Long Survivors Poems
Long Survivors Poems. Below are the most popular long Survivors by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Survivors poems by poem length and keyword.
Market stall sellers, spewing out cheap tat, for bargain hunting peabrains parting with their cash; items disintegrating from one single use.
City traders impress with tall tales of the day, lapping up each others crap enjoying it's scent and taste; not caring for the common man whose lives they have wrecked.
Office workers looking grey, another mundane day. Sitting at their desks, day-dreaming of a different life while listening to bosses drivel on about deadlines.
Shop workers getting by, mastering people skills, satisfying customers; some are born to please but for others it's just painful.
Buskers playing tunes, some are good, some are not. They enjoy what they do, even to an audience unattentive to the soundtrack of their day.
Beggars in doorways trying to prise money from our wallets but who are the genuine needy? Alcoholics, drug addicts or rich Romanian gangs who treat it as a living.
Cyclists whizz past, jumping the red lights. An obstacle for pedestrians and motorists alike; two wheeled accidents waiting to happen.
Motorists zoom past at speed with arrogance and aggression; the survivors way to driving through city streets. A combination with potential for fatal consequences.
Some walk through the streets, head down, oblivious to all around, focusing on getting to their destination. Others soak it all in; buskers, coffee shops, the bustle of life.
If you're in the city, enjoy the city, even with the smog. Life's too short to be annoyed with the things that irritate us. Embrace what's on offer but accept you'll be ripped off!
***
Nobody loved like they did
those nights splayed
like open books,
soggy foils at humid peace,
at least until the next
morning riot.
***
I ran to the coffee shop
last street down,
shouting your name
to a third person,
wearing your face
under the lamplight,
flickering over like a newsreel
from the next day, with
a breaking story.
***
It cracks like a stiff spine
making it difficult
to turn the page, like us
ing in the morning
roar of crow song threshing
in the birches;
then running buckets under
the ceiling spigots at night
all reason disavowed.
***
All reason is tuned
to divining rods
searching for water
searching for the cardinal
heart beneath the ribs
flipping its bird truth
at the bathroom mirror,
in that quick space between
sticking it out, or cutting bait.
***
Our cracked spines are chapped
palms, pocked open hymnals
bleating profanely
the dissonance
that is in our key,
the twelve-tone psalm
they hallow, as they learn the
liturgy of its respiration:
its own dodecaphonic Ode to Joy.
***
Two fated deer, supping
out tonight amongst
the thorny thorns
stretch their necks brink-over
a steep cove’s edge,
and a brittle rocky drop,
stretching out for the sweetest
berries only; come the long
rut way through the woody woods
only to stare at themselves
square-wise, astonished survivors,
wild eye to wild eye wise.
Tumultuous skies of molten lead,
Ominous air thick with dread.
Rotation begins its deadly dance,
Nauseous swirling spurring its advance.
Allied together hail, lightning, rain,
Drop from the sky with thunderous refrain.
Out of the clouds the funnel descends.
Whirling dervish hits the ground,
Alarms go off, sirens sound.
Raging monster churns and spits,
Negating everything in its grip.
Indecent destruction follows its wake,
Nightmarish scenes so hard to take.
Grim-faced survivors survey damage done,
Strongly insisting that the storm has not won.
For Nathan D's Best of the Best contest
I write this note and place it, in my favourite bottle of wine
I sealed that top so tight then I wrapped it with waxed twine
The world is gonna end be it by mans hand or Gods
I maybe should have been more careful on all the toes I trod.
So if there are survivors, after doomsday does arrive
I’d like to leave advice on how one can survive.
Eat plenty of fiber, they tell you it's good to have each day
Five kinds of fruit and vegetables and you’ll always be ready to play.
Red wine is good for you one day, but the next it will kill you dead
They never talked of white wine, so I’d stick to that instead.
Duck and cover if you see a mushroom growing in the sky
They told us they disarmed them, but I think that they did lie.
Never go to bed angry with the one who is with you
So change them each day and then he won’t get angry too.
Don’t try to burn the candle at both ends at the same time
You’ll find it will burn the house down and that will be a crime.
When you wake with aches and pains it is because you're getting old
So the end of the world may not be bad, or that’s what I am told
So remember if you read this and you are to start the race anew
Remember life can be a b***h, you don’t want to marry one too.
When I popped the note in this bottle I left you the wine to drink
So go forth and multiply and forget about the missing link
Then think on this point, I obviously didn't make it through
So throw the rules away and just do what you have to do.
© ~GG~23/12/2012
It was going to be an entry in the contest but I realise I haven't' followed the rules
No Getting Back to Normal, a 9-11 Poem
by Michael R. Burch
for the survivors of 9-11
Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel;
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal
if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak:
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal,
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here?
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.
