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Ballad
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In some German towns
Germans are placing brass plaques
To remember Jewish families
Who were murdered
During the Nazi Holocaust
Ordinary decent human beings
Doing their best
To show what the Nazis tried to do
Has not come to pass
The eradication of the Jews from Europe.
© Paul Warren Poetry
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Free verse
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One of the questions
after the Holocaust
was and is "Why Me?"
Why did they die and I live?
There is no answer
to this question
God's ways are inscrutable
His plan unknowable
Yet there's this --
I live to dedicate myself
to preserve the memories
of those I knew
who could not ask the question
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Prose Poetry
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I silently watch
Two strangers fearfully meet
Neither smiling now
Everyone is an enemy
Whereas pre-pandemic we were all potential friends.
We could strike up conversations in line and such.
If these two
Were the only survivors
After a holocaust…
Where all the rest of us are dead
Would they be afraid to speak?
Afraid to be friends?
Pandemic laughs at me.
In a diabolical way.
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Free verse
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White like the snow
Ice stiffened limbs
Reaching out
No saviors about
Snow flakes in the wind
I reached and reached and reached
Towards deaths cold hands
Never to see her again
I looked down
Wine of bloods holocaust
Flowing from my hands
Unto the devils abode
Whitest of Pyrenees days
I died beside her departure
Railroad tracks empty
Bloodless heart
Ashes black
Butterfly born
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Free verse
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A brave believing victim of the Shoah said, 'God slept'.
Is it not true that God and Humanity were allies as the
United Nations Forces defeating Fascism - for ever?
Only the other day out of respectability I heard an anti-
Semitic remark. Alas, this old evil is not yet dead and buried.
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Rhyme
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(Tribute to Holocaust victims)
Why do I still hear
crying of lost children?
Why do I see fear
in the eyes of parents?
Why do I feel coldness
of hearts and rifles?
Why do I smell smoke
and foul stench of hatred?
What could I have done?
It wasn’t my time!
YOU chose my being
and YOU closed me in it!
Do matters of spirit
imprison the body?
Or does the body
imprison the spirit?
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Light Verse
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You cover me in your regards
You say to me you will not harm
How can I buy my reasoning
When you won't even believe in me
Now I shadow the wind
And I keep ever still
For when it rains in your heart
I just stand here and laugh
For you cry for me
For you fight for me
For you keep liberty
You fight to keep us free
What am I to be
When the new holocaust comes for me
And will I ever get over??
Wounded Soldier
10/07/17
James Edward Lee Sr.
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Free verse
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It may look skin deep but it goes all the way to a soul
A scar on society and the skin of an innocent
numerals meant to identify the person
yet remove them from humanity
Done in the name of ideology
And the politics of bigotry
If such a thing as religion exists
These crimes must have made the angels weep
And deities drop to their knees in shame
Do not be led by politics or religion
Or the words in a book
Trust your heart.
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Political Verse
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I wake up
find myself
wandering in a hot dessert
baking in the malign rays
of a dying sun
I realized
that i am walking around
a post nuclear wasteland -
nothing is moving
everything is dead
I may be the last
person on earth
I don’t know how i got here
or when it is
or even if it is real
or just a nightmare vision
i scream out
Dear God
save me
and hear nothing
but the whispers
of billions of ghosts
in the radioactive winds
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Quatrain
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The towering inferno devoured all in its path,
On the lonely midsummer day.
Nothing was safe from its venomous bite,
When it danced its insidious ballet.
It heeded no warnings and took no advise,
Ignored any little alarm.
It was intent upon causing tremendous havoc,
Leaving destruction and chaos and harm.
This was a fire in his mind, a paranoid distrust,
A doubt with no reason or border.
A raging holocaust of all that he knew,
His all consuming mental disorder.
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Verse
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On the radio: "plants have both beauty and intelligence!"
Her University professors were adamant:
"If you want beauty, rather than biology,
Why not transfer to art, or art history?!"
Lord, do forgive our experts, professors ...
Unwilling to teach as DEEPLY as C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, holocaust survivors ...
And trees: unstinting with shade, space for critters, flowers, fruit, air for me!
Never sulking, whining, withholding love: forgiving our poisoning spaces interminably
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Rhyme
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I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
It is a living memorial to the holocaust for all to see.
The horrendous images there will break your heart.
There were millions of dear souls that did violently depart.
About 1.5 million children were brutally killed.
Satan was a roaring lion that could not be stilled.
When I saw the hundreds of children’s shoes it made me cry.
They are in God’s arms now, in heaven on high.
Written 10/12/16
My Take on the Holocaust Contest
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Free verse
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We saw their pictures:
tortured out of Our imaginations
like golems.
We could not believe
in their frail extremities
or their gaunt faces,
pallid as Our disbelief.
they are not
with us now;
We have:
huddled them
into the backroomsofconscience,
consigned them
to the ovensofsilence,
buried them in the mass graves
of circumstancesbeyondourcontrol.
We have
so little left
of them,
now,
to remind US ...
Originally published in the Holocaust anthology Blood to Remember.
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Free verse
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You said it was nothing,
that we would be alright,
that it was just a symbol,
a yellow piece of cloth.
Nothing was going to happen,
Yeah. Right.
Tell this to me now,
look me in the eye.
I know you can’t.
It’s been a long time
since yellow was just a color
and our star was just a shape.
They need no excuse to be violent.
They do that all on their own.
You said it was nothing,
that we would be alright.
Well look where we are now.
This poem is written in response to a section from Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir Night.
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Free verse
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In my empire of dust…
I sit on a throne built of ruined, rust
I sit, n think about what has been lost
why do images come and
linger, ghosts in the aftermath
of emotions holocaust
why do thoughts come undone
dark, like shadows marching as one
to haunt & taunt my vison-scapes
as I watch my images
aline like cruciform’s upon my edifice,
That singular rock; Golgotha
my eternal scorn
my dogma
in my empires of lust
my empire down
wrapped in thorns of rust.
I cry empire down
I dig into the dust.
my empire turning to dust…
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Rhyme
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LIVES MATTER
From then to now,
Let it be told,
The ill regard for humanity,
mounting stories told.
But God forbid
that whatever be done,
will be done for this reason,
Power, money, control.
The Trail of Tears,
The Holocaust
Black Slavery and Persecutions
where countless lives have been lost
Mass abortions, mass murders
Racial prejudice and pride
Human trafficking, Corporate oppression
between worker and boss
Political battles, divided nations,
Divided families now scattered
Making sure the vast obscurity
that ALL lives is what matters
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Quatrain
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When the sirens wail
A memory’s restored
Of the millions lost
That by God were so adored.
Senseless slaughter
Beyond belief,
Only Satan’s plotter
Could crave this untold grief.
The years have passed,
Generations born anew,
The wish of mourners massed
Humanity slowly to renew.
With one voice all of us decree
Such abomination never shall repeat,
In a world where rarely we agree
We all vow never so mistreat.
But for this moment silent we remain
To say a prayer for those who suffered so,
Old age they never did attain
Yet now bask in the Lord’s eternal glow.
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Free verse
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Lone machines hum and sway,
back and forth to the rhythm and rage.
Optics lens reflect refract and collect
the thunderheads of blood-soaked clouds,
build violent, violet lighting shimmers,
capers, flickers, and fades.
Lancing, dancing striking into a sick parade
Of the damned the beaten and lost march
in time to the metronome
as the eye of creation watches
from afar its sliver light
graces all in its cold embrace...
these white things, gaunt emaciated
Wispy figures in the gloom
damaged and damned doomed to
toil in the Arcane Factories
of nightmare and holocaust.
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Rhyme
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It’s Holocaust Remembrance Day
Yet some in Tennessee
Decided their curriculum,
As is, just could not be.
