Long Civilized Poems
Long Civilized Poems. Below are the most popular long Civilized by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Civilized poems by poem length and keyword.
...Have you ever seen true madness
take full possession of a man?
Gobayth’s dreams of coming home
were now all well and truly damned.
It’s said he screamed for half the night,
so much that it damaged his throat,
and it was not long after that
he started slaying ‘settled’ folk.
The first target was a merchant
travelling with his concubine
and his two slaves on the ‘cleansed’ moors,
but no safety would the man find.
He took an arrow to the neck,
his whore took one straight through the breast,,
Gobayth then slit both their throats,
as the two enslaved men attest.
When he finished that bloody work
he set both of the bound men free,
they became his first generals,
I know, since one of them was me.
We gathered those who had survived,
allied with others nomad tribes,
within a month you Black Flint knew
to step on the moors was to die.
But that was not enough for him,
he very quickly did decide
that those who built of wood and stone,
who grew up plants just to survive,
were too evil to be human,
he’d let no one live who kept slaves,
and with the horde that he had build,
he and his men started to raid.
Those men never learned his true name,
they started to call him ‘Diyal,’
in their tongue that word means ‘vengeance,’
he means to spread it to you all.
He’s ravaged you valleys and hills,
crushed your armies beneath his hooves,
he’s purging all the ‘civilized,’
so no one will remember you.
Your halls and walls he’s burning down,
your ‘kingdom’ will be turned to ash,
where your palaces stand right now
will soon become nothing but grass.
Your wives and daughters? Our war-brides,
we’ll father many sons on then,
your livestock we’ll add to our herds,
nevermore will they know the fence.
This is why you, and all your sons,
are tied up, fearful and perturbed,
waiting the knife that will end you,
you can’t say that it’s not deserved.
It’s what we bring to ‘settled’ men,
we promise to them futures grim,
had you not sinned so greatly the
gods would not send a scourge like him.
This is what awaits all slavers,
this is why all your cities burn;
Diyal liked to slit throats himself,
be patient, you’ll all get your turn…
Loving Nature without loving God is a neat trick
But as I love Nature, how could I complain?
Are you a humanist? Spinoza a guy with a large brain
Defined God as Nature; if one is not the other, then please do take your pick
When you are very civilized the wild jungle or temptation:
-Less your cup of tea-
Then God surely is not Love, how bitter can you be?
Without moral compass: (We are so rude) Without chlorophyll: damnation
Without morals indeed I may be lost. Without life much worse:
God without Nature: it’s just no good, or to me, a curse.
Nature excluding God’s creation, I add, gave birth to the capitalist his saw
He logged the wood, set fire to the Amazon and this he named the law
Since the two, towards each other being amorous:
Nature and its God, as Spinoza be my guide: synonymous
Vaguely the morning descends on my head's heavy boulder,
stabbing the night away, like a rude intruder, and
vaguely, I stare in the mirror at the stranger staring at me.
You were once a familiar face and we shall have friendly chat again,
whenever you feel lonely and depressed. Of the noise outside,
I have no clue, there's probably a preacher pretending we're civilized.
I would be late for work now if I had a job and worried about the next pay check.
Vaguely I remember the good old days, when we burnt half those checks in happy hours, and the handsome tips I left behind. Now I live on memory alone.
Vaguely I shake my head for a nod to life and being here now without despair.
I am vaguely aware of death lurking outside the window, counting my days ahead, like a patient highway patrol bored with inaction. Crap, move to the side and show me your double, need someone to talk straight, without an accent, a certified copy. And where is the damn matches to light this cigarette? I must do something meaningful with my life, without any delay, before it is too late, for what? Vaguely I ask myself, knowing time is not on my side, only under my feet, like a suffocating crocodile that once groped my jaw and then spitted me away as too tasteless.
I find a great deal to learn
from Republican
Supremacist
Nationalistic
Nihilistic Evangelical Rapture
about how to lose eco-political sanity
and lose ecological health.
