War Iambic Pentameter Poems

The Attic


Sewing machine, long idle, gathered dust
     in this old attic of dear grandma's home.
So dark, a lighted candle is a...

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I too will write a poem, like others here;
so many wounded things are on display,
The poet's names and fancy flights familiar,
it may be that there's...

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Sad Journeyman of Death

Sad journeyman of life’s unending tests
bides time in loathsome sojourn cross each dawn
respecting naught but future’s numbered breaths
a-weep upon the touch of...

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    Sarajevo - UNDER A LINDEN TREE
The morning lights and to another day
a pirate's chest you've found but will not stay
for longer...

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     SARAJEVO SNACK
Speak softly to the tune, it plays out in the night,
and never think that Sarajevo hasn't named the song.
Division...

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When he was young, way back before the war,
his friends and he, sure tore apart this town,
now it's been forty years, at least, or more,
those...

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(William Hammer, Thomas Alva Edison's assistant,
has reached the end of his tolerance.  His boss is
planning to electrocute an elephant for a publicity
stunt.)

If he goes...

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We are all equal, though they say you lad
who do they think they are they're not my dad,
on battle fields we live or die the...

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     THE FALL OF BAGHDAD
What rite of passage, moves one to the light,
and through the healing of all earthly ail,
bestows this...

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     SARAJEVO-1995  Another Cease Fire
As old as death and cold as nevermore
all set to stone, by those who've died before;
the...

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I am tough like Huey,
I dream like Martin,
I see like Malcolm,
I stand like Rosa,
I am educated like Booker,
I am the stature of Fredrick,
I am the...

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The war was lost despite its toll in flesh.
The sin we bore was not a healthy mesh.
Yet men forgo the past becoming blind,
As dawn is...

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Straight rows of soft chairs, larval eyes stare blank
Absorbed by glowing colors on the wall
Their jaws slack, fetid whiff, unwashed and dank
Arrested minds the blue...

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Ride, ride, ride thou figure from the East
In thy curse hath many a mother wept
On thy brow the furrows of distant steppes
Yield unto a steely...

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He lived on the stairs behind the old house,
Sheltered from the storms in his small retreat.
There were four wood steps shaded from the light;
This old...

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A hiding place, a warm and darkened room,
A lit doorway, bright against the dark,
Cold against the warmth, a frame for odd
Assorted stranger-forms whose faces loom

As...

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        Sarajevo - DEATH OF A BELIEVER
In Sarajevo, death, down through the years
is fog of mind not meant...

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We all know it does not rain everyday,
And Winter's cold does not forever stay.
The cloak of darkest nights always retreats
When dawn unfolds the sunlight that...

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A field of fire where hails of bullets streak,
Across the holy lands of God and men.
Exalted knights with weapons breathing rage,
The hearts and hopes of...

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     THE BATTLE OF SOUTH CHICAGO
The freeze has brought them to a winter night
they've made themselves, forgetting what is right,
and though...

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