A book Art Spiegelman did write,
A graphic novel, too,
Described the way his parents lived,
As Jews, in World War II.
The Nazis are portrayed as cats;
The prisoners are mice
And it depicts how those in camps
All paid an awful price.
The school board said their eighth grade class
Should not be left to read
A book with nudity ( of mice!)
And swear words - no, indeed!
The novel‘s won a Pulitzer
But ignorance must rule,
Preventing history from being
Taught today in school.
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Blank verse
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Slow decay of physical appearance
once in life was warm
now lives a life of endless storm
loss of the skin, and soul of existence
wind runs away with sediment
outlasting, the bone takes apart time
another life of loss joins the rest
weathered and chipped, bone against bone
everything turns grey, an immortal way
nobody to talk to, no way to say
which built the wood pierces the grain with toothless jaws
different shades of white and grey turn completely black
a holocaust among men from a pulled trigger
once attacked by the mirror figure
recorded in point blank scripture
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Italian Sonnet
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How many died fighting not to get caught?
How many died on those ships, in their chains?
Or, died in those fields with nothing to gain,
Overworked after they all had been bought.
Who died, trying to flee where he was brought?
How many died from the whip and the pain;
At the end of a nuse, where they remain.
Is there a number that you have been taught?
You allowed us to go without a count,
Washing your hands clean of the blood splatter.
Blood was spilled, but we can not count an ounce,
To quiet your "questionable" chatter.
So, if we could come up with an amount,
Then you "might" understand that it matters.
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Free verse
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~ For International Holocaust Day ~
Never again, we vowed
when Auschwitz was liberated
When images of human skeletons
flickered across our screens
Four months later, Never again
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Mushroom clouds shielding
Civilians screaming, burnt alive
Never again, we vowed
then betrayed South Vietnam
the Viet Cong slaughtering
all those left behind
Never again? Never again?
We fled Iraq and Afghanistan
Allies to the butcher's knife abandoned
~ Never again we mutter, Never again
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Free verse
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In me a desert, like a sea of sands expands
A lone rider, my soul, on camel of desires
Panting and thirsty, passes, scanning with aging eyes,
The vast panorama for water.
Horizons ablaze with mirage mock at my dehydrated limbs.
Then on me falls chilling night like a blanket of snow
Darkness overpowers speed journey halts, camel bites the dust.
I lie on barren land like as only survivor of global holocaust
Eternity staring at me with million eyes of stars
Slowly chilll surrounds like waters surrounding
Sinking ship drowning consciousness into
Ubiquitous desolation and death.
The sun tomorrow may rise, may mirage burn sans me.
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Verse
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Brothers forgive your intruders
for the Holocaust they have caused you.
Another land of Canaan taken forever
and they wanted you to perish
like the great Nation of Phoenicians.
Fortunately you had good prophets:
Dekanawida and others.
You did not listen to Jezebel
and Great Spirit, Manitu led you
to the Holy Spirit and true God.
We stand in front of you,
all Native Tribes –
humble, with heads bend.
Our president, who received Nobel Peace Prize,
had the time to reconcile
the atrocities committed on your people,
by the hostile men,
who had to corrupt their own religion
of one Church of Christ
to justify their terrible deeds!
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Sonnet
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SECOND HOLOCAUST
We hear them now, the beating bass of drum,
the marchers, though loose-knit, from Wall Street's rolls,
too soon will turn to cadence; those who come,
all have no memory of Hitler's goals.
Their good intentions caved in, to survive,
to placing blame to where it shouldn't go!
And all too soon, the buzzing of the hive
lays every blame to things we shouldn't know.
Though mournful is the tune that plays along
to every drumbeat, calling for return
of nights of death--the old recall the song,
but much too late recall how bodies burn.
And Stars of David are replaced on every wall,
by Swastikas demanding rights for all.
Scary.
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