that faithful day
As the skies sadly wept a guilted grey
On the highest hill, they would be seen
Ruled by Roman eyes that did demean
The middle cross covered in a rustic red
Where the blood of Christ, sacrificed shed
The limpid lamb died for our shameless sins
With whispering winds spun by Angels wings
The Christened cross was made thus Divine
For Christ awaited ascension to the Holy Shrine
And the weathered wood of dogmatic Destiny
Dexterously dismantled bereaving blessedly
Christ was carefully rested in a timeless tomb
As His Loving Light created a newly found womb.
Revamped from an older poem...
Feb.27.2019
Cross - Your Interpretation
Sponsored by: Carolyn Devonshire
Placed 2'nd...Thank You
When Humanity Cries
Message in my angry pen
Peeps yearning for release
To scrawl on white walls
Venom from a ‘ball’ sting,
Bane in an irate pen
From a daring ken.
I yearn to hug The Hague
With stumps for hands
Which were both chopped
By some idiotic bandit-
He’s on the Court file
I’ve reason to smile!
I’ll murmur woes of war
Into the cockles of its ear
Cut lips the Cross to kiss
Iron taste of cold metal;
Gone past pain of whips
My lip chopped as chips!
I see with my big Heart
Both eyes all gone blind
The sight is that of greed
Where no Civility thrives-
I presume they are stars
O Gosh! They are scars!
Weaklings trampled dead
Line each side of the road
Suppurating in cold dreams
Power of force flying fast,
Right is not so strong
But the strong or wrong.
Modest message peeping
From shadows called Ink
Yearn to release Graphics
Of Humanity crying;
Where Ghandi stood once
His ideals have no chance.
Formation is taking shape
In battle with poetic force
Frenzy poised to pounce
And denounce decadence.
Mother’s loin was torched
As Hiroshima scorched!
My Anger was aroused;
Like tinned fish so packed
And carted away from Home
To work another’s Farm;
Until I learned to read
I loathed this dread!
We cry, cry beloved groin
When another one dies
“He’s taken, taken by AIDS!”
I mourn, I travail, I wish......
Holding a dead child
I cry hoarse and wild!
I whimper like an orphan
Sucking Pen for a thumb
To draw the bitter Ink
And spit to the paedophiles.
Bereaving children fun
Evading his lewd run.
I smoke and sniff this paper
Scrawled this painful writ
That, perchance, putrid lungs
The message will massage.
I yearn for an injection
And not this rejection!
Where then is my mother?
Ah! A Kitchen Girl.......
Father? A Garden Boy
Boy and Girl at their age...?
Now I sleep not a wink
A wretch on the brink....
Ink tears well in my eyes.
I feel I’ve gone shorter
Rolling down the cheek pad
To leave a letter of pain.
I kneel, my sins to bloat
Till knees bald as a goat!
JM
29th Oct’ 2013
Within the cankerous catacombs of the slaving still
Where torrential tears fall like rumbling rain
As the decomposed dust gets its felonious fill
And sanctioned sorrows receive their parasitic pain
Where dichotomous dreams destroy the nightly nest
And slumberous souls reminisce their restless rest
As the Dragon turns to breathe its bereaving breath
For all that abandonedly await for its defunctive death.
July.20.2016
Two Stanzas - Two Only - Poetry Contest
By Broken Wings
rhyming scheme abab ccdd
Was professor of astronomy, ah those heady days
Studied fields in cosmology, including solar rays
Observed galaxies all my life, seeking exotic events
Ironically happens now, as my death’s dispensed
By dour hospice window, seeds a suffusion of light
Not dazzling, quite fuzzy, discernibly white
Shallow luminosity, enters my departing room
‘Twas pitch black this night, no forecast moon’
Growing in intensity, colours turn purple green
Must be an invasion, of extraterrestrial aliens
Hope they finish me fast, this final stage is slow
Then the fireworks start, whole world’s set aglow
Heaven’s have ruptured, no raindrops seen
Cataclysmic silent eruption, yet everywhere serene
It’s not possible, unconscionable, too far south
Only a gamma ray burst, could bring this about
A possible hypernova, just light years away
Hits Earth’s magnetic field, in a mega-aurora display
Iridescent photons, avalanche over me
My teardrops fluoresce, through the apertures of agony
Hypnotic warmth, released from cold light
My woes are assuaged, God this feels so nice
Semiconscious state, accruing spiritual bliss
“So this is how life ends, amid ethereal fine mist.”
