Author's Note
In February 1258, the Mongol army led by Hulagu Khan sacked Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. It marked the end of the Islamic Golden Age. Libraries like the House of Wisdom were destroyed, and countless books were thrown into the Tigris River until the water ran black with ink and red with blood. Scholars, artists, and civilians were killed. The destruction ended centuries of science, medicine, and philosophy, and showed what happens when cruelty replaces knowledge and forgiveness.
When Baghdad Wept-CM
Cruel hooves marched, and cities bled,
Cold steel struck, and scholars fled.
Wisdom burned while rivers ran,
Words turned ash in Tigris span.
Mercy slept while towers fell,
Golden age was lost to hell.
Yet kindness waits in hearts to rise,
Forgiveness blooms in humankind eyes.
Indicative fact:
The quarterback got sacked
Imperative demand:
Carolyn, please hold my hand!
Subjunctive wish:
If I were Irish…
The shattered remains of what I once had,
The hollow dreams still quite tall,
My mind of chaos driving me mad,
All behind a huge, transparent wall.
I hung my head low, slumped down.
I searched aimlessly in the darkness.
A picture lay there; on my face a frown,
But what was left of them all, they called it silence.
I caressed the picture,
My thoughts haywire,
The world is sinister,
Burning me up like fire.
Who am I? A meek peasant.
Knew no more than hardened violence,
A burdened past, a tortured present,
And what lay beyond, they called it silence.
Sorrow gripped me on the inside,
Lifeless and shriveled from within,
Merely spectating the secrets, they still hide,
Hoping that once again I could begin.
Sacked of my people, my life,
All while hiding under a veil of pretense,
Blaming me for the start of a strife,
And what they didn't need, they called it silence.
I let it calm down,
The whirlwind in my mind.
The warmth and laughter, I had them drown,
No place for joy will I ever find.
I ripped the photograph, my elixir.
The fire crackled in the distance,
All gone, I was forced to surrender,
And all that was mine, they called it silence.
Though nothing changes, nothing stays intact.
Some places I have loved are shrunken, spoiled,
and sights I’ve carried with me are now soiled,
polluted. I’m confronted with the fact.
But Rome’s eternal, even when it’s sacked.
It’s comforting to know that, when I’ve toiled
to keep alive a vision, and recoiled
from ruination, I can yet exact
enormous pleasure from what still remains.
The brooding phantoms which I have to face
are ghosts of my past self. As vigour wanes,
it pains me to recall each trait and trace
of what I was, in catacomb campaigns,
whose faded glory saturates the place.
Musings on the façade of Seville Cathedral
How patiently they suffer, these old saints!
Their sandstone features, crumbled, vague,
some noses gone (some medieval ague,
or Time's cruel drip?) they offer no complaints.
Stranded seven centuries on this reef,
they bake, and wait resignedly, begowned,
for bell-tower shade slowly to inch around.
Do bas-reliefs experience relief?
This church was once a mosque. In point of fact,
the holy ancient venerable Gothic pile
(and here one struggles to suppress a smile)
has relatively recently been sacked,
and only lately put to Christian use.
These saintly faces, preternaturally mild -
do they still fret? Or are they reconciled
to slow decay, as hand or ear works loose?
And do they savour time as you or I,
observing how, below them in the street,
perukes give way to pony-tails and pleats?
Or do, for them, Septembers flicker by
like squandered seconds? Do they muse on Fate
and Destiny? What if my youth has gone?
What if this woman keeps me hanging on?
They also serve who only stand and wait.
Nine months after October 6, 1973
PM Golda Meir of Israel was history
For an intelligence failure colossal
She became a political fossil…
Fast forward to October 7, 2023
When Hamas went on a barbaric spree
Killing more Jews than any day since the Holocaust ended
Yet PM ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu’s had his term extended
Where is the leader to end Bibi’s reign
~ flush him and his generals down yesterday's drain
__________________________________________________
On October 6, 1973, Egyptian pontoons crossed the Suez Canal
into Israeli-held Sinai, unchecked by Israeli forces, a colossal
intelligence failure on the part of Israel's military. Prime Minister
(PM) Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan were sacked
nine months later---despite being heroes to much of Israel's
populace.
Held it in, so strong.
For too damn long!
Bit my tongue,
it bled blood-red.
Cracks ran rampant,
as the eruption spread,
the pressure built.
The head-cap exploded -
Volcano Maricano!
Flash to Ash
Dread is Bled
Scene is Black
Flak is Sacked
Volcano Maricano!
Ashes flew,
molten lava spew,
red burning streams
dribbling down,
defacing, everything in
its path! Smiling!
Flash to Ash
Dread is Bled
Scene is Black
Flak is Sacked
Volcano Maricano!
Volcano Maricano!