It feels important to remember
and respect
basic nutritional dumping facts
of public health through reinvestment
and global climate pathology through extraction
apartheid
blame and shame
Some movements smell,
but this does not remove them
from appropriate gut matters
for poets
saints
and sinners.
We civilized Western straight white people
worry about this so much
we dump our waste into our water,
intentionally polluting and sacrificing Earth-generic purity,
rather than planting it in soil,
where healthy scat can grow robust
resilient public and private nutritional green wealth.
Of course poop stinks
or it smells of developing resonant possibilities
for healing polluted
stagnant
depressed
economies;
Fragrance of probabilities
for redeeming corrupted political dissociations,
Sentient scents for a truly multicultural
salvific
robust
resonant
resilient sacred theology
advocating spaces
and time
for natural ecology.
Of course your body waste stinks
of outside wealth-nurturing memories.
But, does it smell healthy,
or too red meat-eater
predative RightWing
toilet twittering
of rapaciously OtherUnWise eco-politics?
Your lips preach freedom,
but your hands drip with the oil of innocent blood.
You speak of peace,
but your bombs have baptized the earth in chaos.
I have seen your flags fly high
in Baghdad, in Kabul, in Tripoli—
not as symbols of liberty,
but as shadows over graves you helped dig.
You called Saddam a demon,
spoke of weapons never found—
but the only weapon that killed thousands
was your lie, polished and televised.
You turned the Holy Land
into a furnace of weeping mothers.
And still, your voice says:
"We fight for democracy."
But democracy does not come
on the back of tanks.
It does not wear uniforms that trample
the cries of the oppressed.
You speak of the International Criminal Court—
and yet,
you silence it when the gavel falls
on one of your own:
Benjamin Netanyahu, the accused,
bathed in Gaza’s smoke,
but guarded by your shield of denial.
You call yourselves the civilized,
but your soul has forgotten
the God who lifts the humble
and breaks the prideful.
Now, the Global South is rising—
with the dignity you once denied them.
They remember Congo.
They remember Haiti.
They remember the long night of colonial cruelty.
You call them enemies,
but they are only your mirror,
reflecting your sins with sobering truth.
And I say to you:
> What you do unto the least of these, you do unto yourselves.
For every empire built on lies will fall by truth.
Your children will ask one day:
"What did you build, father?"
Will you say:
"I built prisons in Palestine and playgrounds in Texas?"
No—
the world will not forget,
and neither will God.
> “For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled,
and the one who humbles himself shall be exalted.”
Amen.
My hands rough like sandpaper
Rubbed along the smooth surface
A sandstone sculpture carved by unknown hands
I looked closely many images
Each staring at me
Like a convoluted totem
The bear and sandpiper
In a tender embrace
Intelligent dumb eyes staring nowhere
Eagles talons gripping, cutting into base
The humble turtle, wisdom's companion
Images from a thousand life times
Stories told around fires
Drawing me in like quicksand
Enchanting me with ancient drums
I wish to leave my civilized self behind
A feathered sandman calls my name
"Fly with the sandpiper"
"Ride sandstone dreams"
For Frank Herrera's "Native American Collage" contest.
As cave-dweller O man, thou wert crudest,
Ere civilized and a bit social made,
In a painstaking long march to the crest,
Evolving— a seed of creed mutated,
Ye struggled long before brought home baked bread,
As weeds lose out ere mutate in maze
Of labyrinthine lanes darker than dread,
From chaos were created newer ways.
No growth hast grown that would not get modest,
Undeterred, no head hath moved nigh ahead,
All progress in time tends to pause post-haste,
As brightest rainbows fizzle out to fade—
The nature of Nature none can evade,
Nature unfolds in long phase, not in days,
To vales turn top peaks that were once jaded,
Creation as comes in chaotic ways.
In eons human hope kissed vales and crest,
Surviving in cosmic womb, never dead,
Suffering birth pain quite un-manifest,
Remember, yon of that tall mountain head
Lies your fond dream. Do walk on, go ahead,
Not just on peaks, hope lives in vales, at base,
In journey too to enjoy, never dread,
A way forward comes from chaotic ways.
