Long Nuclear Poems
Long Nuclear Poems. Below are the most popular long Nuclear by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Nuclear poems by poem length and keyword.
He was withdrawing;
inside his eyes he cleaned the glass of his spectacles
they were worn thin now and only looked inward.
Nuclear weapons were threatening
the circuitry of a million neurons,
a conceptual forest of wooden perceptions
had been targeted by alien guineapigs,
helmeted ants were excavating his mind.
He muttered a question to himself:
What's a guy to do when the world
locks you out. even, attacks your long held reality?
What gives when the rope has no more 'give' in it?
He called his dead mother
(the cell phone was really that smart),
she replied from the outer-rings
of some milky nowhere.
"You should get out more,"
said the ethereal voice of the dearly departed,
"stop writing ambiguous and quixotic
letters to yourself."
"Mayb tomorrow," he replied uncertainly,
then he put the phone back
into its shock-proof bunker
at the deepest center
of his hive-humming brain.
I don’t think I’ll ever see
a POTUS as stupid as Trump can be
Recently he had Iran on the ropes
Iran’s beleaguered citizenry flush with hope
Cheering a President who seemed to mean what he said
that he’d leave Iran’s oppressive government for dead
But he stopped abruptly, he pulled the plug
let Iran’s maniacal thugs out of the hole he’d dug
Why didn’t Trump finish what he’d started
As things stand now, he got out-smarted
For all his boasting and blither-blather
I imagine most everyone would rather
Not see him give the Ayatollah hundreds of billions in alms
with zero progress on nuclear arms
Or let Iran control the Hormuz straits in 60 days
when pre-Trump it was always a free international waterway
And at the G7 conference, he defended permitting Iran to keep her ballistic missiles
confounding America's generals and top-drawer military officials...
The ‘deal’ Trump's ‘negotiated’ lacks any reason
~ except as ‘Exhibit A’ for an indictment of treason
Tongues of solar flare writhe in combat kiss
—flame-throwers unleashed
iron words h a m m e r e d in fire
ferrous words melt-morph into heart-welts
once under skin
hear the fevered air burn with cheers;
c a c k l e s of c r a c k l e s and h -i -s -s -s
bellies of tears full of fire; fire feeds on gasoline tears
fire-eaters’ —bellies full of flames
turn inside-out; fire-breathers shape-shift
from love doves to squawk hawks
bonfire of marital bliss consumed by wildfire
desolation burns holes in lacy i n* t i* m a* c y
ashes
fall
from
s o l o
cigarettes
. . . nuclear winter in summer
t h r o a t s of songbirds c h a r r e d
. . . silence
follows blaring —w h o o s h— of serpent fire
purification in cremation of all OratiOn sound
liability and liberation
animate to dissipate in snaky smoke of HeLL-wraiths
apathy clouds form they rain on red heat
smother a smolder mother a cease fire
ember-ice; scalds freezes t–h–a–w–s
whets flesh — and wets fire extinguished flower bed
ashes laid down
—passion’s quiet confetti paves a path—
w. a. i. t. s
— s l e e p w a l k s
… d r e a m s
On the sandy knoll he stands, a solitary, forlorn figure gazing at the sky. It’s a clear night, and hundreds of stars shimmer like fireflies pinned to the firmament. His eyes fix on one of them, a twinkling pinpoint near the center that seems to give off a faint amber glow. Looking at it distractedly, he wonders what star it is, which galaxy, how many light years away. He has been mired in a persistent gloom brought on by a bad breakup which life in general has done little to lift, and in his pensiveness, he yearns to be where he is not.
Stars congregating
A salve of reticent lights
Melancholy vaults
He imagines not only life but a much more advanced civilization on the amber star (the distinction between a star and a planet he’s in no mood to dwell on), an unknown utopia in the wilderness of space where unhappiness has been bred out of the entire race, and where there’s no war, no loss, no hate, no love, just a perpetual lightness of being maintained by wisdom and moored to omnipotent technology. He wishes he could leave everything behind, and go far, far away to that beckoning star.
Soul with starry eyes
Thoughts retreat into night sky
Fantasy of flight
The star he’s gazing at is in fact not a star, but a planet in a spiral galaxy 4.5 million light years away, which would not be visible to his naked eye if it weren't for the light from over 5,000 near-simultaneous explosions that have obliterated civilization there in a nuclear apocalypse. Before life was extinguished, the planet’s inhabitants called their galaxy the Milky Way, and the planet itself, Earth.
Man-made suns flashing
Perpetual night descends
Light flees into space
Inspired by the song “So Many Stars” by Sergio Mendes, Marilyn Bergman, Alan Bergman
Deep within Earthen bowels
immensely distant from sheltering sky
amidst a thick fog enveloped landscape
with here and there a projected
craggy, derelict chasm
precipitously crooked
rocky claws pointing toward
an infinitely wide yawning abyss
dwelt kindred spirits
comprising soul asylum
where grateful dead (albeit marked,
via weathered tomb stones)
hermetically sealed
once vibrant corporeal mortals
betook their eternal slumber.
One among their number
included a misanthrope
who sported long straggly hair
bushy eyebrows shield
ding cold eyes of steel
straggly bearded clammy chin
in tandem with a hairy body
which when alive (long time ago)
upheld upon unshod feet, a severely
hunchbacked cretin
Within dense pitch-black terrain
(Mother Nature enlisting
a menagerie of life forms
accustomed to hellish environment)
awash with unrecognizable
alien sights and sounds
mollycoddling bewitching warlocks,
mailer daemons, trolling trojan horses
imps of the pervert chieftains, fiery
long and fostered Golems
who called underworld
their private demesne
also alluded to Marcy's playground
holding hostage Alice in Chains
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
The Beastie Boys, Culture Club
The Human League, and
Village People a Crowded House
Emitting wisps of ethereal matter
appearing a small medium at large
chat snap ping, flickr ring
indeed joyus minions
exalting piety good and plenti.
Prone ounce sing proud purgatory
promoting protean phantasmagoria
hideous hulu hoop dancing holograms
highly distorted grotesque
silent 10,000 maniacs screaming
sinister semblance to banshees
slithering across escarpment.
Echoing one end of universe to the other
putting to shame initial big bang
ranking as a mere whimper
that original primordial blast
which cosmological exploits
generated heavenly sphere instantaneously
comparison viz Krakatoa times Googleplex
essentially reduced to insignificance
albeit on the analogous tinker toy
premised conjectures of brilliant minds
could gander feeble educated guesses
asper extraordinary natural phenomena
mortal mankind could never approximate
as belligerent threats punctuated,
via nuclear warfare
merely rates as a flickr
amidst uber kindle snap chat ting
tinder blinks, extinguishes,
snuffs out one lowly
Beatle browed bipedal simian.
When a class is boring, the air can feel close and rebreathed - not a comfortable feeling for a COVID child. When the class is finally over, it’s like you’ve escaped something.
Did you know an hour has 60 minutes because ancient Babylonians used a seximal system? (base six).
The class I was in was small, just eight of us around a table in a small room (four students were missing that day) and somehow the class had wandered into the unstable, waring, state of the world.
The professor ended his unscheduled thought, on the result of nuclear war, by saying, “After the nuclear exchanges, when the cockroaches take over..”
“No,” I interrupted - it was a flashbulb moment - an impulse. I don’t usually interrupt professors, “Ants. Ants would take over - they’re mobile super-organisms, cockroaches are just meat to them.”
His smile and nod of approval felt warm and cozy, as if my emotions had a texture and temperature - but I knew it was something assigned to me briefly, like a motel room.
Nuclear survival isn’t exactly my bailiwick, I’m not sure where I picked that thought up or why I had the confidence to offer it. Confidence is a thin lever to work with when talking to a professor. I’ve seen professors crush brash students.
The bell rang, I had survived, and Leong was waiting for me in the hall. The crowd in the hall was moving on toward their classes, like water splashing in every direction. Leong barked a laugh. “What?” I asked.
“Neh,” she said, waving her hand (meaning forget it).
“What?” I asked again.
“When I was little, I would visit my grandparents' farm, in Shandong (province, China). They would call their cows in with a bell,” she said, motioning, with both hands to include the crowded hall.
“We’re the most privileged cows in the universe,” she suggested smilingly.
“I suppose we are,” I agreed, as we passed out into a wind as cold and harsh as witches' breath.
While I'm reading a poem about it on the previous page
the girls come over to visit their boyfriends and dance
in high shoes and perfume. Their legs are strong and their voices high.
And the guys get high and hard thinking about what the girls are like
behind their eyes.
That says more about me than reality. And it's exactly four lines.
Ken Patchen would say his angel smells sweet and sassy.
I feel the bony fingers of mine who has been working to stay alive.
Enough small poetry. One must conceive of a project--
say a poem about a bridge--or stop writing
and instead walk over the bridge at sunset and see the city in a nuclear
war
the clocks, the Watchtower and the docks gone and no smoke.
I still exist but I'm late for my job. I'm dressed well
in honor of true love and Spring which both outlast the holocaust.
The manager cans me with the cold hard eyes of one who accepts the
rules entirely.
Goodbye to the rows of dead metal desks and goodbye
to those who can take it longer than I.
The guys downstairs do not read poetry and very little prose.
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money does not
occupy their minds.
The sex pistils of the mountain daisy is no concern of theirs
and the man upstairs who plays the horn is less than a curiosity but makes
more noise.
When I feel like this nothing matters and this is good--
get warm with wine, turn out the lights and turn up the radio--
if only there were a woman who liked the down and out life too.
In the end someone sticks a gun in my face in the South Bronx.
How I got among the fire escapes in the sooty alley I cannot say
but it is one of my earliest memories. Perhaps it is my grandmother
holding my hand
or one of the clowns. I say Drop that goddamn gun and he blows me
away.
~ Surviving Hell on Earth ~
(The Nazi's Camps)
They had seen Hell on Earth
Lived through it, survived
Tight-lipped through all the horror
Never succumbing to bitterness or sorrow
Seen babies thrown in the air and shot dead with rifles
In front of their thunderstruck, disbelieving mothers
Seen dogs rip the flesh off of tender girls and boys
Vultures and crows clean up with their cackling noise
Witnessed gang-rapes of tender teen-agers
Radiation experiments on their private parts
Their eyes plucked out of their heads screaming
Gasoline fires consuming their bodies and hearts
And then, most awful of all, the crematoria
Hundreds daily taking 'showers' of poisonous gas
The stench of their decaying bodies piling up in smoking ruins
While the Third Reich sang and danced to Hitler's tune...
At the end, human skeletons marching weeks on end in rags
Through unforgiving Polish forests in winter storms
Shot through the head should they tarry or stumble
Writhing as their saintly parents died in their arms
This couple, this pair, survived, and they married
Made a new home in the State of Israel
Where Iranian jackals still howl at them daily
Warning them of plutonium and nuclear bombs
Tight-lipped they were and tight-lipped they remain
Building a home, bearing children, carrying on
Burying the pain in the past, they neither pout nor complain
No time to waste on vengeance, life's too soon gone
Two Jewish heroes re-embraced life, made the most of peacetime
Teaching the world ~ even unthinkable horrors can be overcome with time
Don't you understand what I'm trying to say
Can't you feel the fears I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave
Take a look around you boy, it's bound to scare you, boy
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
How you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction
Eve of Destruction sung by Barry McGuire
World War III
Could we on the verge?
Is this another cold war?
Will it end badly?
All it takes is a wrong word,
itchy finger, Russian coup,
a single accident and the world
will end in fire followed
by a long cold nuclear winter.
There will be no one left
to write poetry
Black is the dawn
Sunset is the light
I’m lost and withdrawn
But you’re never out of sight
The sea is all dry
And the desert is wet
But time spent with you makes me always forget
This world is upside down and full of hate
But the one thing I have is you and you’re my soul mate
The end of the day starts at noon
And wintertime comes around In June
People still argue even when they greave
And the government is full of to much make believe
Spending time with the family’s a chore
And there’s always a threat of nuclear war
Thank God not yet
But time spent with you makes me always forget
This world is upside down and full of hate
But the one thing I have is you and you’re my soul mate
Time is slipping away but there’s no clock to show
And the more we try to slow down the faster we go
Were all waiting the return of the all mighty G.O.D
But he’s not allowed in school what a free country
And we still can’t get by the color of the skin
Nor more marriage we’ll just live in sin
Why don’t we act differently so we won’t regret
But the time spent with you makes me always forget
This world is upside down and full of hate
But the one thing I have is you and you’re my soul mate