Mass Grave Poems | Examples

List of Member Poems

The Valley of the Fallen

A four pillared greeting, a long winding road
A quiet, eerie presence; cold, soft whispers...friend or foe?

A cry from the mountains rides on the breeze
It's heard in the valley, it's heard in the trees

Fallen for God and fallen for Spain!
It's not spoken with pride, but with pain and disdain

It comes like a croak, ragged and dry
Like it's been all boxed up and has not seen the light

The cries sing aloud from the walls of the nave
Most of them dug up; their final resting place: a mass grave

A shrine to the fallen for country and kin
A monument to remember; never forget this buried sin

A four pillared farewell, a quiet drive home
A reassuring presence, a new friend, a renewed hope

Premium Member Winter Violin

Time used to be gentle
like bike bells singing harmony
with a summer breeze.

Time seems to be picking up speed.
A freight train without an engineer.
A Hendrix electric guitar on amphetamines.

When did time become a runaway brute?
A trickster, a taker-a mass grave maker.
The shell game player. Raper of dreams.
Whisking everything you love to the far away...
Putting your cries on mute.

Time is picking up speed.
Withering things but never planting seeds. 
Plucking the shriveled blossoms of memory.
Dumping them in a landfill.
With broken dolls, rusted 5 speeds, black lantern dreams.

Time is yellow rings of selfishness. 
Forever hungry- lacks any empathy.
It devours the cream of life.
Turns the radiance of innocents into junkyard eyes.
Splashing gray onto the temple.  
Welding bent hand to crooked cane.

Smashing everything in its greasy path.
Time is endless clownish-black comedy- a careen off a cliff.
A vintage violin at the bottom of a winter stream.
Time blasts into celebration when you're down to your last breath.

Premium Member The death of leaves

The mighty wind buffets
And the trees cry bitter tears
I try to hang on to my limb
         "Don't let go!"
shutting my eyes to the debris 
     
                                        I'm torn loose, 

                                                               blown away
    
                     through the empty air


                                                   nothing to cling to
     
panic sparks as I'm rolled
                                            over 
                                                     and 
                                                               over
     pulled this way................................... then that
  



                           too much wide open space
     



I'm battered against something solid
breaking,
                cru
                      mb
                            ling into dry pieces
I 
fall 
to 
the 
ground
           into a mass grave 
of mirror images. mirror images
     mirror images. mirror images


mule minded

Mule minded 


Plough, my mule
a furrow in my name 
the almond tree blossoms
there will 
be another furrow 
in my name
memories collect 
spent bullets 
in a mass grave 
in pursuit of knowledge
while yellow flowers
at the edge 
of a memory 
wilts 
not robust enough 
to plough another furrow

Premium Member Ramonda

Mauve sweetheart of mountains
your petals pulse purple twilight and scatter small stars
amongst scars, whilst wars rage on the world's dark stage
and the stage disintegrates, becomes a mass grave,
scissored by shadow and scythed by sorrow.
Yet graves are amethyst-studded with promises of tomorrow;
lifeless lilac revived by meandering kisses of mountain streams...
Sleepy sweet-scented stars dream delicate dusk,
bloom on hostile ground, birthed from rocky earth,
storm-swayed but unbroken, budding
through the longest night, awakening
violet visages unfurling from the heart of dark
to be reborn in gold-gifted dawn.
Tenacious you cling as morning sings
to the small yellow sun that rises
in each resilient heart.

All Of Us

a tomb
   you say
domed 
and grand
and cherubin
   temerity
a mass grave
of all of us
but 
who still
creeps around
upstairs


Genes Futility

Gene futility

 How can we look at a child and kill it, by using “it”
we have distanced ourselves from the child they are no longer
unique, but just an expendable extension of us.
The intense love we have for a lost child is the grief
of our own demise…it is the only proof we ever lived
the loss of a gene, inconceivable future transgression.
A child killed in a drone attack in Pakistan stirs us less
then the sight of a bunny rabbit run over; how sad it
had to die, but it crossed the road. A naked Jewish boy
in front of a mass grave, his cap hiding his modesty,
I condemn all mankind for his demise, he is our cruel
gene-based viciousness, the survival of the genus and
for it to survive there is no room for compassion.
A man who kills children whether by drone or gun kills
himself and forever he shall walk in night's shadow.

