Best Self Immolation Poems
In the beginning there was a lonely word but soon after
there was no room at the meagre hostel for the saviour
Sanguine hopes flash-flooded the sanctuary of hearts
sacrificial blood of Christ awaited to be spilt in vain
Spelt out the message of rusty nails corroding on cross
bones mounted the flesh ready for vanishing memories
Lest we forget Christmas it amounts to summits of wrappers
luxurious gifts opulent indigestion after a vainglorious feast
Reindeer and global delivery services occlude the notion that
taking stock is not about counting presents but reducing the cost
Jesus flashes from i-pads I this and I that please give me more
extra goods additional abundance mince pies and stuffing
Belching and flatulent Tim reaches for his heartburn medication
tastes uppers and downers sniffs white powder on bank cards
His wife smears the makeup she grabbed from under the tree
her new perfume a bountiful offering of disguised scented myrrh
No sense for frank frankinsence as she sniffs expensive fragrances
from benefaction bottle’s decadence and reduces benediction to myth
Gift wrap explodes from the fireplace in the mix of unopened packets
just after Father Christmas has made a lucky escape from the scene
Arson of gluttony self-inflicted suffering self-immolation of sorts
sorts out this unholy communion followed by smouldering mourning
The insurance company refuses to pay as they insist that the couple
had backed the wrong course of action in vile contempt of true faith
They however donate a beautiful bible of careful calligraphy
with gilded ornamentation bound in leather and lather of time
There are no walls standing for wailing when Tim and his spouse
and it remains to be seen whether they might find a mangled manger
To resume business as usual or take refuge in meaning and truth
when the word in the beginning had become a sorry blank canvas
18th November 2018
Contest Christmas Mourning
Sponsor P.S. AWTRY
THE THREE STOOGES
With their lunatic style of slapstick
These old favourites made their mark
Bangs on head, eye pokes and **** kicks
Were transformed to works of art
But it's not of this trio I speak
Three more egregious, my aim
On these your attention I seek
They're REGRET, SHAME and BLAME
Undesirables of the emotions
With pretence that your life they will serve
If for living this life you've devotion
Treat them with the mistrust they deserve
.....................
SHAME - the one least deserving disdain
The one who gets head bashed and eyes poked
Only loons never feel guilty pain
Without wishing their sins be revoked
With no shame at our dastardly deed
We would surely be heartless and brazen
Not to wish to repent, fault concede
But don't drown in self immolation
.....................
REGRET is a stooge insidious
A crime with no victim but self
Curbing soul in a manner perfidious
Life on hold, and you on the shelf
Have a few, perhaps 'too few to mention'
You mis-spoke? Well by all means retract words
But avoid a total suspension
And don't spend your life looking backwards
.....................
Then BLAME, there's the killer, life dumbing
Though it may give relief and brief feel-good
To beat up some rat who had it coming
But move on! Don't espouse victimhood
The problem with indulging in blame
It makes another the cause, you effected
Paint yourself in a victim's frame
Can you then be source for life corrected?
13 May 2018
The time has come your passing has happened
Your desire to live was never dampened
The great Scottish debate for you to stay or go
I screamed yes, but the haggis of your heart said no
The split of our nation represents the split in my heart
But now the time has come and we must part
Much like our dreams of reaching the sixth form debate final
“Page 32” you crowbarred into conversation
infuriating Ash to the point of self-immolation
your self important boasts of superior knowledge
turned my my weakened soul into watery porridge
You were not a stereotype, despite what many said
Unlike most Scots, you ate more than simply fried bread
Your challenge with crackers so lascivious that I lost my thread
And since then I yearned for a way to do more than simple observe your bed
But your aggression was endearing, cutting and clear
Tearing opponents to shreds, speaking to all that will hear
But I was behind a glass wall, simply shedding a tear
As a limp invitation to a party was the closest I could near
I sit here now and remember our lark
Our time together, characterized by a battle with a shark
The verbal brutality was shocking that situation was stark
But your retorts were quick witted, but often loaded with snark
This took so long to write as my heart still bares scars
An open mouth like yours could give hour long seminars
Yet you still saved me from being bundled into one of Bennet’s cars
Yet I must hope that we meet again, underneath heaven’s stars
As I drift along the cosmos
taking eons for my thoughts to osmos.
