Begin by stripping my skin to the bone
Misfortune is baked in layers
Mania in DNA is more than kin
I trust nurture entwined with nature
Tattered veils obscure perspective's light
Shameful gauzes are undressed
Ran madly half-bare to sis's arms
Suicidal wolf cries no longer tempt me
Re-parenting without weed strips me
No more wine ushering the beast
Make abstinence my embalmer
Repatriate this childish soul to the slab
But, bare days are still in need of veils
Nicotine measures hours hemmed
Buried childhood squirms for treason
I have yet to abandon painful threads
Terrors of walking nude will be learned
No parents to steady with hands
This old man-child still wants claps
The past waits for touch inside the tomb
Miles of selfish ribbons unwind clinging
Stand half mummified yet alive
Walk roads of perils on bare feet
My uncloaked condition accepts it's terminal
Life without bandaids is one beginning
My mania unwinds what's hidden
I'll rise from the crypt together
Till ash revealed is cleaved from soul
John 19:41
At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid.
From, Hymns of My War
Unpublished collection
“Dear Mr. and Mrs. Thomson,
In this casket is most of your son.
We strongly recommend cremation.
The rest remains missing in action,
With the thanks of a grateful nation.”
Graves registration records them, “Members Missing”;
Limbs now of a foreign flora? Will the Resurrecting
Repatriate them from the Sao Den and Cu Chi trees,
Or the killing fields endlessly cycle their lees?
No, no more mustering to the drums, as names
In limestones will report for their remains -
Until the last of memories unwrites any claim
By they who sent them to mindlessly proclaim,
“Thank you for your service”
Copyright Paul Thomson 2019
Come rain or shine
The children of Penny Lane
Gather to play and while away
At Lady Madonna
Out polishing her front doorstep
Day by day
On her run down council tenement terrace house
She is so house proud
But expectant visitors never come
Nothing alive has crossed over
Since that letter was delivered
Notification her Husband and Son
Where alas no more
Casualties of war
Merely your country owes you a debt of gratitude sincerely sorry for your loss
With no body to repatriate nothing
to put in a coffin or bury she couldn't even
plan or mourn at their funeral
Eleanor Rigby
Where do they all the lonely people
Come from and go
God only knows the time and place
Half a heart
If I am at work
or at leisure
with half a heart,
No echoes, no thrill ...
Like an unsung song
broken strings of piano,
Waiting no mend
dying slowly, forgotten.
Like endless nights
staying dark and cold,
Some unburnt coal
with embers, frozen.
Like flute immersed in water
as no air enters or leaves,
Descend deeper, unblown,
unkissed, drowning.
Like a stone at the shore
I wait for a new sun
A wave, give me shake,
to make afloat, alive.
Else let tsunami engulf
or repatriate my bubbly half.
Written Jan 7th, 2016
For contest "Free verse extravaganza"
Sponsor- Catie Lindsay
Permanently nuclear heads
psychosis; sightless
Heads
Plant of the haters
Insanity this race
We; any race
Commonly we repatriate
The rays of the sun
For what
Radiation
Ruining our earth
Reproduction of what
The death
and the death
The winner who
only dust
A weapon of no winner
No buds
Only! only ash!
Of Hiroshima, Nagasaki
Who is Replaying that?
Kids with heads;
Nuclear
Who are playing
deadly game of men!
Cut off diffusion from its gate
that mast confusion insulates
its own conclusion, while sedates
affinity, binds not God's state!
And strings of justice intimate
life's own true standing contemplates
the aggravation is relate
encumbrances soul's restorate!!!
So cut me off from solaced fate
my own adjourn indoctrinate
the going forth, my medals hate
but freedom, freedom to create!
The blowing casts its youthful mate
while I of self's uniqueness late
am in disguise to build abate
and rescue pride in my times date!
While followers fumble for their plate,
I pull away ~ repatriate!
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