When lost to the moment
ill begotten by a wind
there twirls the devil’s cyclone
that traps all hope within
Foreign and invasive
it seeds wherein we fall
immune to every warning
Thomas doubting Paul
For babies who haven’t learned to cry
the border waits redemptive
Kerouac their fate inscribed
Mexico City Blues alive
In the emptiness of tomorrow’s lore
dead echoes grieve stillborn
despoiled voices lying mute
— unspoken in their scorn
(Dreamsleep: May, 2026)
You write
inside the circle
I write
outside the arc
Praise and pander
despoiled ground
Where my words
refuse to park
Applause and cheers
to follow
Like the Reaper
closing in
Owning your soul
with each accolade sold
Indentured
— to their whim
(Dreamsleep: November, 2025)
My generation
is unfixable
The young
still hold the key
Unsullied by the
vested norm
They look
but also see
They hear those
inner voices
Not yet despoiled
and dark
Believing that:
“Oh Yes We Can”
As seniors
— bray and bark
(Radnor High School: November, 2025)
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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 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
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.
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)
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)
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.
winter has arrived
ill winds have despoiled the leaves~
bare limbs and branches
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