Best Graves Poems
Snowcapped graves marking frozen lives once shared
Reminding me of the winter graveyard walk, unable to let go
Frozen in shock, in a day that no words could show
My being shattered, alone again, with no answers to anything
I remember what it’s like to feel like I cannot go on,
With this life dealt to me, like a bad hand of cards
I remember the lack of opportunity to say goodbye
So instead, I stood at our grave, talking to the dirt
Oh how much can return, by a sight seen in this way
Snowcapped graves transporting thoughts to that day
Heidi Sands
2/9/20
Two empty coffins...with unknown names
Saved for the unfortunates...of Jesse James
Made for the men, they say...Jesse killed
Only a matter of time, they'll both...be filled
An Epitaph To Make Me Laugh Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Jesse Rowe
4-22-2019
Laughing graves is a scaring reality
As I moved deep into the forest,
unaware of what was ahead of me,
graves jumped out one by one
Holding to each was a white ghost
I was scared and deeply troubled as
next to me stood a faceless leader.
Games of laughter started in a chorus
Graves shook whenever ghosts laughed
Reason jumped out of my head due to fright
An angry ghost asked me why I came
Vying for trouble in the land of the dead
Eager to know what is happening there in
Secret nation built from ruins of bullets
I visit them in silent repose,
their memories float on whispered breath.
Bringing the delight of days now gone,
I do not feel the sorrow of death.
Here I can still see his loving smile,
feel his spirit fill my heart again.
I see his eyes dance as laughter spills,
and tobacco stains his grizzled chin.
I’m with him once more in darkened woods,
as favored dogs run o’er creek and hill.
The taste of port wine upon our lips,
we’ll drink until we have had our fill.
I return to her comforting arms,
upon my brow I can feel her kiss.
I let all my troubles fade away,
to be replaced with a peaceful bliss.
They’re nothing more than two simple graves,
no different from any other.
But these two hold all the memories,
of my cherished father and mother.
Men march forth
Like fodder falling in shallow graves
No one wins a war
No one counts graves
Lift your sword high and mighty
If you are not the undergrowth of the lost
Your victory is to return home
Your Duty however has drastically changed
Teach us, both young and old
Both rich and poor
The value of those lost souls
Buried in shallow graves
Inspired by a friend and his grandmother on Memorial Day
I hope the Grandmother gets to read this and see how small deeds make us all remember!
Thank you
BROTHERLY GRAVES
On brotherly graves wooden crosses don’t stand,
No widows weep there, mourning,
On mass graves you see only flowers and
The fire, eternally burning.
The earth here ruffled with stony waves
When mortars were ripping the planet.
There is no personal fate in these graves –
All fates merged in one under granite!
I see in the flame, that forever is lit,
A village burnt down to coals,
A tank that is flaming and there in it
I see burning soldiers’ souls!
On brotherly graves no widows weep,
And there they put no crosses …
But it doesn’t mean our grief isn’t deep
And we have forgotten the losses!
Translated by George Tokarev
© GEORGE TOKAREV 2003
When winter fell upon our graves
The light of the moon illuminated our paths
To the cold ground we were no longer slaves.
Flowing through the air in waves
We could finally read our epitaphs
When winter fell upon our graves;
And the snow made its way across the plains
As we felt the cold winds against our backs
To the cold ground we were no longer slaves.
Sunlight breaks through as nighttime fades
But doesn't show our tracks
When winter fell upon our graves.
No longer bound by our faiths
Freed from our traps
To the cold ground we were no longer slaves.
Acting out our final roles in our eternal plays
Was it all a dream? Perhaps.
When winter fell upon our graves
To the cold ground we were no longer slaves.
Prescott Bush proved his moxie
as war-profiteer proxy
with brother Harriman
since shame can't bury them
when suggestions turn Nazi.
There isn't a mass grave in my neighborhood
a creek has never flooded
(there is no creek, after all)
and bones have not surfaced.
A bulldozer never grinds to a halt
stayed by a smiling white skull.
The driver doesn’t jump down
doesn’t sift through the remains
kneeling there on the plot.
I once found a grey limb
jutting out from a hill.
I hoped it was a bone
maybe a femur from yore,
the last limb of a virulent Ute
protecting his home—
built by him
with his arms and legs
with the tools of the plains.
His scalp no more,
his skin long gone
but the bone remaining
still staking claim
for the living and free.
But it wasn’t a bone—
it was a tree limb
because there aren’t graves in my neighborhood.
There aren’t even real trees
or game trails;
there aren’t survivors
or failures
let alone corpses and fleas
And the only war left to fight
is against omnipresent me.
