Best Reliquary Poems
A Reliquary Musing
A child’s doll melded into a stone in a former Nazi Death Camp
as its chilling image haunts the collective mind of those who live
in the so-called civilized world of today and who profess a hollow
concern for a child who’s long dead and who’s been completely
forgotten to the rest of the modern world.
A sad image like this one should haunt the very soul of mankind that
oft professes a political correctness as it sweeps such unpleasant images
under a bone-ridden rug that reflects a sad happenstance and mutters only
a sigh at the horrific nature of such a truly evil occurrence.
And, only Almighty God knows this sad truth.
And, now you do too.
Amen.
Gary Bateman, Copyright © All Rights Reserved
June 14, 2022 (Narrative)
Written: May 22, 2026, for a contest sponsored by Daniel Henry Rodgers
3rd place contest winner
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They found it in a cellar no one remembered building—
a small box of tarnished brass, hinges soft as old breath,
a warm lid that felt like it had been pondering for a long time.
Scholars termed it a mnemonic engine,
while clerics labeled it a sin-counter.
Children claimed it housed a star that forgot how to shine.
The lady who inherited it—
The one with the quivering hand and the always-paused voice—knew better.
She had seen the way the box listened.
When she approached, the air thickened,
as if the room were holding its breath to avoid spoiling a pledge.
The box never opened for her or anyone else.
It often shifts its weight on the table at night like a dreamer rolling over.
She kept it despite demurs that it buzzed, projected shades in locations,
no lantern may explain, and knew things no object should recall.
When she tried to leave it behind,
the silence in her chest grew heavier, as if the box were
only keeping her unspoken life from collapsing.
She swore she heard it whisper, never words, some nights.
A quiet, rhythmic counting sound.
Counting her unspoken regrets, options, and lost selves.
Maybe the sum of times she walked back from a truth.
The reliquary kept its secret.
It waited, watched, and held what she couldn't say.
After she died, they found the box beside her,
still closed, warm, and listening.
No one dared touch it, but someone claimed they heard it exhale—
a long, relaxed breath, as if it had stopped counting???
Retreating into my mind, I find,
Encased like glass, a history of my past, of
Lovers long ago, of bent and broken arrows.
Instant memories envelop me, like a familiar
Quilt, wrapping me into a mummy of guilt,
Unhappiness, pain. . . all feeling remains,
Are stored here, the bones of tears, to
Regret, resurrect, reflect, or entomb. I linger, having
Yet to exhume, the elusive, gold doubloons.
4/26/11
*Won 1st place in "One Off" contest
In my heart, a reliquary, gather teeth that do not belong to me,
but are those of voices I swallowed out of politeness, unwillingly,
they echo in silence like relics of a gentler, forgotten violence,
and I polish them with guilt until they shine like silent confessions.
I tell myself there is beauty in this digestion of thoughts and emotions,
that consuming means transforming, changing essence into silence,
but every night, I wake with a mouth full of unbelieved prayers,
as if my soul seeks to speak unshared truths.
And yet, within this dance of shadows and unlived memories,
I struggle with the ghosts of those words that never belonged to me,
I am an alchemist of my own conscience, seeking to find gold,
in the ashes of promises I never understood, only swallowed.
I place these relics under the pale light of introspection, seeking healing,
but each rattle is a reminder of transformation through forced silence,
and I wonder if I will ever be able to release these captive words,
or if my heart will remain a reliquary of eternal melancholy.
I had to learn to skin animals
but instead
practiced on myself
after diving deep
into the abyss of my soul,
I surfaced
with my tri-colored eyes alight
in the illumination
of self prophecy
fates morn’ dawned bright
flint-ed off the horizon
the sun blazed,
misery
and reflect in the seven seas
streaming from tempests eye
I stretched out my dermis
till a feather was thicker,
it was then
the calligraphy started
a hundred thousand words
later, I became concerned,
my relic would perish
with nothing to protect
my legacy,
times harsh hands
crush the petals of my soul
I pushed past the thirteenth rib.
and pull out my heart,
the seven seas having decimated
to clear each chamber
my words rest in a reliquary
lined with love
and I pass it to you
for safe keeping
namaste
—When the Last Tear Remembers the First Star—
When grief came barefoot through the corridors of night,
And briny traitors rose from the caverns of my despair,
They bore the ancient verdict written against the light,
That clay must bow when storms have stripped it bare;
Yet beneath the ruins of all I had known as me,
A small forgotten door opened into memory.
For years I wore a kingdom forged of silent pride,
A crown of iron placed upon a trembling head,
And hid the rivers that moved beneath the tide,
Lest they reveal the fragile country where I bled;
I called my tears a weakness unworthy of my name,
While my own heart burned quietly without flame.
Then came those salt-winged strangers from the deep,
Those pale ambassadors of sorrow’s oldest sea,
Who entered where the buried wounds of childhood sleep,
And whispered that even mountains fall eventually;
But when their waters gathered upon my sight,
I closed my eyes and walked beyond the night.
I returned to afternoons of unmeasured gold,
Where dust rose softly beneath our running feet,
Where a little universe of laughter could unfold,
And rain would crown the lanes we called complete;
There, beneath a sky no sorrow had yet scarred,
A nameless radiance waited in the backyard.
No throne, no armour, no forgotten vow remained,
Only the wind, the earth, the voices left behind,
The old familiar paths where innocence had rained,
And a vanished constellation blooming in my mind;
Then every salt-born river descending from my eyes
Turned into trembling jewels across the sable skies.
I knew not whether the heavens had bent to me,
Or whether I had finally learned the heavens’ tongue;
For grief was no longer the grave it seemed to be,
But the first dark soil where hidden stars were sprung;
And the thing I had feared as my deepest scar
Was carrying within it the memory of Diamond—the star.
Now when those briny heralds return once more,
And knock upon the chambers of my mortal frame,
I welcome the tide that once I called a war,
For it arrives bearing no defeat, nor shame;
And somewhere beyond the silence where all tears are done,
A diamond still trembles—the first light of the sun.