Here’s an idea that might sound ALIEN,
just show some MOON to keep from failin.
Originating from a place called Ur-anus,
not a PLANET but designed to contain us.
Try converting your STUN GUN
to ignite the methane for fun.
You’re destined to be a galactic STAR,
by keeping those cheeks ajar.
If you try this poetic dictum
don’t explode or you’ll become a victim.
You need to arrive sans detonation
uncharred by self-immolation.
A Letter from Anna, circa 1979
“My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
thinks these dark days of autumn
are beautiful as days can be.
She loves the bare, the withered trees
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.”
Just when I think all traces of you are gone,
And I should, finally and once and for all,
Close the chapter of us and the way we were,
I’m reminded that I’m not the only one
Who is, from time to time, re-visited,
Though not by you, but certainly by the thought of you...
Something found in a drawer, in a notebook, like this,
Reveals a curious poignancy, a cherishing of what was or might have been,
A tenderness preserved from a moment in time,
A possibility postponed or deferred, a regretful acceptance...
My memory, when he’s here with me,
Thinks…no, he feels with all the love and compassion
That you hardly remember you ever felt for me, with me.
Before the chemical soup of pills shut off the wellspring of our passion,
Before the descent into a chaotic and bewildering
and tragic and uncontrollable madness...
But when he, my memory, is here with me,
I do remember and hope I’ll never forget
How passionately we loved
How joyfully we loved, and for a time
How magnificently we loved…
I remember watching you ride away
On your horse across the desert,
Waving your sword in the air in farewell,
Not knowing how many centuries would pass
…before we would encounter each other again.
And with an almost unbearable feeling of déjà vu,
I remember watching you drive away
On your journey across the country,
Waving your hat in the air in farewell,
Not knowing if we would ever, in this life
…encounter each other again.
So, I will hold Anna’s letter in a safe place for you,
For when you are ready to come down from your cross of self-immolation,
To re-awaken and give new life to your compassion,
To honor, acknowledge and accept
the magnificence
that is the essential truth of your being,
…and encounter once again the women who love you.
I sat upon an old stump,
Nautical twilight swelling like dark cotton,
As brown leaves swirl'd in an autumn breeze,
Piling around my leeward boots,
A sound, good memory from childhood,
The sound only autumn leaves can make,
As they blow down a dusky street,
I take all that in, distracted,
As winter geese pass by overhead,
Long necked, vee formed,
Honking like commuters on the pike,
And my thoughts return like sparrows,
Winter chilled as always,
Like standing in the doorway of summer’s icehouse,
And stare into the windows of my home,
In the shadows of the yard like some midnight stranger,
Drawn to the light and noise as some wayward moth,
Made frantic by chemistry and discord,
Amaranthine bafflement of the love sheltered there,
My diamond geode,
Formed not from heat and pressure,
But plasma love,
My fluttered heart sandblasted,
Tortured by the juxtaposition of
Creating something to watch it die or,
Watching it become more than it was before,
While wishing to be one thing,
Unsure of who I’d need to be,
Unsettled by who I really am,
(Whoever that is),
And realizing that for all my self-immolation,
We’re all just playing at being grown up,
And this stump,
Just put a splinter in my ass.
LOOK OUT, IT'S GETTING DARK
Look out, itís getting dark
Time never strode
Viciously before
Treachery, torment
And unleashed lust
Demonstrated route-march
Even at broad day light
Look out, itís getting dark.
Daughter has not reached home
Look out ÖÖÖÖ.
Clutches of evil
So visible, virulent
Brutish libertines
Clung in air embodied
Tender child
She is not at home
Look out-
Sharp beaked vultures
Incorporeal
Invisible,
They flap wings,
Ugly luring of tongue
Resounding rhythm
Vagrant beasts roam, grunting.
Celestial bodies, guardian angels
Keep eyes shut
Look outÖÖÖÖ
Way side brooks
Bogs lay bare
Ferocious shades in darkness
Fireballs roll from gut to throat-
Dispassionate halogen lamps
Hostile streets concealing
Treacherous holes
And ferocious bipeds to pounce
On pray.
Itís dark
As dark as the Black Angel
Our daughter-
Look outÖÖÖÖ.
A wail on wings of wind
A choked scream-
Nauseating odour swells in air
A shadow at the rear end
Of St. Joan street.
Stage sets of a trap pit
Scary shades, bitter fruits
Of calumny, distressing.
Arresting with claws
The black scorpion stings
Prey shivering in fear, disgust
Flames, flesh burning
A self immolation
Crumbling down to ashes.
Our daughter
Look out-
Itís dark
As dark as Black Hole
Devilís stake
Charred body-
My cherub
My blood-
She is not at home.
Night spreads heavy shroud
Over our dreams.
A death knell mourning
Slovenly
Crushing life
Our life
Women in Afghanistan Commit Suicide to Escape Domestic Violence
It is estimated that 2,300 Afghan women attempt suicide every year, reports National Geographic. Between March 2009 and March 2010 alone, an estimated 103 Afghan women set themselves on fire, reports the Ministry of Women's Affairs in Time Magazine. Most women are successful in their efforts. It is believed that more than 80% of women who attempt suicide by fire or self immolation die, reports Time Magazine. ( Women's Revolution, Sunday, January 16, 2011)
By the side of you, rest of your life
She vowed you to share grief and strife
To be together until depart by death
She was the one who kept on you faith
Happy moments added to days and years
She brought up precious sons and daughters
To ease your life with every gladness
She swallowed silently any bitter soreness
She was to welcome weary you at the door
You were in torment, she made it pass slow
She assured when you suppressed in fate
She was really your faithful soul mate
Beach parties at every Saturday night
Camping, surfing and adventurous flight
For your own pleasure along aims of life
Had you ever been nonchalant on your wife?
For a slight mishap, you abused her a peak
Ending arguments with lavish slaps on cheek
Hiding your blunders raised arrogant voice
Had you ever been egoistic on her face?
Deprived love in her own grand kingdom
Tortured her mind at each and every blink
Agony buried in her heavy heart fathom
It might compel her to make own life sink
Could you bloom a lovely fresh blossom
From its cleaved petals gone withered?
She was merely a fragrant satin blossom
Why did you let her life untimely fade?
Swarnapali Liyanage
10/08/2011
I’m not writing this for you, silent intemperate witness
the same rain paints your canvas but lifeless
self neurosis constricts and binds rainbows
from adorning walls of crashing acidic lies
Honesty laced with empathy, is it that hard?
Crushing waves of apotheosis, honour and kin
the only traits noble of hominine sacrifice
left on broken blood soaked shores of lassitude
The web glues all whether you like it or not
lighting up every cell to stimulate interior growth
Reawaken to the facts and reconnect, everything is waiting
opposite the shores of occupation and self-immolation
Quietly quiescent
unable to see
your own flamboyant flammability
the arcane knowledge
of a spark's quintessence
lost for too long
too late
the tender tactile flames
candles of ambivalent amber
that lick at burning skin
are casting luscious light
calling it love
when it catches you
when you are set aflame
then with bittersweet hindsight you know whether
you will be the one that's reduced to ashes
in assured self immolation
or the one to dance in the embers?
will you pray for an intercessor
or become the blaze?
it must be near the forest beds -
near! oh, near the forbidden beds
of ancient pigeons and sacred doves
that flock’d along the lofty niger beds -
and came she – sudden and sullen
came she with throat song-swollen
like some sands of fast and fluty men
singing like some sword-beak'd hen
that flock’d along some weird river beds -
and well-wrap’d were her strange signals!
and came she – a sinister creature wild
of baboons and monkeys - a like-mind
who must twist-blew in the wild songs!
who must sing and dance baboon songs!
and father thot a monkey could sing
drumming on the native ancestral drums
and mother thot a baboon could sing
dancing to the native ancestral drums
and death came, oh! young death came
wearing a cloak of fiery ferry of primates
oh, the stretch of lands under this tame
plung’d into the great wisdom of primates
and this death welds a sledge hammer
each son and each father along this niger!
some harsh bombs in a hand-shake
with my forests chas’d rest out of town
and in turn the baboon’s good estate
took such a lifeless state of a leaf-brown
where baboons and monkeys drench’d
in soft-humour of bloody strife
where whole villages lie fully sack'd
from ancestral lands by a new lord of strife!
and father a-jok’d of such a lifeless figure
and mother smil’d at such a lifeless figure
but the harsh bombs of lifeless bombardments
brought a silent vacuum in the forests!
oh, stubborn lords of my cut-throat gentr’y
my niger beds a-crop the sly seedlings of beauty
tho’ baboons and monkeys a-swim like the swine
in blood of self-immolation, a-crying … crime!
calling all mistreated jugglers
and wretches of condemned madhouses
bewitched by fingers of freak fame
the spindly fingers of trickster twins
that open the floodgates to occult caverns
unleashing the brusque wraiths
the brittle symmetry of her glacial eyes
cast down from the empyrean skies
as a sanctified abyss from ancient past
eyes as candlelit rectory windows
shining bright like voluptuous pyre
and ferryman’s lantern on turbid nights
calling all gritty peyote coyotes
gargoyles of noxious mind germination
whistling by the graves of stars
in the form of ravenous black holes
so vexed by the self-immolation of lovers
the musicality of their hearty asphyxia
tantalized through thick and thin
falling in cascade down the wailing well
how do we always end up vampirized
singing the longeval sardonic litanies
outliving the meteoric tremors
as monuments of the past tumble down
calling all incorporeal beasts
to swing the fate’s pendulum in effigie
and mourn the motheaten grandeur
of lofty and aged Victorian ancestry
within the reach of eternity’s gate
disemburdened and lost to the ether
melting at last in the muse’s embrace
eclipsed by the fading night gyrations
there’s no excuse not to leave in rapture
one last rainy walk by the derelict wharf
ready to fall down the fissures en masse
into the ruptures of our narcotic glossary
The pale faced young damsel
By evening turned into a blushing bride
Her cheeks made red with rouge
And her lips glossed in cherry red
But the makeup artist, before
Seeing the magic of his deft touch
By some sudden mental derailment
In a bid at self immolation,
Set fire to himself
Badly burned by the inferno
He plunged into the waters below
One more attempt at suicide?
Or a frantic attempt to save himself,
From an act, he impulsively rushed into?
Yet another question remains
‘Can flames turn him to ashes?’
Or water, drown his resilience?
July. 15.2022
A Brian Strand Premiere Poetry Contest
Between the sun and moon
you come to transcend
the frescoes on the sky
for a lost chance.
It fuels the anxiety.
When do I meet you
in dark to explore the
lightning rod.
The inside enemy will
allude to self-immolation.
Where will end the
agony of man ?
The carnage continues
unabated. The crowds are thinning.
Lurking men on fimbriae dump the veils.
Who will invite them today ?
Satish Verma
Buddhist: self-immolation
Muslim: blow everyone up
Christian: just shoot you
Hindu: Sikh revenge
zeal: (noun) a feeling of strong eagerness,
excessive fervor to do something or
accomplish some end
© Goode Guy 2012-11-27