Shallow Graves 2
Written: By Tom Wright
2/20/2006
Our fondest memories lie in shallow graves,
Those unpleasant things we’ve interred deep.
To Satan’s excavation we’re oft made as slaves,
Preferring they’d remained in abysmal sleep.
His reminding voice whispering in our ears,
Rouses thoughts that so long have slumbered.
But Christ, has erased, all our guilt’s and fears,
So now to past deeds, we’re not encumbered.
Waiting for a phone call
Hoarding memories surrounding
A nest of sorrow
She's deep asleep
I watch her...
She's
dreaming dreams of happy times but gone...
Busy walls with mounted smiles
A mute TV screen displaying a tragic comedy
Curtains shielding tears
Three phone devices that do not ring...
I must go back to my reality
I cry, she cries...
Our phones do not even sound busy...
Invisible wires of the soul crash in memories...
copyright@iolandascripca2013
In the Middle Ages
witchcraft was wide-spread;
young witches were buried
in shallow graves.
The angry bard was also a monk and defended the Church,
" No witches of any age will be roaming in Catholic Florence
and allowed to practise their magic by the glow of the torch! "
From the pulpit he made his voice rise and broke the silence.
He felt the presence of the other witches who gathered
outside the church; he trembled a little, but continued
his speech of condemnation that to them wasn't eloquent,
" Go to sleep and never rise again " was the loud chant.
All seemed peaceful on that Good Friday with the rain falling,
the bells of the basilica tolled to mourn the crucified Christ;
the altar was draped in purple, the glass windows were dark,
the parishioners waited, the bard never came to the mourning.
" Mourn the barn's death! Christ forgave all sinners, he did not!"
" He burned them at the stake not as criminals but as heretics!"
" We'll protest and revenge their death so inhuman and unjust!"
The witches' chant was louder than the lament of the believers.
Written on 5/31/2016
They were young then, now they would be old men looking across an empty beach, the sun at their back; for many this would be their last day to grow old; dead in the water; dying on the sand of Omaha Beach.
Memories.
Three long hours smashing through the pounding white capped waves; cold and hard as the water washed over the sides, mumbled prayers mouthed through cracked lips saturated with a salty brine taste.
Bodies were pressed together, brother to brother, clammy breath on your neck, an anvil hammering your chest and hoping the body against you would not taste your fear.
Scorching white flashes of light slashed across the plodding boats, tracers burst bright in the early morning light, twisting a body around, then another crumble, finally the Higgins boat stops......
And the gates of hell open wide to the heavens, making room for the newly departed as bodies stumble over the metal ramp, falling down in a slow-motion dance into the water and drift away, for eternity.
Terrible Memories.
A fifty-pound stone strapped on your back, when suddenly the guy standing next to you is not there, vaporized in a conflagration of redness and matter, an empty vessel flung to the heavens in pieces.
The screams of the wounded horrific, as bullets drive you across a sprawling field of fire. The sand was pockmarked by craters on what should be an early June summer day for frolicking at the beach.
The dead bob in the cherry colored water, and the torn apart want to be any place but here, at this hour, at this time, on this day, praying to heaven to make this hell of exploding shells a dream.
Haunted Memories.
Your name doesn’t matter when you are already dead. The dying dissolve in a burst of machine gun fire before kissing the coarse sand, washed away by the relentlessness of tide and the hour, MIA forever.
The unbroken rat-tat-tat sound as bullets slam into bodies and the boys of summer scream for their Mother and the God of morphine. Bursting landmines scatter a leg fifty yards away and the sand bleeds out red.
Memorials
The Ghosts behind the graves, brothers in arms, rest in the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer in the quiet French countryside, not far from a place with the All-American sounding name: Omaha Beach.
I walked past the cemetery the other day,
Those who fought for a right to vote,
Were turning in their graves.
I could hear them moaning in their eternal sleep,
Use it or lose it, use it or lose it was their universal call,
Though not scared, I shuddered from top to toe,
At the horror of all horrors,
As I contemplated a world with voices long silenced
By the winds of apathy and contempt for those,
Past and present Champions of the democratic cause.
A world where democracy was off line.
And yet the people were all oblivious to the fact,
As they took their daily happy pill
Once the shuddering had stopped,
I stood respectfully and said a silent prayer,
With no words adequate enough to express my gratitude
To all those beautiful souls,
Who deserve to rest in peace.
I don't know what the caretaker will make of the photocopies of my,
Voting papers on their graves,
But frankly I don't care.
As if they are ever called forth to reawaken our fading memories
I pity all the non-voters.
Wrinkles on the waves,
Each pebble tries to leave marks,
Water is their grave.