Best Charnel Poems
The Unknown
While standing on a razor-edge end of my mortal time,
I’m not sure of what lies beyond and what I shall find.
Death’s dead, cold eyes stare me down now, as I wait;
My spirit sweats and shakes, as my blood turns frigid.
His skeleton face is scary, horrid, pallid, and macabre.
His apparition floats freely full of fear this frozen night.
A little girl long dead steps toward me from this oblivion,
Her face sad, streaming tears as she hands me a wilted rose.
This strange netherworld has that dull, cold pallor of death,
Just like the smell, sensation, and sadness of a charnel house.
The moon on this eve is one blood red, insidious in intent;
Fixed high in the cold night sky it gives one no hope at all.
The little girl long dead returns and holds my left hand gently:
She says, “It’s not yet your time . . . this is still only a dream.”
She adds, “The River Styx lies ahead—cold, dark, and deep.”
She says, “There is yet time to change your life for the better.”
As I started to awaken from this intense and revealing dream,
I could hear a faint voice whispering deep inside my psyche.
It told me now a certain message that I shall never ever forget.
Follow your heart and conscience, find the goodness in your life.
Listen to God and what the better angels of your nature tell you.
This shall keep you on that path of the devout in the eyes of God.
The image of God is reflected in Man himself as he seeks to fulfill
Always His Divine Destiny!
Gary Bateman, Copyright © All Rights Reserved,
January 1, 2016 (Lyric)
Categories:
charnel, death, evil, god, heaven,
Form:
Lyric
( This poem is about the ' Killing Fields' of Cambodia, 1975-79, where as many as 2 million people were murdered by the communist Khmer Rouge. I taught in Phnom-Penh from '73-74, and never met a people I liked more.)
They haunt me still,
the brown children laughing, always laughing,
the women voluptuous, languid,
their movement almost an invitation....
Even the traffic policeman:
crisp, clean, proud in uniform,
moving with ballerina grace
as hordes of cyclos and mopeds
and the occasional automobile
pirouette endlessly about him,
impatient bees made quiescent
by surreal beauty of white-gloved arms
cutting through thick tropical air....
Everywhere was grace, gentleness:
temples incandescent at dawn,
with ant trails of orange-robed monks
cradling their pot-belly begging bowls,
the patient women standing by the road
to lump rice into the begging bowls,
the monks always staring blankly ahead
as the women bowed low in reverence,
grateful their gift of life was taken....
And oh, how wondrous it was:
an accident in the street, yet no anger,
no bile--forgiveness, felt before thought,
thought before uttered....
How could such a people murder?
No, not murder-- slaughter!
Their mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles,
teachers, priests, friends and children too.
Change temples of peace into charnel-houses?
Schools of knowledge into abattoirs?
They photographed every butchered lamb,
like the devil's children on holiday,
and decorated the classroom walls,
a show-and-tell of horror and despair.
Why? Why?--
Why such pain on
such a gentle people?
Why did God hide His face
while the world turned its back?
Forty,
forty,
forty
years
and still...
still they haunt me.
Categories:
charnel, angst, bereavement, betrayal, corruption,
Form:
Free verse
He drank, thirsting for her;
with stygian lips pressed to her neck,
She was exsanguinated.
The squalid night-beast, left her lifeless body,
behind an alley dumpster.
No moonlight betrayed the remnants,
of his latest meal.
Any slight remorse, that he felt,
was obliterated by the metal-sweet taste,
upon his vile tongue.
He was alive again and
there were more than enough prey,
to nourish him, for an eternity.
Aerial bound, for his charnel palace,
he would sleep like the god he fancied himself.
For eight-hundred years he had perfected his hunt.
His travels had taken him through the steeps and berms,
of antipodal continents and he had viewed
what most humans, could not.
The hellish beast loved the hunt,
as much as, his meals.
When prey inadvertently approached his abode,
it was left free;
he savored the taste of the chase,
as much as, the catch.
The elixir of life was ambrosia;
The likes of which, he’d not tasted in his mortality.
How he longed to thank the beast he’d once feared, for bestowing immortality upon him.
When the next gibbous moon took its flight,
the cravings awoke him.
Dressed in his finest, modern day attire
he set upon his task.
There’s a peculiar thing about Vampire,
they fancy themselves invincible.
Old vampires, like mortals, are often,
Over confident and become careless.
On his last hunt he lost his head,
to the single swipe,
of a large were-claw!
Categories:
charnel, dark, gothic, halloween, horror,
Form:
Blank verse
Fire at the edge of the world.
Eyes deep within the shoreless forest sea,
Witnesses of most ancient ways
Watch smoke rising from the approaching front
Of treeless, naked land
Stripped bare by blind ambition,
Quietly await the end.
Five thousand acres a day
The last great garden drifts into the skies
To join the circling storms that once nourished it.
The fires lick and crawl their way
Into its green heart.
Fire is eating the soul of the world
Reducing the face of its childhood to ash;
- Behold here the sorrow of Eden's last relic
Becoming the charnel-house of Creation.
Categories:
charnel, nature, places, political, sad,
Form:
Free verse
Continued from Part 1
The Beggars ’neath the balustrades,
and broken Children, Chambermaids,
are running wild from wraiths, afraid
of dreams where death redoubles.
They fritter time with tattered threads
(from ragged clothes they’ve left in shreds),
crocheting hoods to hide their heads
and faces, full of rubble.
But many things will not remain
the Morning of the Hurricanes,
when goblets filled with cool champagne
evaporate in bubbles.
The White-Robed Maid adorns the trash
with charnel urns awash in ash,
then fumbles with an untied sash
while pacing in the Palace.
Her hopes congeal in coffee spoons
with memories adrift in dunes;
yet, still she smiles with teeth like prunes
and lips of painted callus.
And long before the midnight drains,
the Saviour wakes, the Loser gains,
the waters of the Hurricanes
will fill her empty chalice.
The storm (behind the clarinets,
the silver flutes, the castanets,
the foghorns belching in quartets,
the bagpipes, puffed and swollen)
is keeping time to tambourines
while Tom Thumb and the Four-Inch Queen,
pick up the shards and smithereens
of moments lost or stolen.
They’re trekking through the Dim Domains
(where fountains weep, the mountain wanes),
yet can’t escape the Hurricanes
with trundling eyes patrollin’.
The Crowds (arrayed in jewels) in jails,
stoop, peering through a fence of nails
while light behind their eyeballs pales
with plastic flame that sputters.
They huddle there because they must
(with eyelids hung like peeling rust,
their tears, palled pellets in the dust),
behind the bolted shutters.
They’ll reawake without their pains
the Morning of the Hurricanes,
without their sores, without their stains,
their agonies will fill the drains
and overflow the gutters.
End
Categories:
charnel, fantasy,
Form:
Rhyme
Black night,
Await the solar charnel steeds,
Await the noon,
Await the blacker, richer dawn.
Pale heresy dispatched
The light brings on
Silver and subtle with deceits
A day of error o'er a night of wrong.
Nor can the fainting heart resist
The furtive promise of a Christian bliss
And light's pale monuments uplift
A pagan and a passionate kiss.
Categories:
charnel, history, philosophy, psychological, religion,
Form:
Didactic
If tomorrow never comes
my heart will be kept in your hands
you remember me when sword is seen by
my words will never lie like an eunuch wind
i tried hard to discard those ugly image of war from my heart
once and more, another image came to me
raw and shocking, causing me to flush and bite my lips
and i thought how cruel life could be.
how heartless and uncaring nature treat me
rivers of darkness, i swam in pains
as the battle line is drawn ahead of me
i want you to know how much i love you
have no doubt in your humble heart if you see me no more
i work in shield, against the charnel house
memories that threatened to engulf me
and i could not shake free from the cold hands of the past
let my image be caved in your heart
down on the alley are more good memories kept behind
that would shield you for ever
change has not come yet
to this part where life is a race
in which the strong trample the weak
remember my wills written in the wall
sound of my music flowing in your veins
down the river band behind the iroko
i tossed the bed of roses you gave me
although they seems stale but stagnant they stood
waiting for the remarkable day to come.
let my feelings and emotions remains not silent
welcome charity in sound mind
orphans and the homeless forget not
feat not alone in my wealth
least you become miserable
say me well to Michael
the son of short Ogbu Efi
we have known each other since ages
climbing hills and trees
take care of our children
wait no longer
teach them the myth and the culture of our kindred
and those folktales mother told us
tales of their father's tribulations, forget not.
this lonely road i walk
fighting for my country
the green leaves howl in tears as i trampled on them
in anger
i wear courage like a shield
attacking the enemies in the battle field so wide
thousands are slain and millions held captive
no retreat no surrender
my hands are stained with innocent blood
as i shrouded in mystery
know you that the love i gave
would for ever last if tomorrow never comes.
Categories:
charnel, anger,
Form:
Elegy
It happened many years ago, just after World War ll.
When I was just a little girl with lots to see and do.
A visit to my cousin's house, ten miles northeast of town,
Would cause the frown upon my face to flip flop up-side-down.
I stayed for just a week or so and shared her saggy bed:
Told silly jokes and giggled, as sleep hovered overhead.
Then came that awful morning when we took our country walk.
The day would start with sunshine and much childish, girlie talk.
Mowed stubble in an open field, each bare foot placed with care,
As well as dirt road trod upon, with stones and pebbles there.
But what we were to come upon, while meandering on our way,
Is not a sight that any child might come upon today.
An old shed there beside the road, not even tucked from sight.
A charnel house with death inside: bad dreams to come that night!
The hog and steer hung upside down and both were split in half.
The pig above a rusted drum, prepared for scalding bath.
Their innards heaped beside the shed, a pile of sickening gore.
Two heads with glazed and staring eyes, would view the world no more.
A slaughterhouse for all to see while happening to pass by.
Run by a neighboring farmer who did butchering on the side.
We stood transfixed and watched him work, his lips pursed in a whistle,
As he dunked the hog in the scalding drum: later scraping off the bristle.
And sadly we took a closer look at the face of that old steer.
Two days before we had patted him in a field not far from there.
That gentle old beast in a pasture, unknowingly chewing his cud.
Now a dead and lifeless thing, defiled with sawdust and blood.
We trudged home in solemn silence, our innocence badly bruised.
The world, though still an open book, had new . . less pleasant rules.
A lesson in our lives to come of the callousness of men,
With many more lessons to follow, before this world will end.
Now when I see children learn about death, while watching pretend CGI;
Two little girls will still come to mind, and the old steer that made them cry.
© 2015 Diane Lefebvre
Categories:
charnel, dark, death, sad, scary,
Form:
Dramatic Verse
I do not know how men many we were
or how we went, what we saw on the way
nor do I know for what ungodly purport was ours
or what goaded us on into deeper uncharted territory
despite our tortured souls and aching bodies protesting to refrain .
I vaguely recollect through my befogged mind
some arcane words like Shoggoth and Mi- go and Dagon,
so much gibberish and blubbering babble of deranged minds
gone at once numb and addled with sights and sounds
forbidden to man in his wildest dreams and thoughts.
Through crenellated valleys grey misted in their troughs
and crests and covered with slime or ooze as from some
white-wormed denizens from unnamed and should-not-be-named
lairs in regions in deep damp grottoes of infernal charnel mounds
did I and my ill-fated team wander wild-eyed and unkempt.
Do not ask me what we saw when we reached our goal
for what my skulled orbs beheld or what my brain deciphered
I know nor remember not all semblance of sense and sensibilities
having fled with a volition not my own but driven by transfusions
of thought telepathically imposed from without from the miasma.
I know not whether to thank those who found me in the sorry state
that they did - a blathering caricature of the human form more ape,
nay, an ape has more intellect and dignity, than man- a creature more
fit to dwell in the mire and morass of a cess-pit than tread the same
hallowed soil or breathe the self-same vapors as civilized man.
It was far better still that the group of kindly souls, most rightfully,
had left me to my own contrivances and let me wander in my unknown
quest for unknown and mysterious things best known to myself once
but now lost to me forever.
I find myself in these padded and strait-jacketedand dreary halls of Arkham
standing at the edge of the precipice of an insurmountable mountain with
an abyss at the foot, both of interminable depth and dark as the devil's heart.
I have leaped from this vertiginous height perhaps a dozen times to end my misery
but having felt all the terror and thrill of finding absolution, I find myself here again,
and again.
Categories:
charnel, dark, fantasy, horror, imagination,
Form:
Narrative
a clock strikes twelve - -
the old charnel house door
creaks open
for Tracie’s Scary Ku contest
Categories:
charnel, mystery,
Form:
Haiku
ON LOOKING AT SCHILLER’S SKULL
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Here in this charnel-house full of bleaching bones,
like yesteryear’s
fading souvenirs,
I see the skulls arranged in strange ordered rows.
Who knows whose owners might have beheaded peers,
packed tightly here
despite once repellent hate?
