Best Mausoleums Poems
And the cemetery was fresh and vivid green
when we took our bikes down the paths of it -
past stones and trees and mausoleums and grass as far as we could see,
carefree on that muggy summer afternoon,
perspiration glistening on our arms and on our faces
as we sought to stay on the shady side of each well-traveled lane.
Instinctively we followed Dale, our older red-haired fun-loving brother,
turning here and there; it didn’t matter. We had no destination,
no gravesites of friends or relatives to visit.
Sometimes we would spot an interesting tombstone,
jump off our bikes and take a closer look at it.
We were just kids, out of school for summer with no real obligations.
Our lives were a clean slate, not like the worn and broken headstones
we spotted sometimes on the cemetery’s edge, the older area’s grave stones
whose names were hard to read and dates went as far back as the 1800’s.
Those were emblems of an ancient past for us.
It was 1965! We were the modern generation and the future loomed
as large for us
as those many squared city blocks the cemetery measured.
Flash forward two decades to 1984. I was married with two small kids
and back in my hometown; things around me seeming so much smaller,
and the future loomed not quite so large ahead of me this time.
Most of my sisters were married but leading separate lives in different states.
We all had pressing obligations, so our reunion could not be a long one.
No longer were my sisters and I carefree, and we were not riding bikes.
We rode in cars that followed one another in a line.
And the cemetery was cold and dismal grey on that December day
as we gathered around the unearthed sod,
staring, unbelieving, into the giant hole that was to be the final resting place
for the brother whom we’d once followed so gleefully
along the shady paths of vivid green.
Written May 19, 2016
for the "And The Cemetery Was" Poetry Contest Contest of Broken Wings
Categories:
mausoleums, sad,
Form:
Narrative
Rife with abstractions, and still just listening;
Leaning on pages, the night keeps glistening.
Ripping at seams, no intentions of fixing
As leaks spring up in the darkness of evening.
--
Hollowed-out souls fill the depths of this bet,
And mausoleums hold the ones straggling yet.
We're fighting ourselves over people we've met
Just to make up the ground in relieving the debt.
--
Knife with distractions, and I've stopped listening;
Meaning enrages; The light drips, glistening.
Slipping the reams, no ideas for fixing
The problems arisen on this summer evening.
Categories:
mausoleums, introspection
Form:
Quatrain
Every morning upon rising
Routinely searching my vital signs
As a poverty stricken person
Searches pockets for spare change.
The grim news reports,
The skyrocketing death tolls,
Mausoleums more populated
Than the emptied churches,
Many desperately seeking God
From the confines of their dwellings.
I remember the time, early in life,
When I use to peer from my window
Into the darkness outside
For the headless Dullahan at the reins
Of the Cóiste Bodhar (coach-a-bower),
Its four black black horses
Powerfully pulling the death coach
Up to my front door, as I ruminate
On the words of Yeats, casting
A cold eye on life, on death.
Life, death, such separate entities,
Or so it seems, on the surface.
Yet, forty-two years of lessons
By grieving families have only
Taught me the oneing of life, of death.
As the beloved Anchoress of Norwich
Gazed out the window of her cell
Upon her nation devastated by
The Black Death and war,
So I gaze out my window on a world
As broken by plague and political violence,
And am comforted by the word of Christ
To this simple Middle Age mystic,
“All shall be well, and all shall be well,
And all manner of thing shall be well.”
(c) 2020, Robert Charles Wagner.
Categories:
mausoleums, death, faith,
Form:
Free verse
They loiter
in memory's mausoleums,
old chants,
those gilded liturgies,
ready to resurrect
and eat through the ear
with promises
under the finery
of polished myth.
Grafted onto our very bone,
these structures scaffold history
and who we are.
Now, stripped of flesh,
they moan
and rattle the dark
when given voice
by savage winds.
I have heard
the haunting echo left
in the wake
of their going.
Emptied of substance,
these vacated vaults
house only noise
from human ghosts.
I have listened
for the faint whisperings
beyond the worn out
replays of the dead,
for something transcending
numbers and name -
hear only the wind.
I keep telling myself
this is enough.
Categories:
mausoleums, absence, wind,
Form:
Free verse
Unwrapping both a blessing and a curse, extracts
Love’s essence painting souls and framing them abstracts.
Too brazen into Jung’s collective we were when,
Our fists were punching holes up through the floors of Heaven.
We knew the fools from those among the wise who cherish,
But that denying harlot Fate, had to be selfish.
Now under burden of this heavy and cruel loss,
Pain’s pressing pitch to blacken the abandoned cross.
Among the broken pieces that will fall this way.
The mausoleums that will be cap stoned today.
In paper coffins lay the letters of their last,
To reconcile this day, or others from the past.
Possessions that become departing gifts to friends.
A rotting, cold corpse they will be, when passed again.
Those stalking zombies out of reach and courting hate
Caressing defense of an unforgiving state.
Must they forget the lover’s pages bled in ink.
Escape in substance high, and falling drunk in drink.
As desperation quickly fills their beds with drones.
The futile chains attempts, when weakness is alone.
To look again to see the gift from ending’s split.
A testimony of a truth embracing it.
For what this life has taken, in return, it gave.
Event Horizons welcome us beyond the grave.
Some morsels kept out of the ruins of our dreams.
A loving Christ’s hands will to heal and stitching seams.
His wisdom and his patience walking me still slower.
His ways are guiding me, in these, the years to over.
Categories:
mausoleums, christian, jesus, lost love,
Form:
Couplet
Embarking upon another vigilant journey, as ever searching these
Sinuous corridores in sublime; a maxims inverted souvenir; effusions
Waterfalls of wisdom to contest this, their mortuaries enigma....
Craven images incised within marble stones strewn amid the roguery
Of a silent night; rustic crossing the cold damp earth; its wilted flowers
Unto the mausoleums seminal door; twilights prophet speaking now in
********************************************************
...."Summations Rhymes * 'Vice Versas Impasse?!'" ~
Categories:
mausoleums, hope, life, love,
Form:
"Some of us have secrets – William Tell."
Some of us have secrets.
Well, we all have secrets, William Tell.
We sweep them under the carpet,
or trade, for better things.
Some things we exchange,
they see us captured and seized,
canaries singing in gilded cages,
well, some not so gilded;
some are chirping up
an opera, orchestra vulgate,
the percussion,
rattled and deceased.
We pretend to live in golden ages
the buried deep inside us - we,
claw a way out of the hidden
musty mausoleums
haunting
all
the poetique
people.
The external jest,
they love it all,
they smother us
in their velvet words,
or drown us in
a baptismal tide
of touch and tell, bugs,
truth or dare,
a looney tunes overture.
Some of us have secrets.
Well, we all have secrets.
We sweep them under the carpet, or trade,
for better things.
The Apple plucked from the tree
like a story, before bitten,
placed on a head
stood against a wall
William Tell
for better things
(LadyLabyrinth / 2023)
Categories:
mausoleums, muse,
Form:
Narrative
A light mist of ethereous rain falls
silent on his thin, sharp-angled
face. He lengthens his stride and
leans toward the wind. He walks
through plundered poverty; crumbled
by the weight of exodus. Abandoned
to the blood-rough nails scratching
on the concrete diasporas of multiethnic
history.
Past the playground echoes of PS #59,
as they drift along the faded asphalt
haze of time. Echoes still ring true with
elemental bones of hope: the children
break out and through gunmetal gray,
graffiti covered doors, outside to the
saturated heat of inner-city rage.
Past gothic orthodox cathedral
mausoleums which sit like ancient
stoics and stare through burnt-amber,
azure, crystalline-blue stained glass
eyes; focused out with a kernel of
eternal mustard seed hope: souls will
come again and warm the sacred pews.
Past the Puerto Rican market
where the pig's head led the
carnivore parade of mastication
promise every day. A meat-market
window of letted-blood and death
reminiscent of Amsterdam whores
with their wares on display for the
dead-eyed stares of the men outside.
He comes to the dust and
grime of an empty lot covered
by old and broken concrete slabs.
He stops and lets his mind drift
back to watch a woman who wears
a ratted fox-tail wrap around her
neck. She holds a long, un-filtered
cigarette, loose, between her two
bright, fuchsia painted lips. She
wears a black velvet hat with veil
to her nose and a straight black
dress that flows below her knees,
mid-calf, above her shiny black,
high-heel, patent leather shoes.
He can almost see through the blur
of a chiaroscuro choreography his
mother, visiting with the Kazakhstan
neighbors, in this dreamlike memory.
The multi-plexed, subsidized project,
where he was born, once stood just
beyond his vision of a mother's visit in
high-heel, indigo, tangerine, sibilant
sounds; lit with electric light smiles
of denial.
She would hold her cigarette between
fuchsia lips and wear that ratted fox-tail
wrap until the cancer cough began to spew
Chesterfield blood on the molted fox-tail
head of her beloved fur.
Then she went to bed. Went to sleep. And died.
Pigeons cooed quietly on that New York City night.
Categories:
mausoleums, historylight, light, cancer,
Form:
Verse
Contortions beloved china doll ballets; fallacies repertoire?!
Sublime, embarking upon another vigilant mnemonic journey
As ever searching these sinuous theatres jigzaw corridores to well find
A maxims inverted souvenir....
Effusions waterfall of wisdom to contest this mortuaries enigma!?
Discernful images incised within black marble stones strewn amid
The roguery of this grayish night; rustic, crossing the cold damp earth
With its wilted flowers unto the mausoleums preemptive seminal door....
Twilights prophet speaking now in summations scarlet rhymes?!
To wrest the breath from abymals reaching grasp that it may surely die; dissolve
Into a thousand broken pieces to be crushed aneath, vice versas impasse ~
****************************************************************
....“Figurines, Figments & Fragmentation” *
Categories:
mausoleums, hope, life, love,
Form:
Wake up to the magnitude of the responsibility you shoulder
In singing the destiny humankind deserves
Betraying secrets to the egregious egret whose stakeholder
In his demented demeanour reserves
The right to plan, design and manufacture weapons of mass destruction
Whose reach and damage could wipe out the future humankind
Treasures in beliefs, norms and cultures whose construction
Aimed to implant virtues which find
Resonance, consonance and conformance in every facet
Various genotypes and phenotypes of the human race
Wear in awe and glamour that make up the alphabet set
That defines human nature in every trace and face
Living on the face of the Earth in the love habitude
Throbbing in hearts
Whose latitude and attitude
Once embedded in all Arts
Identified in caves, in grottos, in frescos, in cathedrals, in mausoleums
Breathing and preaching love
In beating hearts, in museums
Below and above
The heavens wake up, speak up
To reconcile warring religions, ideologies, mythologies, methodologies
Crawling as dregs at the bottom of the cup
Where the secret to the survival of the human race lies in new psychologies
Whose central tenet
Reduces
The Internet
To a platform where love produces
An elixir that metamorphoses human life
Into a form that lives forever
If only humankind could wipe away strife by mastering the art of playing the fife
Whose tenderness tune cures life brevity in a laboratory located in Denver.
Categories:
mausoleums, poems,
Form:
Free verse
Silence morphs the call of falling dusk
Gathering under fiery skies,
Stilled leaves in somber silence hang
Moping at the darkness that plies.
Dusty paths the home-bound cattle plod
Syrupy chirping of birds in flight,
Smoke from the earthen ovens pause
Wistfully staring at twilight.
Frenzied bats eke out their weary awls
Urging the evening star to wait,
To let moon lord overnight,
And muse over their morbid fate.
Wind over the placid river brings
Low tidings for cicadas to cry,
Fathom the fragrant moonflower will
Need endeavour to pacify.
When vigil of stark skeletal boughs
Stand mournful over the hooting owl,
And the mist like a wimple veils
The nocturnal creatures that prowl.
Those who lie in cemeteries stark
Berate the mausoleums old,
Affording them scant room to move
Adding to their ordeals untold.
Crimson dawn will pale the darkened sky
For light to lug another day,
Darkness would need wait again
For dusk to come upon its way.
***********
Categories:
mausoleums, nature,
Form:
Narrative
Slowly the sun sets as day turns to night.
Cellars, castles, and caves, places that cause much fright.
These are the areas, I call them my home,
secluded deeply within mausoleums and tombs.
Once I awake from a sleep of no rest,
gradually I rise from red velvet lined casket.
Hovering above dirty, dusty, stone cratered floor,
gracefully floating, exiting heavy oak crypt door.
Black overcoat with yellow gold buttons and links,
white shirt, black tie, fur scarf of two minks.
Appearance is normal for the society in now,
dressing the part, slightly wealthy, and greetings of bows.
Never drawing attention, til catching warm, living soul alone,
down a dark alley, quiet street corner, or invite within home.
Hypnotic dark eyes and a voice that will snare,
bringing her closer to death, she's completely unaware.
Capturing one's soul, mind, body, and heart,
moments after meeting, their blood mine from start.
As my arms wrap around you and draw you in near,
I expose my fangs, glistening white, soon red smeared.
Lifeless body, pale white as my silk shirt,
draining you empty, quenching this dark thirst.
Hours have passed, must exit this town,
dawn is approaching, as I enter graveyards ground.
Another night has passed, one less soul on this earth,
my life never ending, non-mortal, Hell's curse.
With arms across chest, eyes shut but awake,
waiting til dusk, another journey and soul I will take.
Categories:
mausoleums, scary,
Form:
Rhyme
Homeless I lived,
without even a marked territory
to claim as my own!
How I wished I had access
to a mattress to lay my weary body
or a ceiling under my head!
But I had no place to be in
I have slept in roach infested tunnels,
under bridges and doorways,
walked alone through city streets-
a shadow lost in the absence of light.
In the night I have walked through empty streets
where feral cats and dogs, stalked.
During day, people would walk past me
Looking away as if I were a plague
Amid the crowd, I searched for a kind face
But I could see none.
Sometimes, a hand would occasionally toss
a coin or two into the begging bowl by my side.
In the absence of a marked territory,
I kept walking from place to place,
until my muscles ached and my legs
refused to budge an inch or take another step.
I lived poor, so poor, a lost soul in every way.
When I died, my body was wheeled in a hearse,
with a few following me, with hesitant steps,
more as a custom than a gesture true.
The open gates of the walled cemetery,
allowed a glimpse of the newly dug grave.
In a remote corner it stood,
close to an overgrown hedge,
among many a mound that bore no name on it.
Oh, the indigent and the lonely
are destined to huddle together
in death under the sod
with their identities merged
into a single clan!
My body when swiftly lowered to the pit
and as everyone left to join the rage of life,
I pondered, how on this Earth
the distinctions of rank
extend down unto dust
and follow one like a faithful mongrel
While the rich lie in mausoleums
and in tombs with their names engraved on marble slabs,
think of the many, mere chaff in other’s eyes
who, in life or death, are never fated to be in marked territory!
A torn page from life’s tome!
A story ended and deleted forever!
Categories:
mausoleums, angst, betrayal, death, funeral,
Form:
Free verse
That afternoon at Highgate
When my life had paused awhile,
Old graves and headstones greeted
With their sad and forlorn smile.
Smirched epitaphs stared at me
My call they wanted to know,
Though vowed in pensive silence
With the ones' who lived below.
I tread on cobbled pathways
Between light and dappled shade,
I wound past tombs and gravestones
Down the chapel's colonnade.
Past ivy mantled towers
Then climbed a steep wooded hill,
Saw no interment service
And the cemetery seemed still.
Traceried terraced balustrades
Brick catacombs in iron-cast,
Mausoleums of thinkers,
And graves where mildew amassed.
Grass blades and blossoms beckoned
That I stand and pay regard,
To those who walked the earth once
And lay in the wooded yard.
I turned to look for mourners
Strangely, I found there was none,
Grave-Angels surveying me
For I was the only one.
Could fathom not my habit
Of rummaging life in death,
In a yard eschewing time
That cared not for poisoned breath.
Bees and butterflies floated
Near boughs of many a tree,
Felt they were entertaining
The ones buried there and me.
Knew not cause of my halting
Perhaps weary of the world,
The air balming my sorrows
With fragrant blossoms unfurled.
Wish could decipher lessons
That I could verily keep,
From those who once existed
Now endowed with restful sleep.
I stirred up to crimson skies
For the day had passed away,
Dusk gathering rapidly
My journey a longer way.
When leaving that tranquil yard
Wondered at my lessons there,
My sojourn at the boneyard
That cautioned - to be aware!
For the dead too had once lived
With many an urgent chore,
Yet, when sly life deceived them
They weren't wanted any more.
All doorways barred forever
Adorned with silver and gold,
Save one gray and forsaken
Welcoming them to its fold.
Know men have little option
But accept their hallowed fate,
All vanities ground and churned
Though it be a trifle late.
When I walked out of Highgate
Its echoes haunted my mind -
Mattered not where I journeyed
Knew destiny lay behind.
***********
Categories:
mausoleums, death,
Form:
Elegy
With its silvery veil the moon's pallid sheen
Spectrally cloaks and invests all the homes
Transformed into midnight mausoleums
While those who sleep within can never be seen
As cold as the tomb
As miserable as a morgue
As silent as the grave
As the sheathing of a sword.
The dark shades of night unfold
Where they lie deep shrouded in their beds
Dreams dance lively in their heads
While they look like bodies cold.
Closed to all are the eyes of their resting places
Blinded to outside view
Wrapped in night's dark blue
But within their still frames R.E.M races
Outside in the gloom wreathed like hearses
Stand their silent polished cars in rows
In preparation for sadder blows
When funereal will be the verses.
Categories:
mausoleums, dark, death, night, sad,
Form:
Rhyme