Embalmed Poems | Examples

Anne Sexton, Why I took My Own Life

I wore my mind like a corset—tight, laced, unseen—
while the world asked me to smile with lipstick teeth
and stir the soup without stirring the storm inside.

There were mornings I woke as if embalmed,
already dressed in the hush of death's silk slip,
no reason, no riot—just a fog that would not lift.

The walls of my room pulsed like veins
and the mirror whispered lies in a female voice:
You are failing. You are too much. You are not enough.

I was the soft thing breaking beneath
a century of silence stitched into my sex,
taught to hush the howl and cradle the ache.

My hands shook when folding towels.
My heart stuttered at the scent of soap.
There was no name then for the madness.

Just "hysteria," like a curse tucked under my skirt,
and doctors who told me to marry or pray.
No pills yet. No lifeboats. Just poems or the end.

So I chose the door
that closed softer than the others.
Not for drama—
but for rest, for mercy,
for the silence to finally match
the silence within me.

If I'd been born later, maybe
there'd be lithium instead of letters.
But time gave me verse,
and verse gave me wings too torn to fly.

The Archive for Sour Sorrows

In the vault of sorrows, the lights are dim,
Memories dangle stiff, stark, cold and grim.
In glass-fronted vaults of remains half-dead,
Haunting to avenge losses, regrets and dread.

Bitterness is grit, dust and rust—
Metal relics wrapped in tempered crust.
Too sharp to hold, too old to appeal,
Scars embalmed, behind bars of steel.

Fur skins and feathered bones, long dead.
Eyes once bright, are now glass instead.
Stuffed with pride, stitched in despair,
They rage within riles, gasping for air.

Old garments show arguments, long of old,
With threadbare cuffs, and buttons of gold.
They're sour of fit, and hung too tight,
To ever again leave shadows in bright sunlight.

Such bitterness belongs in museum displays.
Where you can visit it on sad, rainy rue days.
To see such hateful feeling-disheveled, dismembered.
Covered in dust, to be forgotten, not remembered.

Lock it up, behind the glass, don’t let it breathe,
Bitterness will bloom, when we fail to believe.
It should be kept under lock and key.
Where all such sour sorrows, are meant to be.

Meant to be, Meant to be-!
That's the key, That's the key!

Night Sweats

Lay there sinking, thinking
under the surface of sodden anxieties.

Recall you darkly
the flickering hours, the tinctured years,
as sweat-stained sheets leech.

This room may be your last gasp,
but you can’t tell,
time distorts death as it does life.

Come morning, the body
(if it is still fitfully aware),
may be rinsed by an untried light,

an embalmed mind unwrapped
as muggy dreams are moped away
for one more uncertain day.

The Glory

*The glory* 

The beginning of a milky infant
Every step we take ends on a soaking, softness of a wool
Dratch in the mud of tenderness
As times goes by we get to a ring of race 
Embalmed with a *circle of fire* 
No one dears to take the course!

"Ahhh! is this how it will end?"
Many times our thoughts wander off
Far deep into the desert of unyielding imaginations

Yes! By that time we had realized what the race entails 
We are just a detail in the hands of the *great emperor* 

Our thoughts far from the one we had from the start
By then we know about life.
All the budding began to wane 
There's but one thing that saves

Never let distraction make a fool of you
Never yield to the distressing tears of life.
Keep moving forward
In the *isle* lies your glory

 
#The King's daughter

September Rain

“Some stars are frozen within the shades of shifting seasons, yet the grief of love, etched in acrylic gold, whirls through the sunlight, dressed in grim mists,  echoing endless memories of a timeless romance” Quote By Poet 

I feel the frozen sigh of an aching sunset,  
as the warm mustard dews of moving mists~
 softly stroke the sapphire fringes of  
    silent seas, singing somber songs  
into the rain-kissed skyline,  
        heavy with onyx tears of angst,  
like a withering black rose,
   mourning within a mahogany casket,  
  locked away with sorrowful memories,  
  embalmed in hues of hurling hailstorms. 

Perhaps somewhere between splitting gusts  
and gales of grief, sullen sunflowers remain trapped,  
as souvenirs dusted with greying greens of a broken September.
   For every autumn  holds a narrative,  
   lost between the dusky views of drizzling leaves,  
and I will forever bloom from an opaque mirage,  
   listening to the fading forests~
whisper woeful odes to the wistful wind.

mourning mausoleum

“When trust is a walking phantom, 
draped in dying dandelions, 
let the wind blast forth its shattered promises,
as rain rinses away piercing pain of memories lost” Quote by Poet

the sky is a catacomb
of faceless promises and ghosts
clothed in tangled treachery
as trust is a wilted tulip~
embalmed in golden tears…
O’ deceived heart of the eclipsed sun
you were once glazed in jewels…
now a mourning mausoleum~
chanting a moonless requiem
resting in ashes of skeletal lies….

The Empty Room

Monsoon mornings are like a seedless vase filled with paralyzed petals.  
I sit reminiscing, the fleeting frequencies of his ancient clock,  
now cloaked in coal cobwebs composing skeletal memories;  
a timeless token of unblemished innocence,
when tiny fingers, tattooed with henna butterflies,  
awaited the dawning strings of golden kites.

