When End of Days marked every soul,
The Bells from Hell, as well, would toll.
This mad prophesy, sadly written,
Had the Devil badly smitten.
We had to face the flames and fires,
Thick with smoke and funeral pyres.
Fought on the beach and desert sand,
Well, at least, it wasn't hand to hand.
All the beasts were barking for blood,
It was feast, famine, and flood.
Still, the Bells continued to chime,
Dogs from Hell, ate two at a time.
Amen, for now, our sin would end,
And a reign of pain would now begin.
Was it all by some grand design?
No matter now, I'm in that line.
Categories:
pyres, death,
Form: Rhyme
The Earth isn't dying—no, she's screaming, a sound you've stopped hearing.
she cried when girls walked miles for rusted, tainted water,
when ancient forests become forgotten, ash–filled pyres,
no worn map ever dared to mark.
In my homeland,
we don't fear the tempest's furious might.
We fear the silence –
The hollow echo of empty, cracked wells,
the desolate stretch of barren, parched fields,
The early,unforgiving digging of our graves.
They label us “developing,”
yet we are always the very first to drown,
The very first to wither from hunger's bite,
The very first to forfeit a future
we never, ever sought to destroy.
They peddle green, plastic-wrapped illusions.
“Eco.” “Clean.”
As if mere words could somehow
unscorch the blazes from the sky.
But behold, we stand–
girls with bare hands, replanting the struggling forests,
boys coding, fighting against the swift collapse,
children marching, with fierce fire in their lungs.
I continue to write.
Because even now,
The Earth, in her enduring wisdom, still believes in us.
Categories:
pyres, imagery, inspirational, meaningful, metaphor,
Form: Free verse
A flag draped box on titanium stand
Bears all that remains of a noble man
A father’s pride, a mother’s grief
A widow’s tears without relief
A son whose memories begin to fade
As the soldier is solemnly laid
The torment a brief eternity
Brought by war infernally
Driven by other men’s desires
We raise yet more funeral pyres
And watch again our young men go
Though some may not return we know
How long shall we pay this bloody toll
With tokens made from our own soul
Categories:
pyres, funeral, loss, soldier,
Form: Rhyme
A Night of '89
Footsteps at midnight
the knock no one dared answer.
Dogs howled in silence.
Charred Bodies on the road,
eyes still open to the sky.
The crows never ask.
Posters on the wall
by morning, the faces fade.
Smoke curls from tire pyres .
Mother lights a lamp.
Her son's shoes still by the door.
She dares not whisper.
Gunfire in the dusk,
then a scream the wind carries
who will name the dead?
Red water flows past
the paddy field in full bloom.
No harvest this year.
Schoolbag on the step—
its owner taken at dawn.
Chalk dust on the floor.
Whispers fill the lane.
Even silence has been killed.
Eyes blink like shutters.
A list with red marks—
young names, crossed out by the state.
The clerk still records.
Cicadas still sing
though men hang from tamarind trees.
Life pretends to go.
Categories:
pyres, anger, cry, death, fear,
Form: Haiku
Flames swallow oxygen,
duplicitous in their deeds,
circumventing steel barriers—
steel barriers doubling over.
Ashen soot cakes the walls;
walls crumble, interlacing with soot.
Pyres of fire lick the night sky;
crimson smoke suffuses the air.
Breathing in microparticles,
microparticles sticking
to fibrous membranes—
breathing collapses.
Lit match—ignition,
cinders glow.
Categories:
pyres, allusion, dark, fire, imagery,
Form: Other
Blight,
Growing,
Toxic seeds
Festering deep
Within cracking souls,
Shaded beneath blackthorn,
Watered by innocent's tears,
Blooming like demonic cancer,
Thriving on infinite misery,
Dissolving veils between conflicted worlds.
Faltering, earth trembling, Demi-Gods raise
The pyres of hellfire, hauntingly glow,
Among backdrops festering hate.
Eerie silhouettes reflect
A macabre ballet—
Twirl, twist, contort sin.
Sulfuric rain
Snuffing out
Hope's rays.
Blind.
Categories:
pyres, dark, death, deep, gothic,
Form: Etheree
The beast Alhambra
roared a violent psalm
Vile conversos
horrid moriscos,
the heretic herds
A spear thrust into
our sun’s martyred ribs
Held in hateful grips
the yellow warblers
dripped in crimson sheen
Flying like Michael
the vengeful vassal
of Aragon’s decree
“O Torquemada
Hark the righteous call
King of Suprema
Execute them all!”
Cold unfeeling wretch,
the flesh guillotine
Teeth clicking sparks
lit endless pyres
Three made Seville
weep at the sight of Friars
Categories:
pyres, christian, history, horror, islamic,
Form: Rhyme
No prior POTUS has admired
Towered pyres for esquires they’d hired
Tired not by work hard
Now wired the trump card
That commands retire or You're Fired!
Categories:
pyres, anger, bullying, confusion, power,
Form: Limerick
THREAD OF FIRE
You say you are not worthy to be remembered
Yet, you are that thread of fire!
The one not put out, never extinguished
One sparking a million singing pyres
Your verses breed inner conflict
In turn breeding flames of desire
How dare you concede you're unworthy
When you are that one thread of fire!