Nurses are praying, down on their knees
Speaking foreign languages, at wonderment they see
Some fear the apocalypse, whilst others run about
I hum Cohen’s Hallelujah, but these words spill out
#O come purge my mind, cover woes
Give back the life, that I forgo
Help me bear this weight, won’t ya
Blind darkness, annihilate fate
Finish suffering, show your face
Unleash the love, they call Gods grace!
#Hallelujah#Hallelujah#Hallelujah#Hallelujah#
Pyrotechnics are over, now quiescently asleep
Drowning no longer, in pillow soaked weep
Greeting my parents, bereaving my family
As I enter a tunnel, leaving the apertures of agony.
Originally written 02/18/21
2022 Poetry Marathon Mile 19 Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Mark Toney
11/06/22
~ (~) ~
"Who
is this
speaking
what can I
say for the
bereaved - lost
amid the shell of
their bitterness
and abhorrence?"
"Who will reject this
speak for their plight
rejoice with them, us;
lest I am anyone the
one but who is for
everyone who is any
one?"
"Which friend from
the expressions worn
upon the falling leaves, I
can tell now time a gift is
much shorter than what I
often believe."
""Like moths with dark shadows
in their eyes children running and playing
in their absence with no reflection of time driven
by their guilt and heavy hands of shame; who are
they now the bereaving?" - "Because I know the
cost uneven, of pride - the cost is more and is
always cutting, cutting me down - one that
is always cutting them - you.""
~ Love lost, the aching desire
burning within.
Frail, though, will I rise,
greater before days,
because promised,
hope chance,
verity my
faith these
gentle
whispers
echo the
opportunity,
and so it is to
them I answer, fall
before. For this, God,
I know would never negate. ~
""For me... all of us, I believe leaves they are the Purest Example
of God's Love Patience and Mercy; shown to us - and as Seasons are
always changing along with them; what He gave me, you - which is what
the Goodness and Promise of what Any True Opportunity is; is what I feel
is one that is just as Honest and Open, just as Willing, needed; wanted for
any one, "anyone... !""
""So sown now in this time left friend I must tell you - I would wish
to be anything if found worthy to be the one caught, cut, killed -
working for The Greater Idea of Peace - and so as he came
to the grand corner, he walks away tossing a leaf behind
him the last words from him; being - "Stop
all wars" time being what it is;
is
too
short!"
The Hunter
(His identity and his prey)
Love is blind, deaf, dumb and stupid.
I blame it all on the imp called Cupid.
No warning shot did he let fly
Before his arrow struck the bulls eye.
The poisoned point of his little dart
Was the reason love grew inside my heart.
The toxin traveled within my veins
And held me with the strength of chains.
(The result of his hunt)
Love spread as quickly as a wildfire,
In heated flames of uncontrolled desire.
It left behind a heart that was torched,
Wounded by being burned and scorched.
I refuse to rhapsodize that love is grand
For it can disappear like words in sand.
Only a romantic fool will ever believe
Love brings only joy and no reason to grieve.
Of sad songs and tears, I've had my fill.
They've left me as cold as winter's chill.
I now sleep alone in my half empty bed.
It's the price to pay when love is dead.
No longer reason for me to linger.
He'd removed the ring from his finger.
Without hope that he'd put it back,
Our marriage was shrouded in funeral black.
From the precipice edge I began to fall,
As high as a towering castle wall.
In fear, I tumbled ever further down
And saved myself before I drowned.
Heart-wrenching, my decision to walk away,
But I could no longer risk my life to stay.
No words of sorrow would I have written
If by Cupid's arrow I'd not been smitten.
How different would be my private thoughts
If he'd not taken aim at my lonely heart.
No memories to keep me awake at night,
Or to recall upon morning's first light.
As bitter as these words may sound,
It's an honest attempt to be profound.
A reflective moment of bereaving.
A remembrance of love's deceiving.
Would I have wished I'd not been shot
And wounded by love? No, I think not.
Even though it has come to an end,
My seared heart has begun to mend.
What good is there to live with regret?
