Embalmed Poems | Examples

List of Member Poems

Premium Member Riders on the Storm

Out of the murky mist 
Amidst the mistral winds
The tempest tips the mast 
A crippled ship descends

Pain-fated Captain's crew 
Rain ravaged by degrees 
The cox would steer the crow 
Below the savage seas 

To dare the darkened depth 
Untethered fathoms feared 
As harkened angels wept 
A weathered wraith appeared 

To cast the mastless craft 
Amidst the rocky realm
The staff, now pointed aft
While the cox, held the helm 

New Captain's crew was calmed
By current, ruby red
A salty sea embalmed
The sunken, drunken, dead

An albatross had mourned
Poseidon's wounded pride 
Thrust-trusted trident scorned 
Calypso raised the tide

Premium Member Artificial Accolades

I listen to the waves sighing,
like words seized from the weary,
an island that trembles
to the tune of every tide forged
with artificial aquamarines,
like accolades articulated
with aesthetic lies, 
misleading the mindless,
ridiculing the rhythm,
as if we are all blindfolded ~ 
bleeding ballads of the broken,
borrowed from buried poets,
still breathing amidst their demise…

But if only they knew:
imageless imitation never
impressed the Imagists,
the ones who care
not for rhyme’s retardation ~ 
that sounds like absolute absurdity.

So tonight, as I write
with granite and garnet,
I long for perfumed light
to school the manipulated rules, 
claiming to know it all,
sitting in their emptiness,
unaware of neither
        what’s right nor wrong.

I am the unblemished;
I breathe not illusions
embalmed with poison.
I am original ~ 
a word that no longer is present
in the dictionary of the deceitful…

Premium Member Why Do I Hate Him

He is nothing to me but repulsive at sight
any misery he suffers brings me a delight
I avoid him at all cost and always he I ignore
for his constant rambling suffers he bores
he looks more ugly than a human really can
for everything dumb and stupid traces to him
He does nothing but scream insults at the night
crying for he suffers for being himself what a plight
He never had a job still lives with his mom
who sits by her upstairs window appearing embalmed
He constantly sweeps the street over and over again
then the dirt he gathers he tosses into the wind
He always wants a lighter or to borrow a dollar or two
I tell him to go away got nothing to give to you
Strange and derange I try to pray him away
But even God won't take him Satan prefers him stray.
Why do I hate him with him it is all to feel
He is like a demented cartoon nothing about him real.


Premium Member On a shard stretched of incomprehensible narrow, tight and wide

On a shard stretched of incomprehensible narrow, tight and wide,
a silent strident laugh I often forbade-allowed myself,
it's the ordered chaos indescribable, the howling clang
of hermit tear struck in a shattered version,
habitual miracle of screaming silence, poor wealth,
fulfilled-unfulfilled love in the sweet cruel pain,
embalmed wound of your gentle-cruel smile, deep-smooth,
chasm full of filling, lady-lord, speak silently,
divinely mortal, thus unfulfilled-complete, mute song
of swan terribly gentle, of angel broken-whole,
white-black of the cursed one blessed in forgetting-remembrance...

I long without longing, dying alive, lucid foolish thoughts,
perpendicular parallel equations, humble pride of ladies
rubicund-pallid, prostituted icons holy-profaned,
fierce cold embraced I feel in ribs empty full,
our loves lonely-together, I have spring-summer
frozen-inflamed, satisfied hunger for warm winter,
autumns with dry rains of sleet falling upward,
that fly-frozen calm torrents toward fields
hermit-populated, our stars extinguished-lit,
sky-earth, living death from the empty-full mind,
your caress burning-cold, my life confirms-denies!

This Gift is Not For You

Heart paralysis reflects unholy yearning.
She has wrapped her love in soiled paper
and hidden it beneath forgotten works.
Specters in the house heed alarms and float
towards daily rituals that rearrange pain.

Distant transmissions crackle through nights.
She has wrapped up her love.
Once fond recitations swam on breezes and
brushed lip to skin with infinite colour that
tattooed devotion onto vein and pulse.

Embalmed silence sits still, pregnant.
She has wrapped her love in flowered cloth
and tied it up with faded ribbon.
Home was an adorned method scorched by
evening embraces and empty bottles of wine.

Rooms now echo flatly, devoid of a beginning.
She has wrapped up her love.
We ran away together; we ran so far with
broken radar and injured souls that our hurt 
became skin and forgetting became dear.

She has wrapped up her love.

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.


Premium Member 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

Premium Member 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.

Premium Member 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….

Premium Member 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.

Premium Member 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.

Sub Categories

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.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace