Long Seep Poems

World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems - VI - Chaim Nachman Bialik, Erich Fried

After My Death
by Chaim Nachman Bialik
translation by Michael R. Burch

Say this when you eulogize me: 
Here was a man—now, poof, he's...

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Because the charity of my native place
Obliged me, the broken branches I the picked up
Them giving back him, who was to debase.

Then we finally reached where had to leap
From the second turn to third, and...

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Identity Apples

iam a fat skeleton, resurrecting 
from the sad memories of dada 
and dark mysteries of aminism 
iam buganda 
i bleed hope 
i drip the honey of fortune 
makerere, think tank of africa 
i dance...

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Something strange

and unexplainable comes this way,
this way, it comes to us sly and fast, 
some say, perhaps, 
it has already arrived, 
it walks unseen, in the midst of all, of us 

we go about our...

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The flames of the furnace (well-travelled by wind
slowly glazing the rags of gray women chagrined
at the sight of a hair fleeing tresses now thinned) 
sometimes billow like waves flooding naves through the night,
when the lightning...

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Moods oscillate in cadences of peaks and valleys
Music to fractious emotions on greasy dance floors
Mistimed cues of flares smouldering relationships

Angst of redundancy seethes from within as lava
Anger is camouflaged with the cloak of reticence
Ardour suffocated...

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a collaborative work with Alfred Vassalo


The Stars sparkled in her eyes
As light interlaced with her shadow
Causing her to question her senses
Even though she closed her eyes
light continued to seep out

Her brilliance, competed with the sun...

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 Diary Notes: Lament at Dawn A Year Ago and yet now No Change
				                     ...

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Molly decided to go to work 
Early.  Instead of working the
Late night shift. She worked
The night shift as a Registered 
Nurse at Bishop Central 
hospital, three blocks 
Away from her place. Molly's 
Mind drifted...

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How we loved the same
Foods, had the same dreams,
Wanted the same future, longed for the
Same life together, loved the same movies
And songs and books and colors and clothes
And people. How we knew what the other...

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About Bill Posters and Bill Greenwell

Words not to use in poems

In 1993, I (Bill Greenwell) went on a three-day workshop with the poet Peter Sansom, who co-edits The North, and runs the Smith/Doorstop imprint. He’s...

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Is it possible, in times like these, 
To fight off such adversity and selfishness
And to save other souls that you owe not to?
Gaze into these pain-filled eyes,
Contemplate their crushing calumny 
And see why I must...

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(1.)
Beware, Nightmarish Dreams Are Oft By Raven Sent,
(In Tribute To Edgar Allen Poe)

When incantations stoke fiery embers,
eerie nights, their sounds roust to remember
ghosts of yesteryears, so birthed to dark play
within nightmarish dreams, as monsters slay.

Around...

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So this is it, huh?

This is the end?

We have come this far,

And this is the end?



All over, just like that?

Your betrayal seep in through my pores,

It taints me whole.



This is the ending of a horrible...

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(His Version of Somber)

Even in the light of day no light can penetrate me, the darkness seeps out of my soul and it consumes me
I have no light to shine on me, that was taken...

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Dear Heroin, 
My name is Pamela,  
I'm writing to you Because I've heard of some stories of what you can do. I heard you can stop me from feeling insane, I heard you have...

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caught in the crossfire, of well-hidden snipers
that aim through the lens, of venomous vipers
paralysed by poison, blinded by spies
unarmed victims, enemies in disguise
shadows that taunt us, ghosts we let haunt us
vanish in the light, of...

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Brave people 
I grow...on...
Weeds surround me...
Beads falling playfully...
Rivers, like vines, entwine...
Roots of moist seep in so fine

Because I cried
In this wilderness
I grow, I grow (x2)
Happily, I glow,
You know? You know?
This tree I am
Never a free...

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15.4
“You are not the body
You do not have a body
You neither do nor enjoy
You are Awareness only--the timeless Witness
You are free
Go in happiness”

15.5
“Attachment and aversion
are attributes of the mind
You are not the mind
You are Consciousness...

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Tell me every lie you’ve ever told, don’t hold back for my sake, let out all of the pain within, explode
Don’t make me out to be someone that I am not, I am not an...

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Actions Speak Louder Than Words Contest
Sponsor: Silent One

Why can't I sleep tonight? 

I can not stop thinking about our last fervid conversation.
Broken promises of a long lost love affair between the cores of two fleshly...

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I do not fear you, Blue hellion of Satan! From deep within the reaches of his evil den, your master has sent your frozen azure waves crawling to my stronghold. Inch by inch, your glacial...

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In the depths of nothingness, my love, a flower sprung from snows,
I dreamed of you as a splendor, an undying fire in the night, an eternal promise of beginning,
An ode in the whiteness that migrates,...

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Thought Train Location As of October 27th,2013
Take 1

…don’t even try to believe or perceive or conceive any of this*
when the clouds come to veil the stars and the night puts you in an unsure but...

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*** ENDURING ***

(A Part Two about my recent illness, following “Lunacy Loo Flies.”

Fear
Stepped into the holes of my weakness
To impede my pace to recovery, 
Absorbing the basic radiant light —

My going forth walk had previously...

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