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Best Cordite Poems


Premium Member I Was a Soldier
I was a soldier of the past 
And I know im not the last
I signed up to serve my Queen
Far off lands I have seen

As that soldier I done my best
Losing friends laying them to rest
We fought for what was only right
Giving freedom to others...

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Categories: cordite, courage, memorial day, military,
Form: Sonnet
Premium Member Memories of the Sea
Ah the lovely seasdie
Ah the lovely seaside

Childhood scents
Salt air, Salty bitter memories

Jacques had turned just seven
He dreamed to walk along the seashore
He dreamed to see the seagulls sore overhead
He most of all dreamed to leave his basement

All the windows were covered with curtains
The days, nights...

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Categories: cordite, caregiving, confusion, death, sea,
Form: Light Verse
Biography (Thesis Statement)
I rose not like flower or like tree
Not like eagle's hubris in the sun
Old skin shed in the divided city
Last clone of a manhood almost done
      And so I tasted the salt that lingered in blood
    ...

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Categories: cordite, history, life, philosophylife, me,
Form: Verse

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry



Bleeding the Optimism
Rust on padlocked factory gates
from tears of broken men.
Time has stopped on the golden watch,
freeze framed memories of a better past.

Scattered faces breed sour looks
for brothers of nepotism
with handshakes that nearly broke arms.

Crouched in side streets
observing worldly peasants passing.
Slave ganged with vacuum eyes
tripping through life's...

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Categories: cordite, people, social,
Form: Free verse
Premium Member I'M Too Tired To Dance
** An exercise: write a sonnet in iambic pentameter.

With heavy heart, I offer my remorse,
for I'm too tired to dance this weary eve.
The echoes of my workday's tireless chores
linger, leaving naught but fatigue's relief.

Oh, believe me, I hate to disappoint,
for the music tempts me to...

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Categories: cordite, dance, humor, teen, today,
Form: Sonnet
Salient
The salient drew his mind to the terrors of the day,
and the stink of the long dead buried in the mire.
The creeping barrage sought him hiding in his clay,
found him there and surrounded him in searing fire.

Beneath the wounded trenches his new comrades lie,
broken and...

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Categories: cordite, war,
Form: Ballad



The Persistence of a Memory of Apricot Shampoo
The Persistence of a Memory of Apricot Shampoo
by Michael R. Burch

For all that I remembered, I forgot
her name, her face, the reason that we loved...
and yet I hold her close within my thought:
I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair
that fell across her face, the...

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Categories: cordite, desire, hair, longing, love,
Form: Sonnet
Malaysia Long Ago
stars,
above swirling dark,
in sky drained of color,
below,
sprawling Asia,
spread out in a carpet,
of billboards and humanity.
watching it all from the world's largest tower,
feeling like a king in a secondhand sky,
now walking among streets, stalls, and stooped shoulders,
inhaling foreign vapors.
smoke from cheap cigarettes drift down,
to mingle with...

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Categories: cordite, sad, war,
Form: Prose
Universal Soldier
Lay me to rest in marbled halls with angels at my head,
not lying here in the mud of Ypres with khaki turning red.
Let me die a noble death, one that's worth fighting for,
not to avenge a nobleman who I've never heard of before.

Let me die...

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© John Jones  Create an image from this poem.
Categories: cordite, anger, humanity, remembrance day,
Form: Rhyme
Just a Little Thunder
O just a little thunder, Lord
A little booming of the sky,
A little clapping of the heart.
One more shake of mighty Sinai
One more drop of love
Flock upon me your mercy now.

Dry sky and no air
I feel the lung dessicating in me
O how I pray to hear
Just...

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Categories: cordite, faith,
Form: Free verse
Hi Skool Massakre
Hi Skool Massakre
Goth boy dressed all in black. 
With a moody stare. 
Not giving a frig. 
As long as his subgun is loaded. 

Safety off. 

Both his and his gun's. 
Hear his New Rock boots stomp down the school hallway. 
See students cower behind barricaded...

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Categories: cordite, fantasy, gothic, hero, high
Form: Verse
Lion of Judah
THE LION OF JUDAH

Lightning bursts from the sky
Electricity sizzles
The smell of cordite fills the air.
A spatter of rain forms large drops on the dusty ground.
Black clouds form a backdrop to the Thornveld 
as the sun kisses the horizon goodnight.
The sound of a lion roars before...

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Categories: cordite, bible, faith, jesus,
Form: Narrative
Ka-Pwing
forgotten sound
of a father's voice,

only a fond memory of English Leather,

faces of children
not one's remembered,

melancholia captioned,

while snared in long wars
bereft of true glory,

cordite charred, world weary,

heavy hearted,
heavy handed,
heavy lidded, 

minutes whip past
like a lash on raw skin,

gilded ages burst like flack,

eons too much when unwelcome
too...

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Categories: cordite, father, memory, old,
Form: Free verse
A Soldiers Tale
(A journey into the First World War)

The trembled hand
the twitching face.
A desperate draw on cigarette
looking for courage in a cordite breath.

Huddled in mud protected by 
slime filled walls, 
these walls of Jericho shake
crumbling into my fear.

My tomb beckons another inspection.
Buried alive under corrupted soil,
a land...

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Categories: cordite, war, prayer, fear, men,
Form: Free verse
Knighted Cards
Knighted Cards

Richard Boone
Presented Paladin cards under an ominous tune.
First gunslinger so erudite
In circumstances likely to explode like cordite....

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Categories: cordite, america, celebrity, music,
Form: Clerihew

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry