Long Unburied Poems
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He has no grave
In the fields he lies
Unburied, in the fury of battle
He leaves behind his love
A love letter in his breast pocket
All to be added to the dust
There is no cross to mark his passing
Only a memory to hold upon ones sadness
He is a lost soldier
A year has passed, his family mourns
His lover sits at the window waiting
A bullet kills you now
A wounded heart takes years to die
So quietly she both hopes and withers
A poppy in her hair, marks her despair
Armies march and armies fall
Battles won and lost as young men die
Endless is the death that pervades these lands
As the lonely soldier fades into history
His loved ones left to hold a ghostly flag
His lover never left her window
She never lost the hope within
Scared by the wounds of war she was
She carried on, yet her life was grim
Fifty years later, to this day
We all stop in silence to honor the past
A new building constructed far away
As they dug the soil that gave way
To a secret of the past
The lonely soldier but a skeleton
With a paper close to his heart
A love letter they did uncover
Postage due for sure
His tags and cross they enclosed
With words of love from long ago
So on a warm summer’s day, by her window
She saw the postman approach her house
With a faded parchment from the past
Words that would make her heart beat fast
Years upon years she had hoped
Now the answer was sadly clear
She whispered softly…
My lonely soldier died that day
His letter is now here to stay
To keep me warm until the end
Knowing his loved never waned…..
I love you dear
I hope you know
One day I will whisper this close
For now I fight to free the world
So that I may be with you
Remember me, if I should fall
That no matter where by bones may lay
My heart is with you always
Note: Late for Nov 11 as I had the flu, but better late than never
there's a second ocean
sprawled like an accident,
a spill of plastic guts and chemical veins
choking what swims,
suffocating the tides
that once dreamed of moonlight and salt.
we did this.
with our coffee cups and straws,
our six-pack rings,
our shiny wrappers crumpled
and forgotten.
a monument to convenience,
an altar to laziness,
floating like the unburied dead
on water too poisoned to sweep.
somewhere out there,
a bird swallows a cigarette lighter
and calls it food.
a turtle struggles in the straitjacket of progress.
and the ocean,
the god we ignored,
becomes our mirror,
ugly and infinite,
what kind of emotions do you feel when I call you out about that?
My wife and I traveled here
To walk on water
With ice pics and an old shiver
The Mackinaw Straits
Where Huron and Michigan open their mouths
Kiss and hiss
Under the legs of the great suspension bridge
From which a high-rise temple
Loomed over the chopped water
Made of diamond snowstorms
And sunrays soaring to the shards of heaven
Then collapsed last night
In a moon beam of oxygen bubbles
A sparkling drowning man sinking and screaming
Through the cold green of space
A bartender in St. Ignace
Suggesting
“Alright, my friends, last call as the ice falls.”
And in the crystal steam of sunrise
The Straits are strewn with rubble
Ice slabs of sapphire
Thick as fallen floors of transparent concrete
Overlapped with snow clouds wrestled down
Like piles of swans with broken necks
Moaning the violin song of whales
If you put your ear
To the hull of a sleeping Sheplers ferry
While a stiff flag of torn pant leg
Left behind out there
Is picked at by a golden eagle
Mistaken for an unburied sturgeon
All this
Arranged by the random disaster of beauty
Which is why we came here on this journey
Just us kids
After all these years we built together
Hand in hand like clipped wings
White wisps at our temples
Drawn up and down by the twists of universe
Renewing our vows on Valentine’s Day
Climbing atop
The blue ice of the Mackinaw Straits
Where we saw the bottom of the lake
As much as we walked a clear sky.
As those inflicted by greed and corruption
become Angels of death stalking the land
with crimson flaming eyes
they search for those chosen to die
and fill their stomachs with satisfaction
to quench their thirst and hunger
The arguments are many from the lips
of those so inflicted
they laugh out loud at those who crawl
and wither on their bellies swollen from hunger
beneath poluted skies of warm air
These lies are plucked like fruit from a dying
tree of reason, succulent portions to be eaten
through the ages like sacrifical lambs
carted down the road of insanity
to the hidden altar of greed and corruption
It's where men gather their armies
complete with marching bands
as they bow before the annotated false God
with eyes of exhalation
these inflicted souls, these open sores
lay torn on Nature's flesh
pounding their blood soaked fists upon their chest
sreaming "I am here"
wrapping their well fed bodies in the cloaks of Priests
praying on Sunday, devoid of morality the rest of the week
sitting in judgment, demanding money for the chosen few
Blood drips from their callosed and cold hands
from the digging of graves
that lay in the graveyard of expectations
from a promised ring
Those they leave unburied lay on the side of the road
their trampled flesh left to be devoured by vultures and rats
to be seen as a warning to mere mortals
who stumble towards the horizon of hope
dirty and naked, trying to fulfill a dream
while escaping the nightmare of madness
from those whose eyes
have turned a crimson flaming orb
8/8/20
contest Infiction
Fully Autumn
——————————
A fine, clear creek
Trickling water
Flows long on by,
As Earth presents
Such a festive
Winding valley’s show.
Sun’s rays sigh.
Sprinkling lights shift nigh.
So sooner do feelings rise
To gift
Such a landscape with its due awe;
To sing glee
As Nature calls
Her choirs to harmonize,
Accompanied by
The wistful poems of
Mounds of carmine mums,
Tipping their petite
Petals within each
Wending breeze;
To scatter away worries
By tracing the last flights
Of silver-spotted butterflies,
Aiming skyward through
This autumn’s afternoon.
Transforming trees stand
Splendid in a flutter-falling
Of their leaves — a gracing
By colors
On the fingertips of
The wind — with their lounging sway
— this way then to the other—
As created to be
Life’s November cotillion —
For a dance, and
Then a sylvan space to
Sleep before snow
Covers over all…
Still, unburied, with a promise
Of resilience.