Envoi
Keep climbing, if hope be the only aid,
Inhale hope in every breath, don’t just gaze,
At rope’s end, O hang on by just hope-led,
For, from chaos are built morrow’s fairways.
____________________________________
Musings | 03.02.2011 | Hope
Poet’s note: Heart, it seems, lives on the edge of hope. The brooding head hesitates, delves into new depths, meanders, groping for a way out. Seeing the way much of the world is moving today, one tends to indulge in melancholic thoughts. Has man lost all hopes? I don't know but hope, it’s not so. Civilization, I suspect, is an inverted bell-shaped curve. Things get worse before they get better. Read also my ‘Hope: A bird wordless that sings', a ballade.
Decided to write about the ills of the world.
Perhaps I'd need a bigger forum
for such a vast undertaking.
Now let me see, where should I start,
with the Neanderthals?
Well, methinks nothing much has changed
since we became “civilized”.
Wow! That was quite a stretch,
The word civilized is open to interpretation.
In my wee brain, it means
acting in a civilized manner towards
our fellow *****sapiens.
Listen to the six o'clock news any day
and you'd be hard pressed to find
any examples of civilized behavior.
Is it just the mood I'm in today?
NO! It's been like this since the dawn of time.
I absolutely DO NOT UNDERSTAND!!!
Can we justify it by saying,
“It's who we are... a combative species?”
There, that lets us off the hook.
With today's modern technology
methinks it will only get worse.
We will all become detached from our feelings,
robotic like the mechanical creatures
that will someday be the rue of mankind.
I don't want to be alive to see it!
This sub zero stuff may finally be over
How do we survive every year
It ain't civilized, it's downright barbaric
This year got a frozen rear
Sat down on the coals in my barbecue pit
Took twenty-four hours to thaw
Till finally I smelled a very strange odour
Realized it was time to withdraw
A Canadian dude but this is insane
Even I can't handle this stuff
Told Cathie, better hide all the knives
Enough is bloody well enough
Likely flying south with the birdies next fall
Can't take another winter like this
Too old and decrepit, way past my prime
As I leave, I'll throw you all a big kiss
This sub zero stuff may finally be over
How do we survive each year!!!
© Jack Ellison 2015
It starts with you stretching~
a heroic, over-the-top reach
across the bathroom counter,
your fingers barely able to
graze the empty cardboard tube.
“You’re unbelievable!” you groan.
“Who in their right mind
leaves the toilet paper roll like this?”
I lean against the doorway,
crossing my arms and enjoying the drama.
“That, my love, is what sailors call a broad reach~
you’re almost there, but the wind
and the toilet paper have abandoned you.”
You shoot me that look.
“Oh, please. You’re the one who used the last of it.”
“Incorrect,” I reply, “that was the cat.
She’s been plotting a coup d'état for months.”
You ignore me and continue your dramatic stretch,
trying to snag the new roll~
the one sitting just beyond your reach,
your fingertips doddering like an old quarterback.
“You know,” I add,
“if you installed the roll under,
you wouldn’t have this problem.”
You freeze mid-reach.
“Don’t start.
We agreed—over is civilized.”
“We agreed nothing,” I say.
“You declared.
I quietly rebelled.
It’s called balance.”
You sigh like a disgruntled woman
who has endured many things~
my thermostat treachery,
my dishwasher loading heresy,
and now my toilet-paper insurgency.
“Fine,” you reply.
“Hand me the roll, O Keeper of Chaos.”
I pass it to you with exaggerated ceremony,
like I’m presenting a royal scepter.
You snatch it, triumphant.
Then, with the precision of a general
placing a flag on conquered land,
you install it over~
smooth, confident, victorious.
“There,” you proclaim. “Order restored.”
I grin.
“For now.”
You narrow your eyes.
“Oh, you wouldn’t.”
“Oh, I would,” I retort.
“And I will.
A broad reach is nothing
compared to a well-executed midnight flip.”
You laugh~
that warm, reluctant laugh
that always ends the battle,
even if it doesn’t end the war.