An “ex” phones up to tell me that she’s broke:
Republicans get beaten in a vote:
unwary tourists, chowing down on goat:
some moron doesn’t understand my joke:
uncomprehending, tells me that I’m “woke”:
destroying doubters with a Dumas quote.
The Sinking of the Maine – that hapless boat
was downed by Randolph Hearst’s own payroll folk,
and not the Cubans. Furnishing the fact
to someone who’s been clueless all this while
is gratifying. Quarter-backs get sacked,
but idiots are taken down with guile.
Exposing crass stupidity with tact,
and subtle humour. These things make me smile.
The Future as Irony
If we try to look ahead, say ten years when ex-president Trump sits in a cell in Arizona sent by Elon Musk, who rules the world and has an army of all-seeing AI officials, people will wonder why Trump lived that long, living on burgers and Pepsi Cola, concluding it is a long-life diet they too must live by to become very old.
They don’t know that Elon Musk, the Titan planted a chip in Trump’s brain to keep him alive showing us he has no hard feelings against the man, who got him sacked in 2025 from a job he had taken delight in because there had been many protests from other wealthy people, who the truth was told about their thieving.
Elon Musk is a remarkable man, he puts on a false beard, puts in old clothes and pretends he is poor, walks into cafés, asks for a burger and coffee, if the staff refuses to serve the poor man food, Elon Musk reviles himself and fire the staff who has to beg for food to survive as a moral lesson, the chart-savvy people applauded him
POINT ZERO
Birth slipped into fast flowing
rivers of patterned fissures
her arching brows brazen
searching sagaciously
microscoping every moment
tangoing across thorny
thickets
Hope gazed at her prayer
puzzle poised with pensive
pencils plaintively planting
plantains for pink parakeet
caressing spines singing
softly stirring custard
pudding
Love thought she was best
berry fruit from which fragrant
juice poured jetting jewels
a silver sabre silently stared
further from truth she stood
a sacked saga sagged
Death smiled enigmatically
held Birth, Hope and Love
in oblong esteem observing
Time’s oval ovaries to strike
sublime a node through
which she sodium sucked
Point Zero zipped in sidelong
zaps dishing each zappy
zodiac zones showering
all four with Infinity’s
zygotes zooming
Point Zero was Hero !
©GhairoDanielsPoetry
&Song2021
At sweet sixteen, I had a job at a supermarket
Worked after school until nine
my boyfriend worked at a competing grocery
at a quarter until nine he came over and sacked
to get me out of there sooner
People said "Joe, aren't you at the wrong store?"
This was a small town.
On weekends I babysat.
Back in the day we were paid $1.25 at the grocery store.
Babysitting paid a quarter an hour for six children.
I was not getting rich, but I was getting experience
and money for college.
I pity the refugee’s road of flight,
the children of the shanty and the gun
who on all humanity are a blight -
who die or live unto be an orphan.
I pity the meagre, the forgotten
who a crisis of ravages endure,
whose fate is that of the misbegotten
and whose need is now, real, grave, just, and raw!
I pity the terrorised, the wartorn,
the sacked and conquered that bury their dead -
the child bride, the child slave still to be born
and alas the lost soul already bred.
I pity the brave girl I used to know
and wonder dreadfully where did she go?
Written: August 2006
THREE STEPS
We’re getting close to when the bubble may burst
But hold on a moment, that is not even the worst
As now there’s no chance left of it being reversed
Do they know we are approaching a critical stage
Imminent grief no comforting words can assuage
One thought, one decision, one act
Tensions have been slowly building for some time
The melody’s off, that for so long’s been sublime
Discordant, and somehow the words don’t rhyme
Moving toward an outcome that nobody sought
With weak intentions that have come to naught
One fantasy, one possibility, one fact
It needed management with a strategic direction
Little tolerance for merely exposing imperfection
Intervention is critical and with timely correction
A scared team, with the fear seen on their faces
Ineffective, shuffling around and changing places
One ignored, one retired, one sacked
Beyond the wave-sacked pebbles
lie the pockmarked dunes,
sea-wind swept heaps,
burrowed by the claws of scaly thrashers.
Here they huddle, the working class,
flogging grim pleasures,
wolfing eggy sandwiches,
dipping tea-stained teeth into beakers
as a chill summer drizzles on.
I am a brine-spattered small fry,
a boyhood caught in a swirl
and flounder, bare feet
skimming the slimy kelp, stalking
an ankle tugging surf.
Mother, her demeanor
soggy and sagging at last,
pleads to be led back
to the creaking camper.
Father smokes a plug of leathery shag,
grunts upright, walks toward the sea,
looks to see God knows what,
then turns to drag me away,
from our holiday day.
Santa's aging computer had been hacked
So now his naughty and good list he lacked
He just didnt know
Which houses to go
His ire ended with his elves being sacked.
Written 20th December 2023.
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.