——————————- —-
(c)sally young Eslinger
10/28/2
Thanks be to God
Someone who once loved me dearly
Now despises me.
In such small things are paved the roads to hell.
A turning away from grace.
A tail-spinning stumble down the stairs,
Hitting my head on my lofty ideals
On my mistaken belief in cloud formations.
The death of romance sheds the most morbid shade of grey.
The diminishment of beauty.
The banal stretched over the profound makes a tight drum.
To beat ourselves with.
To the rhythm of the degradation of good true love between a man and a woman.
Nothing works the way it should.
Nothing works out except for death.
My heart has begun beating backwards,
An awkward, syncopated dance of the soul backing into oblivion.
Still unaware that the absence of pain is yet another symptom of impending death.
I am lost within my own mausoleum.
My hoof-steps clopping against the hard marble floor
In between the torn parts of my heart lying strewn about;
Unburied memories of the deepest wounds.
My heart is broken by the shards of paranoia
that spin from a fragile mind.
My curses are my memories distilled from the deepest wells of regret.
Time is but a dancer
But a spinning dancer; nonetheless.
Across a floor of tilting emotions
By which we measure so adamantly our sense of inner self.
I am not my monsters.
But I am the pain that they inflict.
Now falling like rain
On those that I love and those who now despise me.
In Bedzin and in Krakow they breathed in
What they denied in conscious thought or word.
The ashes of the Jews, the shades of skin
Penetrating lungs so deep within
The dead unburied mixed, in air secured
In Bedzin and in Krakow, mortal sin.
The nearby people turned to burial urns.
The human dust by breathing was allured
The ashes of the Jews, the shades of skin.
So Europe took their human ash within.
A graveyard we became unknown, impure.
In Bedzin and in Krakow, more of sin.
And who they thought destroyed lived on in them
Controlled their lungs, their hearts their minds uncured,
The ashes of the Jews, borne in their skin.
Like a mass communion without words
We ate and breathed the Jews, the gays, unheard
In Bedzin and in Krakow we walked in
The ashes of the lost, the glades of skin,
She pounded the last nail into the lid of the coffin
The coffin that held her dream
She sat there for a while
In the silence
Thinking of all it had meant
What it was meant to be
Her dream
She threw herself over the coffin
And wracked away with sobs
The last hopes that lay
Buried deep within her
Silence
No one had come to mourn
No one had said a word
Except when her dream was alive and well
Only then
Then…they told her
“Look at the tell-tale signs
Can’t you see?
Something is amiss
Your dream…Your dream is…sick
It won’t make it
It won’t survive.”
She hadn't believed them
Thought they had lied
Yet, here she was
She wiped her tears away
What did they know?
What did they care?
How could they understand…
That wrapped up there in her dream
Was her beating heart
She could not bear to bury it
So, she pushed it underneath the shade
Of a weeping willow tree
Weeping
Weeping
For who she couldn't be
And she walked away
Dreamless
Heartless
Dead….
Unburied!
Eileen Manassian Ghali
O Council of marble halls and hollow oaths, the world is asking: whom do you save? Are you not but a lion, toothless and tamed, pretending to defend the pride, while the hyenas feast in your shadow?
We have seen your silence dressed in law: in Baghdad’s burning, in Tripoli’s ruins, in the shattered homes of Gaza. Your chambers echoed with speeches, but your gavel struck only air. The powerful spoke, and you bowed, their crimes baptized with your silence.
If peace was truly your crown, would children lie unburied beneath collapsed stone? Would nations bleed while you debated the price of their agony? Nay—your throne is not of justice, but of compromise with evil. You are not a council, but a marketplace where the rich purchase the right to destroy.
Tell me, O guardians of nothing, is sovereignty now for sale? Is humanity a currency, traded in the corridors of New York? Your veto is not a shield— it is a dagger, plunged into the hearts of the weak.
O nations of the Global South, how long will you kneel before ghosts? How long will you believe that justice will be delivered from the same hand that shackles you? Withdraw, break the chains of illusion. Build a covenant not of domination, but of dignity— a true assembly of mankind, born not from the ashes of empire, but from the fire of justice.
For the world does not need a toothless lion roaring for show. The world needs a sword of light, a covenant of equals, where no child’s blood is deemed cheap, and no nation’s grief is buried beneath vetoes.
The Security Council has spoken in silence, and its silence condemns it. Its stage is set, its mask unveiled— not a guardian, but a conspirator.
And so the question remains, echoing through broken streets and ruined skies: Whom do you save?
But hear this prophecy— your empire of glass shall shatter, your halls shall echo with dust, and a new covenant shall rise from your ruin. For the lion without teeth shall be devoured by the very prey it failed to defend.
History will not forgive you. And tomorrow, the world will move on without you.
Waves crash against the ribcage of shore
Where unburied bones play on the beach
The dead swim in shallow pools beneath
Lost Souls never finding their exit door
The living are not welcome to come here
Sometimes they are seen staring from afar
Too many have tried then have disappeared
And death is always what the living fears
From the cliff above the bones are seen
Dancing in the sand, splashing in the sea
Is it a dream or nightmare in unreality
Unexplainable to the living, what does it mean
It means that so much we humans don't know
And even less in which what to believe
Belief is only a product given forcibly
Forced to reap what someone else really sow's
This place of bones called Skeleton Bay
An unexplainable retreat for the dead
A phenomenon unstudied this haunted beach
A place where only the dead meet and play
Written for contest "Bone Beach" 0/25/2024
Hosted by: Anthony Biianco
**WON 1ST PLACE IN CONTEST**