Best Despoiling Poems

Last Night 
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
translation by Michael R. Burch

Last night, your memory stole into my heart
as spring sweeps uninvited through barren gardens
as morning breezes revive dormant deserts
as a patient suddenly feels better for no apparent reason



Strange Currents
by Amir Khusrow
translation by Michael R. Burch

O Khusrow,...

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Around 29AD, a saviour claimed eternity as a light of future hope,
Recorded or foretold, accepted or rejected, he left a message that stretched,
Across the pages of all mankind, throughout all time, resurrected but neglected,
Simple message of loving each other, each human brother of different mothers,
His...

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False Warrior


Cold spear of winter’s harbinger
pierces the heart of summer
leaving her wounded beauty
bleeding out upon the landscape.

Autumn – cruel mercenary force
despoiling the scent of bounty
laying rot the un-ripened hope
denuding the cloaked forest,

Driving color from the stalks
into the shriveling roots
unable to withstand
frost’s crippling grip.

Marching under grey...

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Lying in bed, the light of my computer bright
against the still images slowly changing on the silent TV across the room.
Despoiling the image,
nine seventeen, pm
stands out on the bottom of the screen.
My tired head resting from the day's turmoil, unthinking,
unfocused.
In front of me I find...

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Mosaic tablets are not monoliths.
It all depends (despair, or last best hope?)
whatever end of Tocqueville’s telescope
you happen to be viewing.  One man’s myths

are gospels to another.  Freedom fighters,
or filthy terrorists?  A vexing ton
of evidence encumbers Lexington.
Our certain self-assertion might indict us.

A foreign...

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A bandit who thieves with the moon
Finds daylight arrives far too soon
     His looting is brash
          Despoiling the trash
A boon, what a raccoon leaves strewn ...

Another hides in cynoglossum
Awaiting the scraps 'coonies...

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The Eager Traveler
by Ahmad Faraz
translation by Michael R. Burch

Even in the torture chamber, I was the lucky one;
When each lottery was over, unaccountably I had won.

And even the mightiest rivers found accessible refuge in me;
Though I was called an arid desert, I turned out to...

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I am the scribe who spends my day fixing angles to a pin
yet in night dreams I spill my seed despoiling Seraphim.
I am the pilot holding fast to a course that cannot win
I am the finger on the trigger to loose the dread Sarin
but through...

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Constrain the clatter within the soul's quiescent call
Rip the sun out of the day into night time's placid fall
To bear the bliss of calmness and peace to all

Oust the din of baneful chaos born
It strikes too deep in our marrow's reconciliation
Unprotected as a petaled rose...

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Gold Rush

Today I have been watching burly men 
with heavy machinery despoiling Alaska
in a hunt for gold, and when they have gone they will leave
the heavy foot prints of man behind; a mutilated landscape!
The mining companies are doing the same in Africa
for their relentless hunt...

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A piece of my mettle falls
Despoiling the papered faces
Control lost as another descends
Past moments dripping away
Thereafter…constant

Individual bits of my essence falling
Exposed of crystalline fragility
Unnoticed and tacit traces
Breaking off to wholly decrease
Myself…fading

Tenure of uncounted moments
Deep within my possession
Unseen behind dark sunglasses
Afraid to reveal the millions of...

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It was inheritance of pain. I should
have known. Incontinent, she was scared
to hug me: the child, after the rape. Shepherding
the lacerations: petrified, a body of lad

floating in a sewage tank; a short circuit in
an incubator,  row of infants, life snuffed out in flames;
of being....

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The opposite of life
is death

The polar opposite of eternal health
is terminal disease,
with unease perhaps lying/truthing
in-between timelessness
and untimely demise

So too,
my opposite of steady compassion
may be your unsettling dispassion

Elation v deflation
of all these oppositional answers above
as clear
as unclear appositional questings
below.

What is my opposite of suicide?
Self promotion?
Ego inflation?
Having...

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We’ve abused our great freedoms
to reap the results
with school and church shootings
hate speech a new cult  

No respect for the flag
or sacrifice made
ignoring our veterans
despoiling their graves  

Our streets wait in ambush
where the enemy hides 
to prowl in a wasteland
where evil decides ...

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Dying the slow death of political infection,
it hides within our words

As we try to run, and try to hide,
its plague a constant scourge

Poisoning the water, despoiling our thoughts,
all freedom it commands

Directing the folly, conscripting all joy
—our blindfold it demands

(Dreamsleep: August, 2019)...

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