Despoiled Poems | Examples

Toil

I am as constant as the stars.
From your soul I shall never depart.
The fever grips her in large part
in the phase of popular charts.

For you I am forever in debt
about the things you never said.
Issue warnings of winter’s dread.
To see you is my one regret.

She bathes inside the plastic jar,
taking the joke much too far.
It pleases me to see you again.
In the summer the river runs red.

Believe me now for I have lied.
A thousand stars could never hide.
The last of us have been despoiled.
A hundred years we shall ever toil.

Age Appropriate

Whining, is age appropriate,
With wrinkles - both newborns and aged.
Boo-hoos - in cradle; before grave.
The old straitened; babes’ swaddled.

With wrinkles, both newborns and aged,
They are bathed, despoiled, and diapered.
The old straitened; babes’ swaddled.
Rock and roll lullabies, falling.

They are bathed, despoiled, and diapered.
Boo-hoos - in cradle, before grave.
Rock and roll lullabies, falling.
Whining is age-appropriate.

Cry in the Night

Hooves of horses thundered across the fields 

Onward they came urged by murderous men 

Huddled behind stout stone walls 

Women and children in the halls 

Tears were shed as in fear we waited 

Not knowing what would happen  

as evil came to our door 

 

Where are you we cried in despair losing all hope 

Would we eventually swing high on a rope. 

Faith misplaced on invisible beings 

 

We were few against a mighty force 

Heat from their breath felt on our skin 

Our men were doughty fighters all 

Soon though they would eventually fall 

Over run by superior numbers 

Trampled in the dust by sharp hooves, 

Cheering from throats of viscious men. 

 

Those that survived broken and bloodied 

Hung by their necks until they passed 

Mutilated and despoiled now gone to their peace 

Jeering victors tied us and carried away 

To imprisonment in hanging gibbets 

Facing all weathers and words of hate 

This in the end was to be our fate. 

 

Andrew P  McIntyre.       07/01/2025        (c).

Wind and Snow, Fire and Ice

The gods are angry
and growing angrier.
Poseidon views his beautiful ocean
despoiled with garbage,
poisoned and polluted
by heedless humans.
He rages to Hephaestus
and Vulcan, gods
of creation, but, when angered, 
purveyors of 
fire and destruction. 
He exhorts Jupiter, highest
of the gods, for retribution.

And now
the world is ablaze or
buried in snow and ice.
Boreas, god of the North Wind,
unleashes catastrophic winds 
that fan the flames 
in one region,
turn snow-laden, below-zero blasts
onto another.
Cities are flooded
or turned to dust in droughts.
Crops fail.
Disbelieve in us, they say, 
at your own peril.

Picture on the Parlor Wall

She'd been staring at me since I can recall.
A da Vinci saccharine smile painted on her lips
that I'd traced with fingertips in my youth.
Forsooth wondering, "Who are you, comely lady,
and why does no one ever mention your name?"

Eyes of melancholy, but not a tear had she spilled.
For years now, I'd asked that the truth be told
why she'd been given a place on the parlor wall,
yet no one speaks of her with honor or a trace
of how gracefully she sat on that stiff backed chair.

A fetching look adorned the face of this exquisite lass, 
whose lustrous raven hair was released from its chignon.
What sin had she committed that's kept her story hidden
and her name omitted or deleted from the family Bible?
In gold gilded frame, what blame does she still carry?

What thrust and parry duel must she have fought,
perhaps for love. Her presence hangs in oils but despoiled.
Aged painting of this alluring woman remains a mystery
to me, but I see in her eyes, a familiarity I recognize
each time I peer into the mirror on the vestibule wall.

Too much of a good thing sniffed

The farmer looked on sown fields with dismay,
Be-spotted with tiny holes in despoiled array.
Each spot where mice had dug up and eaten.
Wheat seeds sown with mice-controls well beaten.

The farmer had tried to poison the mice.
Tried birds of prey once or twice.
Tried cats and smelly scent deterrents,
All to no avail to beat the endless recurrence.

One night the farmer awoke from fitful sleep.
Ah Hah! I have an idea cheap, neat and deep.
What if I make the entire field smell of wheat,
By spraying the field all over with wheat-oil neat?

Sure enough, the over spray with oil worked a treat.
The mice dug a myriad of holes with tiny feet,
Where their smell, said wheat should be,
Only to find all their holes empty, no seed to see.

Frustrated, exhausted they paused their paws.
Cursed their noses, tricked by the scent-only cause.
A wheat field, over-sown with superfluousness,
Made their search, dig to eat meaningless.

Surrender

Surrender

Surrender to all am and all I’m not
All the memories and those I forgot
Surrender to where I am and the void
Places of beauty and the cruelly despoiled
Surrender to the pace of time and infinity
Moments of peace and those of morbidity
Surrender the mind and the heart
Love, laughter and the mindless blart
Surrender the soul and corrupt flesh
Angel and demon together meshed
Surrender the awareness and the ego
Dreams and chains, we let go

By Cathrin Stuart

Pit Valleys

In parts of Derbyshire and Yorkshire
there are still pit-valleys,
where industry and nature collide,
marry, and have their natural born children.

The earth once gouged, raped and laid desolate,
is landscaped by those who once despoiled.

Time plays its part, plants its seeds,
it up-roots high piled slagheaps,
softens broken mountains of concrete.

I have walked these valleys,
in some I had to stumble over the fractured bones
of abandoned and rusting machinery;
the fire scorched detritus of coal mines.

I have also strolled through resurrected Eden's,
vales recreated out of the unspeakable
into the bright eloquence of beauty.

The hands of men
and the wings of gardening angels
have covered-up all self-made wounds,
have put to bed the deeply trammeled.

The Lord of daisies and daffodils
strolls unmolested once more,
through the worst and the best
that good intentions can do.

Tick, Tick, Tick

Soft and complacent
our youth in denial
What evil disguises
the past has on file

Wishing and hoping
a smokescreen at best
Masking our fear
while fouling our nest

The seeds of our history
whose names have been damned
And mocked until cancelled
our heritage banned

In near distant cauldrons
a pot stirs and boils
Awaiting our downfall
—and all we’ve despoiled

(The New Room: November, 2023)

Loki's Revenge

A demon’s playing
but no one’s listening
Black whirlwind coming
tomorrow hissing

The moment christened
in dark despair
Entrapping vision
beyond repair

A mantra chanting
its rhythm waning
Despoiled virtue
with time refraining

Unmasking Hoder
in blind respite
The god of darkness
—and lost delight

(Dreamsleep: August, 2023)

Mariupol

The city and its steel plant are now "completely liberated" after 531 Ukrainian troops left the site, the Russian defence ministry said.

Completely {
	levelled, depopulated, desolated,
	despoiled, vandalised, looted, pillaged, plundered, 
	devastated, desecrated, ravaged, violated, emptied,
	laid waste, 
	razed to the ground, 
	scorched from the face of the earth, 
	annihilated, obliterated, eliminated. But 
	}
Liberated.

Bare Limbs

winter has arrived
ill winds have despoiled the leaves~
bare limbs and branches

Today

Today was not so bad,
Yesterday, pure horror;
Tomorrow, I cannot predict,
Yet in terror I live;
A touch so much I dread,
For suspicion is my daily bread;
Every word a leery undertone,
Every smile with hidden intent;
That such evil so very well hid,
Is the crux of the matter within;
Today the child you cheer to see,
Might tomorrow be wickedly despoiled;
Their trust so shamefully they do exploit,
The hurt of the child so well disguised;
For shame will none in truth reveal,
The truly vile deeds in secret are done;
A wish to live with nary a worry,
Truly, only if wishes were horses.
So today I beg your child do keep,
That tomorrow you'll have no cause to weep;
Today find time to teach and train,
That tomorrow you'll have no painful regrets;
For in plain view vile people abound,
To steal the sweet innocence of such a child;
To rape, and hurt, and trick and threaten,
for towards the child is their malevolent intent.

Time and Again

They say Rome wasn’t built in a day
Yet little time it took to crucify Jesus,
Last night I was throwing and rolling dice on the heart of a despoiled lady,
I found her struggling to hold on to her life as if it weighed the titanic,
She sold me dreams and I spoke to her literature, 
We made a beautiful mixture.
The words out her mouth claimed my poems were sugar sprinkled on her lemon days,
And her eyes have found pleasure drinking these lemonade words.
This October I have sacrificed my days working to try and make a place tender for her heart,
If the heart of a man like clocks are broken when they fall, then my time is only right twice a day,
And the rest, I spend recalling words I said that sound like they were meant to be said to you.
I have changed my tense once more,
For sometimes I feel like I met who I love,then like I’m yet to meet her
and on other days I’m just in love with other people’s women,
But yet Rome wasn’t built in one day,
So it might take me Time and again.

Digital Affairs

She is the eighth wonder of the world
And I
The unfortunate fellow who is to cross her path
The enigmatic lass of the soli tribe 
She has copper for a skin
Silver for lashes 
And diamonds for teeth
She reminds me to pray before I go to bed 
I assume that's her way off telling me she loves me
And when I  call her shuga
I mean I know not any other sweet delicacy 
For I hear poetry in the tides of her voice
And Iast april I was peeling my heart to allow for new feelings
And that's how I found myself in the inbox of the despoiled lady
I built a thatch in the palms of her messages
We conversed until angels ran out of sleeping dust
I loved to bathe in ticklish waters of our verbal intercourse
For I am in love with what is on the other end of the line
And her voice is the last thing I loved to listen to before I fall asleep
As if my life depended on it.
For I have a missing phalange and her a broken limb
She completes me!
And she had me promising things I should not 
I love it.

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