Here weaponless, they stand, in this gentled state.
These arms and hands, they once were so delicate!
How articulately
they moved! Ah me!
What athletes once paced about on these padded feet?
Still there’s no hope of rest for you, lost souls!
Deprived of graves,
forced here like slaves
to occupy this overworld, unlamented ghouls!
Now who’s to know who loved one orb here detained?
Except for me;
reader, hear my plea:
I know the grandeur of the mind it contained!
Yes, and I know the impulse true love would stir
here, where I stand
in this alien land
surrounded by these husks, like a treasurer!
Even in this cold,
in this dust and mould
I am startled by an a strange, ancient reverie, …
as if this shrine to death could quicken me!
One shape out of the past keeps calling me
with its mystery!
Still retaining its former angelic grace!
And at that ecstatic sight, I am back at sea ...
Swept by that current to where immortals race.
O secret vessel, you
gave Life its truth.
It falls on me now to recall your expressive face.
I turn away, abashed here by what I see:
this mould was worth
more than all the earth.
Let me breathe fresh air and let my wild thoughts run free!
What is there better in this dark Life than he
who gives us a sense of man’s divinity,
of his place in the universe?
A man who’s both flesh and spirit—living verse!
To The Muse
by Friedrich Schiller
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I do not know what I would be,
without you, gentle Muse!,
but I’m sick at heart to see
those who disabuse.
Keywords/Tags: Goethe, Schiller, German, Germany, translation, skull, bones, body, charnel, house, grave, best friend, friendship love, funeral, souls, soulmate, ghosts, spirit, flesh, dead, death, shrine, divinity, universe
Categories:
charnel, best friend, body, death,
Form:
Free verse
Night Terror.
You need no introduction.
Into my slumber,
With skulking cats eyes.
Now,
You build a charnel house.
Bricks and mortor, sinister.
Laying claim to my dreams.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I suffered terribly with night terrors at such a young age.
I feel they dictated my life for quite some time.
This is one of my more personal poems.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Personification; please?
I dont know if there is currently a contest for personification poetry.
If not, I would love to see one set up.
Unfortunatly, i feel i do not have the capacity to run one myself... yet.
Thank you for taking the time to read my post, Jamie.
(P.S. I am brand new to soup, as you most likely can tell.)
Categories:
charnel, sad
Form:
Personification
lonely as a dried up hero
legend only to the past,
as a world moved on
from foolish children’s faith,
energy of generations
arrives at perigee,
blown out like flatulence
snuck into polite conversations,
snide groupthink on
a notion of good sport
and fair play,
while eyes and hands
itch to turn main street
into charnel houses,
the foolish ones
barking dulcet tunes
get frog marched to the wall,
can it even be,
anymore with visions dead,
above in a hawk eye
clear cold wind and azure sky,
high over every thing, everything
the squabble, the blood
the raging teeth,
godless empires and ideal,
the line of never ending human hearts
blazed away,
flaring like desert sun,
burning,
shining like moon rockets
over the sea of tears below,
the very world gives off a sickbed air,
damned
damn
damn
the creator for demanding
to know ourselves
before we know forgiveness,
of chemicals,
of realpolitik,
of biocentric theorem,
a life,
like this republic,
if we can keep it...
gott mit uns.
Categories:
charnel, confusion, life, power,
Form:
Free verse
yet the people rebelled against me
in the wilderness locusts and wild honey
he poured out his wrath on them
yet i did what would keep it
from profaned in the eyes
of the fighting nations
do not follow the idols of your ancestors
the sacred river flowing dirt
remnants of burnt carcass
yellow flowers merging with clotted blood
naked sanyasis dancing in the charnel ground
post mortem rituals ego transcending
tantric liturgy molding the mind and desposition
prayer beads, flower pujas ,yajna ,mortification
of the rotten flesh, summer solstice
esoteric dharmic traditions
archetypal liminality surface
chthonic dieties dragging
will you defile yourself
what are the roots that clutch
what branches grow out of serpents
Categories:
charnel, allusion,
Form:
There high on an outcrop of sun bleached rock
A skull and bone house please no feign of shock
Resting a place following the charnel house of life
Layered guests welcomed from past time be it husband or wife
No names all lost even an alias a Smith or Jones
Searching long enough I am sure to find my bones
Categories:
charnel, allegoryhouse, house,
Form:
Couplet