Premium Member The Character of a Country

In the heart of a war-torn country,
A mass grave awaits to be filled.
Piled high, the riddled cadavers,
Of the many citizens  killed.

Their unrecognizable remains,
Haunts those assigned to the task.
To bury their friends and neighbors,
Each wearing a hideous mask.

There were many that prayed for peace,
But the Warlords would have their way.
Their methods of horror increased,
And became the trend of the day.

The bombs the enemy launched,
Would land on Ukrainian streets.
Destroying a thriving city,
Where its pulse no longer beats.

As they arose to meet the challenge,
Their lives were put to the test.
But their courage couldn't be thwarted,
And their will inspired the rest.

Now this country's character shines,
For the eyes of the world to see.
And the battle will never cease,
Until all of Ukraine is free.

Some Summer Nights

Some summer night
 
 
The summer night is hot you can see the flames of hell,
acrid smoke and soot through the open window.
In the interior of the house, a primal scream
two wriggling bodies try to produce an offspring who 
will grow up and be like them and die like them?
But not before it has tasted love, a seed of humanity.
Then sinking back underground, spent, forgotten
in the mass-grave of boredom
decorated with flowers that radiate deaths to come.
The Tasmanian tiger howls to the moon and forever
vanishes into an ancient forest, 
While werewolves’ sways to a Mexican dirge

Red and Gray

Skipping down the walk on a sunless, foggy day;
a bright red coat surrounded in shades if gray.

In a smoldering mass grave, on a sad and shameful day;
a swatch if bright red coat, surrounded in ashes if gray.




Inspired by Schindler's List

House of Stone Mass Grave

The wind of change 
Blew off dust settled on my eyes, 
I saw living corpses 
Strolling the streets of urban.

It blew away the cloth 
Tied around my face,
I beheld the mass grave 
Of peasant farmers who died 
From void promises for land.  

The wind erased 
Rhetoric from my psyche,
I discovered the skeletal currency;
Bones of a long breath departed economy.

I saw dead hospitals,
The ill buried alive in their homes.
I am a son of the soil
Living in a mass grave House of Stone.

To Retire In Happiness

Misrule
Misappropriate
Mass-grave

Winter In Rittenhouse

The park is nothing but a mass grave
for the plant kingdom when unravels the night. 
Winter's spectral feet whisper like a knave.

The flowers they did not save.
A cloud barrier and  light.
The park is a mass grave.

Every bough exposed, prepared to slave
many months carrying clumps of white.
Winter's footsteps whisper like a knave.

Mother's light diminishes like a hollow ocean wave
grass letting go of green sight.
The park is a mass grave. 

An old eucalyptus looked upon the ground and forgave
the clouds who stole the sun and bound him in blight.
Winter's gait whispers like a knave.

Light charged with icicle breath and the sky steeped in iron, let's be brave
before gravity's chants begins and the ground turns. The truth will bite. 
The park is a mass grave and winter's stride whispered like a knave.

Africa's Lost Dance

We think we earned
this space on earth, and
we live dreaming
of the lost Africa of dance
lost under that ancient warrior's shield
with too many dragged
into the mass grave
when the weight of the world
pushed us down

Here in sorrow's dream land
we hear the songs like dancers do
our dance is the only thing that makes
the time pass here...
we find peace in the songs

(we can't get enough of them
we've memorized them all
line by line)

enough memories of songs
to last another generation
we drink in them, and
we dance with our eyes

times have changed...
it's a new world for everyone
when the songs in our lives
disappear
what will our dance be?
what should be done
with all the time
that lies ahead?

Is it possible to dance once again
to those songs in our lives
and be able to take
a completely different direction
to the one that has made us
who we are

This lost Africa of dance
has lost its meaning,
and in political arguments
we lost both war and peace,
and danced till sorrow
welled and spilled
and engulfed us
suspended in mid-air,
hidden behind Africa's anonymity.

Premium Member The Rider

In a mass grave so long ago,
They spoke to me before they died,
I saw their souls, the outward flow,
All hope buried beneath that tide.

The many starving, sent afar,
With wearied feet and hunger's burn,
Impel them on - my repertoire,
The children that fail to return.

I rose up tall against the shore,
Wood and iron to hold them fast,
Freedom vanished for evermore,
Slavery's journey to the last.

I set you fighting, tribe on tribe,
The dogs of war so fierce to roam,
Ensure no safety to describe,
What has worth if you can't go home?

Sub Categories

Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace