Warprayer Poems | Examples


List of Member Poems

Clockwork

The clock is ticking
The hands are turning
His heart is racing
His mind is hurting

Around the ground his eyes do pace
Cannot believe what he's about to face

Feeling weak
Legs are shaking
hands clasped tight
The prayer he's making

Checks his watch
14:06
Only four more minutes
Until the show begins

He grabs his cross, gun, the letter to his wife
To let her know
How much she's missed

A final prayer
A command to go
He jumps from the copter
Into the war zone

He fires his gun
His life at stake
For the few,  the proud 
The U.S.A

Purple Heart

Morning glowed, Phillip.
A purple fire burned beacon bright
against the stinging stench of napalm.

A thick thistle - two feet from your head,
wordless in speech, watched 
with dark misfortune
curving letters of prayer 
above your bleeding valor.

A crumpled martyr lying there,
innocent as a schoolboy
amidst the blare of gunfire -
asleep in our country’s eyes
dormant in the arms of an adopted comrade.

I held you - lost brother - tucked inside my soul;
nineteen and breathless.

The tears inside my empty lungs
spilled so softly onto your forehead
as I knelt in the center of August’s cancerous garden;
staring at the mud stained badge
nestled peacefully above your silenced heart.

I slowly ingested and tasted your
bullet-ridden honor, as I was viscerally blinded
by the sickening, piercing strobes
of a delicate mourning's
glow.

A Whore Called War

The bayonets glistened bright
Starshell lit the darkened night
Silent figures the colour chalk
Said a prayer before their walk

Nervous before the whistle blast
Slowest, quickest, who shall last
Dreams hang on barbed wire fences
Many a heart has built defences

Blood pumps through iced veins
A darkened soul alone remains
Thoughts of those that fell before
The tortured mind could not ignore

Over the top for King and Queen
Nought before had carnage seen
Cannot run as the mud it bites
Perfect night for the snipers sights

Young and old, names on tin
Victims both of histories sin
Who the bravest of them all
Last one standing, first to fall

Once a game played as child
Now a nightmare running wild
And daylight comes in full attire
Shell holes, craters, broken wire

For the dead that certain peace
For the living there's no release
Only the living of another day
Constant thought what fate will say

So many men die as they did before
Under the spell of a whore called war


Jaded Seraph

A-sharp bends backwards the strings of my broken lyre
I hurtle towards Earth
In swan-dive defiance of God
crashing through an ocean of prayer
as all Heaven watches, aghast

I breathe in the toxic fumes of the city
leaping from rooftop to rooftop
as naked creatures, bold and ugly
wander the streets stealing souls
like some demented carnival

I spurn the prayer palaces of the prud'homme
like the ear-piercings of an off-key choir
I keep counsel with the pain of men
guided to battlefields
where souls are spent foolishly

I hold them in my arms
and wear their blood, listening
as they search for meaning
with their last dying breath

Our Soldier's

Our Soldier’s

Our soldier’s fight a war that the world has forgotten  
Our soldier’s fight for the red, white and blue
Our soldier’s go without their families and the 
 Comforts of the everyday life 
For our protection and our freedom they stand guard in foreign lands
To hold proudly our flag and what it stands for
We forget what they have given up to serve our country
We; as their nation should never forget our soldiers
Our men of honor
Our soldiers who watch over us
We go about our daily life to busy to write a letter of thanks 
To busy to say a prayer for them
So to our men on guard
Our soldier’s; thank you!
Thank you for your courage and your strength
Thank you for not given up and holding strong
May each of you find the peace of knowing that we back home can sleep at night

Journey Into the Nightfire

You've got to get ready for your journey.
Men to the left woman to the right.
To bed early, sleep well my children.
Night had fallen, I was 12.
Only the darkness;
without love or mercy.
I heard a voice rising up,
woke them dragging them from their dreams.
"Fire I can see fire!"
Some dared answer him,
we must keep going.
We had never understood one another so clearly. 

Several thousand prisoners went through the gate,
never came back.
The look in his eyes as they stared into mine never left me,
I stood among the prayer congregation observing it like a stranger.
A world without God;
You who have betrayed whom You allowed to be tortured.
On the contrary I felt very strong
stronger than the Almighty.
Powerful yet at the same time so broken.
My eyes were open and I was alone,
I had ceased to be anything but ashes

a/n: this was a poem we had to write off of the book Night, about the genocide in Germany
of the Jews.


Remains

Here
In this centrifuge of sanctimony
Where I sip the atrophied air of my ancestors
The shipwrecked tide of my unborn children
Angels dangle from a precipice of silence
Strained by strings of a theoretical God
Sung by eyes of defiance
Which navigate the jagged epitaphs below
Searching
For that one sediment of salvation
That one moment of submission
Hoping he will see
His wonders, atrocities, his indifference
To cast a shadow of conviction
Over shivering light
There
Across the inlet where ivory columns crumbled
And modernity now deftly mumbles
Its fleets of fortune baptized
Nigh the bronze dust of golden millennia
Where history lies with its victims
A fugue of fossilized souls
A silent prayer remains
Here

Dear Father Up In Heaven Today

DEAR FATHER UP IN HEAVEN TODAY
> I BOW BEFORE THY THRONE,
> ON BEHALF OF ALL THE SOLDIERS
> THAT MIGHT NOT EVEN COME HOME.
> 
> MY HEART GRIEVES FOR THE FAMILIES
> OF A DAUGHTER OR A SON,
> THAT WAS SENT TO PROTECT OUR COUNTRY
> SOMETHING LORD HAS TO BE DONE,
> 
> THE SOLDIERS ARE GETTING KILLED THERE
> AS THEY JUST TRY TO KEEP THE PEACE,
> BUT EVIL MEN SURROUND THEM LORD
> WILL THIS BATTLE EVER CEASE.
> 
> PLEASE LORD GUIDE AND PROTECT THEM
> AS THEIR DUTY THEY PROUDLY DO,
> TO SAVE OUR NATIVE COUNTRY LORD
> AND TRY TO BRING PEACE THERE TO.
> 
> ITS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME LORD
> WITH THEIR FAMILIES AND THEIR FRIENDS,
> THE ENEMY,IS DESTROYING THEM,
> PLEASE LORD MAKE THIS END.
> 
> I SENT THEM A WRITTEN BOUQUET
> AND A PRAYER RIGHT FROM MY HEART,
> PLEASE LORD END THIS FIGHTING
> THAT WE WISH HAD NEVER STARTED,
> 
> WRITTEN BY ANN HART APRIL 16TH 2004
> IN HONOUR OF THE SOLDIERS,OVER IN IRAQ

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.

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