Keywords/Tags: 911, 9-11, 9/11, terror, terrorism, terrorist, attack, aftermath, victims, survivors, consolation, consolers, condolences, comfort, comforters, memorial, tribute, sacrifice, sacrifices, grief, loss, heal, healing
We stay in this underground fortress
will it be our salvation or our tomb
Can we survive the pending onslaught
is this a heroic suicide
that history will forget
the vanquished are damned to be erased from the pages of history
Three months earlier we knew
Jupiter had fallen, but how
She was as large as the moon
had impenetrable shields
She was our last hope
of our earth's race
We wait
Those who could fled, thousands so many thousands
those who can't wait, hundreds just hundreds
Can we be undetected
or do they know
Are we betrayed
No one is coming to save us
No one will ever return
to a planet scorched and burnt
by a power as strong as seven suns
A quiet unity combines a thousand souls
buried deep within the earth
A sonic boom shakes the earth
faceless souls tremble
They are here
Slowly I peel away from the masses
Up the steep slope I climb
I open the barrier seal door
and lift it up to reveal
an deserted earth desolated and empty
bone dry with the dust of ashes from once living things
I left up my arms and walk into the wind
embracing the spirit of my mother earth
Slowly I am joined one by one until the underground fortress
has empty of it's thousand, men, women, children
Old, young, healthy and infirm but living
We are alive, we are survivors
They passed us by, not worth their time
and pursued those who fled
Why would they worry about a planet deem dead
Why bother with a tiny blue sphere
insignificant, unwanted and thought exterminated
I place my arms down and smile relief
a steady breeze wisps away the ashes
green blades asunder are revealed
In the horizon a flash of lightning
a clasp of thunder, the sweet smell of cooling rain
People embrace, people cry
Jupiter has fallen, but we still stand
We won after all.
When hope no longer sustains us
and all that's left is debris
scattered across the landscape of our heart
When terrible winds of angry storms
cloak blue skies in a frightening rush of darkness
and nothing is left to the eyes but a scar of despair
etched in the stunned silence of our tired faces
as we search for yesterday's sun
among dawn's gleaming light
trapped between the cycle of black ominous clouds
from our emotional hurricane of constant howling screams
that broke the bonds of love away from its moors
and brought finality to fingers parting
while still clinging until the last through the storm
as it stoled our memories of when we were warm together
leaving us alone and exhausted
10/22/20 contest After the Hurricane
I went back to my childhood home.
To recite a few secondhand lines at a first-rate funeral
to try and hold up the survivors' bones.
A half century is a long time to be away from home.
Everything is off, smaller, colder, shadows in children's places.
I was surprised to see a new serf occupying my childhood home.
Most of the climbing trees were gone along with birdsong.
I rode around my old town with my most recent soulmate.
She's uninterested in my ghosts; she just wants something to eat.
I continued with the tour of the sad and pathetic.
"This is where I had my first six-pack.
In the bushes with the bad girls aside the railroad tracks.
The beer was warm and stolen and tasted really bad.
We used to throw stones at the cars that were piggybacked."
One day the train got revenge, gobbled up my puppy...
He was a curly-headed ball of happiness...his name was Fuzzy.
He squeezed under the fence; or somebody left the gate open...
Quality control was never quite up to snuff in our home.
I paid the karmic train with compounding interest.
"Those apartments used to be a green field
where we used to play baseball.
That law office used to be a candy store.
I guess you could say it went from sweet to bitter. Hà ha."
It's nice to see that the ice cream parlor survived
Although the service with a smile did not.
In short, you could fit my childhood into a half-mile square.
An 8-block nest, smaller but sweeter than the Vatican.
It was in high school when life got serious
Some kids overdosed,
some got pregnant
Some did heroin
Some just settled for hash
Some had big dreams
Some simply snapped.
For most, it was our first taste of death.
A few ran away to make a bigger mess.
Life turned from golden ribbons into tangles of stress.
Struggling with the undertow of tomorrow.
The chaining then slaying of innocents.
They say you can never go back.
The gears of time are without consciousness.
Time will not hesitate to chew your heart up.
Sacrifice you to the scrub of responsibility, measured fun.
Time invites melancholy, resists nostalgia. -
It's fond of guiding memories
onto train tracks, warm beer and dead puppies.
Jingle-jangle bells
Sing-song syncopation
Ambulances hurtle down streets
of post-war Europe
Eerie bells; haunting bells
ghosts of round-ups, of Auschwitz
of Buchenwald, and Bergen-Belsen
sounds of death and doom
Shades drawn suddenly
blinds sealed tight
Breath held; pin-drop silence
'Till the peril passes
Bells tear at tortured souls
Dragnet's tentacles probing
Reaching for fresh corpses to feed
Insatiable crematoria ovens
Decades later, survivors flinch
hearing jingle-jangle bells
So, too, sons and daughters
living victims of inherited terror
June 02, 2019
Entry in 'What Makes You Flinch' contest
Sponsor: Julie Leigh Rodeheaver
I suspect many of us,
if not all,
with a mindful of bodhisattva
positive deviant parented and educated exceptions,
grow up feeling like a human win/lose sinner
fighting against a divine win/win messiah within,
Internally conflicted
about being sent from past sacred regenerations
of survivors
and thrivers
to redeem a fractured Earth
in preparation for secular/sacred
dipolar co-arising Rapture Climates,
epic Operas,
small operations,
of and for EarthJustice grace,
love,
win/win compassion,
To raise multicultural economic health
from death's fading door,
to prophecy polycultural nutritional wealth,
To face immanently within
health/wealth bicameral Rapture,
predicting all Earth's cooperative messianic reweaving
of di-hemispheric bilateral ClimateResilience
for sacredly intersectional ZeroZone Earth
And all Gaian-Christian-Taoist-PolyCulturist
humane sinners,
winning behavioral secular interdependent resonance
to regain sacredly resilient EarthTribe's eco-political Trust
In humane sinners
redeemed by hearing divine sainted voices,
nutrients,
natures,
spirits,
NonZeroSum Souls
Becoming secular-
sacred interdependent Being.