I ponder if shadows of the moving moon still caress chiffon curtains, forming a crescent spoon,
resembling five marbles of childhood that played hide and seek,
to his virtuous voice echoing down hollow hallways~
homing a trail of tender heartbeats from the swings he made for us…
For the empty room of a wise man is never soulless.  
It shelters fearless footprints of futuristic art, painted with patience,  
when fairies of twilight forget the lyrics of starry lullabies.  

Tonight, I trace whispering wallpapers,  
listening to the sound of my grandfather’s perennial promises~
that linger forever, embalmed in sandalwood serenity,
while nightingales croon eclectic elegies to the mourning sky.

Dreams

A stream of optimistic visions embalmed with vivid imagery,
Strength from mental energy kinetically dissolving fears,
Passions observed without words inner peace without mystery,
A sanctuary of hope where disbelief holds no ground here,
An anchor in times of need when shallow waters aren't what they seem,
Disillusioned by physical senses my soul is quite aware of what's authentic,
Imagery converged with empathy expresses the heart's path,
Emotions engage excitement from depression's wrath,
But my shield is a thought enshrined by wavering ideas,
Dreams are a birth a gift and a curse perception is key,
Deception is keen though I realize the rhythm of cycles,
The confusion of idols movement is vital life's an expression.

Pyramids of Love

I remember Cleopatra's moon,
as triangles of time 
unveiled pyramids embalmed in
juniper, incensing golden dreams.

While in desolate dunes 
of the sunrise Sahara,
I've engraved your initials 
with pearls and diamonds.

For in lunar silence 
when cylinders of stars 
embellish skies with hieroglyphics, 
destined twin flames ascend.

You’ll remain a musical~
maestro, choreographing our pilgrimage 
to attain heaven beneath  
henna herbs of love.

Blossom In Snow

I have seen the fire blossom in snow
on the Himalayan peak
wondrous meteoric dust
rise in hymnal flames

Rode on shoulders of snowy giants
on heights untrod by human feet
bathed in mighty energies
released by countless contemplating seers

Erect they sit in hurricane and hailstorm
fortified by the valor of spirit
exerting hard to safeguard the cultural treasure
the time capsules embalmed in the racial memory

Light-bearing is the language of all creativeness in Art
the pan-human tongue, which every one understands
a peaceful all-unifying stream that flows in every heart
as the vehicle of the creative light into all recesses of life.

(Yayati poem)

Author: Madan Gandhi.

Lucinda is Out of Her Mind

She is out of her mind her relatives said.
They wanted her embalmed, cremated or dead.
Lucinda had her wits and was not to be dissuaded.
She gave them all the boot, they were downgraded.

She had a dream, and intended to put it into action.
Wanted a gingerbread house to give satisfaction.
Builder and construction crew were happy to do it.
Relatives inheriting nothing had a huge hissy fit.

Embalmed in form

Here we are, in this lucid dream,
shaped from thoughts we ourselves did stream;
stoic our stance, free from fears that bind,
as soul embalmed in body-mind.

With rage, lust, envy and greed trounced
and world of illusions renounced,
we’re toward love and light inclined,
as soul embalmed in body-mind.

Nonchalant through life’s highs and lows,
as flame of Christ in our heart grows,
we play our life role as assigned,
as soul embalmed in body-mind.

Each form we see, has God within,
so this is how our words begin,
gentling thought, we make our touch kind,
as soul embalmed in body-mind.

Spirit Vessel Elegy

Spirit Vessel Elegy by James Edward Lee Sr. 


Decayed lay the vessel, fill with rot;
Derailed and decomposed;
Tilled embalmed yet corpse not;
Dispose of spirit so rose;
It rises you see the truths-self is spies

Soars a Spirit so the Spirit never dies ;


9/19/23
WRITTEN WORDS BY James Edward Lee Sr. 2023©

The Daughter Tempest

"The Daughter Tempest"

we conceive monsters
and in their cognisance
of freedom 
they break

they break 
themselves 

down 
down 
down 

bit by bit 
climbing
like a Minotaur
out of the Labyrinth

beauty is borne 
in the will left
written and embalmed
in a stubborn heart

borne from destruction
the ugliness
becomes something
devastating

evolving some other
pulchritude inside
the myocardial eye
the mirror’s true nucleus

like notes in music 
delivered to 
the daughter
Tempest

(LadyLabyrinth / 2023)

Mucked Up Moon

Erroneous mirror scatters his face
        Mills his skin into thin porous powder
        Muck which gets stuck under tongue in a paste
        Mouth stuffed with rubble cement rancid sour


       Embalmed motorbike tennage champion 
       Mist cobwebs in his chest, windless clothesline
       Murdered dreams dumped, tight vertibre cramp them
       Measure of failure in winnings' decline 
       
       
       Engine never to rev segments ego
       Mourning whip lashes languish in his lungs
       Molten moon drips millions he forgoes
       Mortality unknown among airborne young
       

       Moonbeam diamonds stall, star status dements
       Ebb of ignition rides midnight lament 


      

               Sixteen year old Hero, Matty

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