Categories:
pyres, inspiration,
Form: Rhyme
Water can be calming until it floods the earth with its purpose
It becomes quite unpleasant when the water overextends its intent
Is it the moon that is making the water have more intent with its purpose
Let it be known that the water cares for the earth to an extent
The water cares for its blood and claims to care for the earth, and wants to nourish its seed
Well, the seed does not want the water with salt
Do not concoct a form of a pleasant and tasty Meade
It would prefer to have the sweet nectar of a malt
The earth is the foundation of life, and the water should cool it down from the internal and external fires
The earth does not want to be overrun with water and all of its creatures of life
A partnership until they enter the pyres
The earth wants to have the blessing of a wife
Each day, the earthquakes and the water go out
Or does the water come out like a spout
Categories:
pyres, deep,
Form: Sonnet
Written: February 26, 2024
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Whilst an ivory sky, my mast ignite.
As tidal waves flicker in sparks that gleam.
Igneous scarlet pyres still blazing night.
The amber sparks hover in swooping sight.
Amid thunder, boisterous shivers scream.
Whilst an ivory sky, my mast ignite.
The limestone chunks resemble carved calcite.
With furnace flames in phosphorous agleam.
Igneous scarlet pyres still blazing night.
As I gaze upward, pitch and haze relight.
Steadfast, I plunge where evil spirits teem
Whilst an ivory sky, my mast ignite.
Rancid stench of the city stinks of blight.
Above lagoons, as muddy smog or steam.
Igneous scarlet pyres still blazing night.
A phoenix amidst the fire, set alight.
overhauled from ashen sidle, wings' dream
Whilst an ivory sky, my mast ignite.
Igneous scarlet pyres still blazing night.
Categories:
pyres, dream, fire,
Form: Villanelle
The barren ground bleached by the sacred sun
scantily clothed children and dogs run
Trees scarred by scavenged limbs
Burned in pyres as sunlight dims
Low water levels recorded on painted rocks
Boats cannot reach out of water docks
I have seen he planet of the damned
The hardened earth refuses tent stakes
another hill make your Achilles ache
The ground crackles then suckles in the rain
lack of jobs, beer in hand men complain
Barking dogs and muffled screams of passion
children cry in starvation fashion
music lifted by campfire plumes
Angry voices friendship consumes
I have walked the planet of the damned
Where people's lives reduced to what they own
Homeless families are not alone
friendship the ultimate mark
the ability to see light through the dark
I have lived on the planet of the damned
And life goes on without being crammed
Categories:
pyres, addiction, friendship, home, life,
Form: Rhyme
With the sudden loss of my dear wife,
In distant home land, I could not save her of heart attack,
With funeral pyres cremating her on banks of holy river,
Heart cried for weeks, family in shock for months.
Crying must become stealth, as work survival got critical,
The deep sorrow and shock got stacked in wounded heart,
Tears dried up externally, but flowed with emotions internally,
The feelings and longing for each other stayed in my heart forever,
Some internet friends, asked me to write my feelings,
A verse, a lament, whatever poured out of my heart,
After month of trials, one day the heart opened in poems.
The poems started pouring out some 20 years ago,
Some were love poems, some bore loneliness,
Some described her beauty and saw her in garden roses,
Heard her songs in the waves on beautiful beaches.
If it was not her loss, I would not have written a poem in my life,
My engineering training lacked vocabulary and knowledge of poems,
Wrote almost three hundred poems in next three years,
All in free verse without knowing abcd of poetry writing.
Categories:
pyres, poetry,
Form: Free verse
A time to rake; to search embers,
for fingerprints and the scorched optics
of the scattered and blind.
After the violence, fagots, and reeds
are heaped up into pyres,
but first the sorting,
the probing for trinkets of flesh.
A silver crucifix, smutter tarnished,
lays blackened by the avid impetus
of quick flames, it is held up,
by a tattered man of woe,
he calls out:
"I found something!"
Death's archeologist huddle,
wipe this soot-seared relic
with sweat
laced with new revealed
sorrows.
The recently threshed look upward,
not down. dull eyed, they peer
as though through the bottom of a fishbowl
at the red and bloated
afloat beneath an unblinking sky.
These smithereens of mortality
slowly bob in the ether,
they wait for the hands
of a meek fisherman to haul them in,
to take them away.
Categories:
pyres, poetry,
Form: Free verse
I may love you, once love is all I have;
someday, with tears I'll wash away your grave:
till then I curse you since you died at last,
leaving me broke, alone, going nowhere fast.
Despite young Cupid, I won't bring you flowers;
or bathe you in dripping-wet, sparkling showers
of worship; or grant you the gold of chaise,
that gilts your summit-peaking thrones of maize.
Instead, I'll bring you a wreathe of barbed wires;
flame it! like a thousand nuclear pyres;
hang it upon your cruel member, like so!
And watch it burn, then cauterize, it slow.
Selfish Lover! You stole from me life's measure
of passion and unfathomable pleasure.
For that, therefore, I've the evil delight,
knowing your digit stands no more upright!
Categories:
pyres, allusion, betrayal, desire, extended
Form: Heroic Couplet
Related Poems