As the empathic moon pales of lustre of life,
and the downcast stars fall in the hour
of lamentation,
unforgiveness has its own realm of misery.
Our anger and resentment strickens our lives,
smothers our love, our joy.
Still absent from one another,
we grow grayer into white.
The evefall speaks of barren and
abandoned dreams,
of reunions that could of been,
of words unsaid that could of professed
a healing pardon.
The unforgiveness borne on a catafalque,
yet, not unburdened, and still unburied. ~
Dank
darkness
was always
settled around.
It was all I knew
of the near universe.
Stale, stifling, suffocating
in my broken and spilt trundle
leaving bitter, morbidly clammy
earth enshrouding my body and being.
A crack in the soil, or in time perhaps.
Slivers of light split the filthy floor,
crawled over ornate catafalque,
and continued its approach,
like winter's blinding ice,
to my exposed bones.
Warming flesh grew
and coursed with
new - life
blood.
Gentle sway by the centre
The bell tolls for thee
Most Gracious servant
bearing thou to thy deserved rest
And as thou art earthly borne by men of the sea
our prayers that flights of angels
have now carrieth thee to the merciful throne
of our heavenly Father,
through him who hast shown
the Way, the Truth and the Life
Where we commend thy eternal soul –
forgiven, pardoned and received –
to the tabernacle of light prepared for thee
Wither thou goest
may we attain the same gracious gift
when we are callest to lie upon the catafalque
and are escorted to our place of rest.
While Cataloguing Catacombs
in ancient Kathmandu
he chanced upon a Catamaran
from nineteen sixty-two.
He Categorized Caterpillars
in an old Catalpa tree
he grabbed a limb that wasn't there
it was a real Catastrophe.
At night his Cat would Caterwaul
out back behind the house
but he Categorically denied
that he smoked Catnip with the mouse.
He had Cattle on his acreage
and Catfish in the lake
he knew a mighty Catamount
who went by the name of Jake.
He retired to Catalonia
where he grew Catawba grapes
but Cataplexy did him in
from which there's no escape.
With a Catafalque for his coffin
inside the Cathedral tall
they Catered in a dinner
and mourned him one and all.
In the Confines of a Dream
By Sy Roth
Their skin touches mine
Hair on end in the cold, tickling,
Vibrating with amoebic fear on an endless loop.
I could not look.
They braved separation from each other,
Buttock to buttock, fearful of the trap
Where shame brays an insulting reality
Nascent scents buried in their catacomb.
Then a quiet and God’s name echoes in their canyon
Hear me. Hear me!
And the eye above peers, a blue orb.
If it could smile, it did.
The dream is long, an arduous journey,
Skins now cling to other skins
And long grooves are etched in it
Hieroglyphs of people predisposed to perish.
In the darkness, they find Jacob’s ladder
And the angel offers no consolation, wrestling with words
Hear me! Hear me! He hears not
And the screams are a balm to the others.
The azure eye above seals fate in their catafalque--
In brief remembrance of the host and their parsec of loss,
The conclusion, an electric denouement, a splash of exhalation,
A remote offering to the gods of fire.
I saw them, the cleansing men.
I parked above the heap
In sordid indifference to their bestiality
Clinging to the apex of our nightmare.
The darkness hides their faces
As the rising sun embraces
And the kookaburras have their say
Announcing the dawn in their Australian way
The stone soldier is their catafalque party standing still
The people are quiet standing as their will
The Minister starts with a prayer
Heralding their sacrifice in battles so far from there
The soldier raises the bugle to his face
And the last post echoes from place to place
Some tears sparkle on their cheeks
As the Lord’s Prayer makes the service complete.
© Paul Warren Poetry
No gifts or cards to buy
now she's gone.
Twice a year –
birthday and Christmas –
would be the frequency
of thinking, choosing,
purchasing, sending.
She was a broken sparrow,
shrunk from a woman.
When I helped to bear
the coffin to the catafalque,
there was hardly weight at all.
At home the cards, the gifts,
are stored somewhere.
He will find them when
he can bring himself
to look through her effects –
gifts and cards,
tiny things that were sent
to a woman who became a sparrow.
a man who never had a death experience is dead
and laying in a casket without experience of the death
is that why he looks so awkward?
is it because he is experiencing an experience
that, actually, is not an experience but a reality?
if that’s not the reason for his mismatching death,
then, why is his coffin shrouded in so many question marks?
he doesn’t say a word,
he doesn’t even try to open his eyes;
no reason indeed for a dead man to open his eyes,
the man who abandoned the world assuredly has nothing to talk about
to the world;
a room full of heavily sunken air
the tears well out from the eyes of men looking at the dead,
only the sound of the watchers’ heart-beats stir up to rise the ripples
in the air
a heart floating on the ripples picks a question mark
drifting by a catafalque hesitantly and asked:
“why did you die?”
as soon as the heart questioned
Unmoved Mover flicked its finger,
and as finger flicked a burnt-out metro from the sky
passes over the world beyond death and draws an indiscernible
picture onto the cave wall; the picture, a shadow of a ghost,
the reincarnated death.
The car that brings that box
with requisite solemnity
purrs reverently to its gentle halt.
The engine is well mannered,
so quiet I hardly know it’s died,
yet the silence now is solid,
till men in black, with practised gravity,
pass to the rear to slide out that box
from its car-borne bier,
where it sat like a slab during transit.
Now it commands my eyes;
it shares my air.
That box! It cannot be ignored,
not now it is here and I so close
and knowing what is in it.
Only when it is carried inside
and placed on the catafalque –
restoring distance between it and me –
do I allow a resumption of my breath
as I move into the chapel
to take my place and make my farewell.
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.