What point in wishing we'd never met?
What once was love is now in the past.
Cupid's potions don't always last.
Sometimes love brings too much pain
With more to lose than there is to gain.
Time has passed without a pause
And broken the hold of Cupid's cause.
I've taken away the hunter's quiver
Before another shot can be delivered.
Another love to tear me apart ~
Another arrow to pierce my heart.
Surrender
Surrender with them, for those all sins
Always you commit, at the expense of belief
At least, they can purge you, dipping in social work
Do not afraid, there is not, capital punishment.
Bereaving, they do not keep you, in bother
Where there is provision, only of rear and care
Supplies only requirements, later they’ll rear, care you
That heaven is within, in the heart of children
When become saturate, they loll, leaving toys and food
In such innocent vicinity, I wish pass my whole life
Being happy and gaily, volatile immeasurably
Could you believe my advice, you commit, they believe.
Instead of boasting roaring, wasting, prime time for
Tearing sky and ground, with objection disturbance
Invest your purpose, to acquire heavenly bliss for all
Billions mothers are wishing, to offer their prospers.
Timidity
Hurl me stones as much as you like
To shear my skin from bone
Bereaving me, you can boast of your custom
Your end is just,
Theirs to make me silent
But millions to millions crawls,
Same way every day and night
Might be there, your pebbles storage can go empty
Nature should remain thinking to construe stones
In faster rate to heat me like desires born again
But my liking, desires cannot go in vain
There is back up of almighty pushing me to do
Being forwarded again and again
Don’t be afraid of them they are thieve
They loot bag satisfy them self every night by same routine
Only they publicize you in the name of adultery
Penalising killing, devouring your flesh with stone
I’ m behind you to support my dear
If this time they peel off you
Next time I scrape their mind with same and right vision
They are doing wrong, wrong worse
What you liked is nature, my system
How they dared to halt, my other beloved
I ask to creator think in it, and change the devise
About such timidity where is weak
In your generation, stop to fill cruelty.
been pretty bad people
burst pipes belching putrid
burgundy petrol
being perfect bleeding puddle
Big People bringing
poverty
bleating pelicans
barges paddling
bereaving patriots
bludgeoning prosperity
beaching promises
burdening posterity
breaking premises
but progressive
bitter Promethean
broken president
believing politics
bereft policies
brokers power
bringing plundering
barons power
bigger profits
bestial power
God's organic clothes are coming unglued,
seasonal seams tearing apart,
emerging alarmingly chaotic
whatever, dissonance?
Supremely straight white noise?
Next time,
I'll recover your naked monolithic culture
in clothes of hard rooted wood
and yet how would you wear them?
Who could?
Perhaps we did
when God grew a tree
like earthy S/He.
Children of Me/We healthy trees
defectively praying for underfed worker bees
while ripping apart Earth's fertile forests
becoming undressed deserts
Unflowing river sand beds
bereaving naked tree trunks
Dead dry
senseless
sexless headstones
where future children of trees
would otherwise have grown moist fruit,
divinely dressed.
Since the genesis of this nation young patriots have borne the brunt of war.
To ensure the preservation of our freedoms, they've heard the cannons' roar!
Politicians send them to battle claiming 'tis in the best interests of the nation,
But, when the conflicts cease, the way some are treated is an abomination!
Many vets fight other battles when they return to the shores of this nation.
They are spat upon, called 'baby killers' and suffer many another humiliation!
Many agonized from the effects of 'agent orange' and fought to set that aright.
A reluctant bureaucracy agreed there was a problem and finally eased their plight!
Alas, too many forgotten heroes are homeless and dwell wherever they can,
Yet the government seems to provide ample succor for the illegal alien!
The powers that be finally realized there is a problem with post battle stress.
After years of debate they avowed, "Maybe it's a matter that we should address!"
Others have been carried from the battlefield wounded in body and soul.
So very much we owe these brave men and women who've played their role!
Are we minding Lincoln's pledge to those who've borne the din of strife,
To care for him, his affairs, his orphan and his bereaving wife?
I have a message for all politicians that is very loud and clear!
Why is our blood and treasure always at the tip of the spear!
If you don't want to care for our vets, then don't make any more!
Stop policing the world and keep our youngsters out of war!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
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