Sonnet: God’s Grief’s Greater?
How much of sadness fills the hearts of those,
Parents who lost their only child one day?
How much of despair, mother feels, of course,
Seating her only son, dead on the way?
How much grief-stricken do our siblings live,
Seeing their dear ones dead before their eyes?
How can a child on earth remain alive,
When AIDS-affected, widowed, mother dies?
What grief engulfs the hearts of women all,
Who find the babe from womb is born but dead?
How sad God feels when into sin we fall;
And sadder still when to hell, we’re misled.
The Mirth God feels is more when souls return;
His grief’s ’yond compare when in Hell, they burn.
6-26-2001
poem by John Celes

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Forever Starts at the End (A Sonnet)
Eternal life will start in my late last.
But who knows death began ere I was born?
A christian needs to die, as it's a must,
Before he could have seen the coming morn.
The day I went out from my mother's womb,
Is just as my death anniversary.
A dead child risen from a woman's tomb,
And breathing dust that lives for vanity.
I'm now alive but died with Him; and then,
Will die to live a life, and will not die
Again of death that doubled-killed the men
Born dead, although, alive, yet passers-by...
The residents of deathless fire where dwell
Those who died dead to die a death in Hell.
poem by Ray Remalig

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Easter Day, II
So in the sinful streets, abstracted and alone,
I with my secret self held communing of mine own.
So in the southern city spake the tongue
Of one that somewhat overwildly sung,
But in a later hour I sat and heard
Another voice that spake another graver word.
Weep not, it bade, whatever hath been said,
Though He be dead, He is not dead.
In the true creed
He is yet risen indeed;
Christ is yet risen.
Weep not beside His tomb,
Ye women unto whom
He was great comfort and yet greater grief;
Nor ye, ye faithful few that wont with Him to roam,
Seek sadly what for Him ye left, go hopeless to your home;
Nor ye despair, ye sharers yet to be of their belief;
Though He be dead, He is not dead,
Nor gone, though fled,
Not lost, though vanished;
Though He return not, though
He lies and moulders low;
In the true creed
He is yet risen indeed;
Christ is yet risen.
Sit if ye will, sit down upon the ground,
Yet not to weep and wail, but calmly look around.
Whate’er befel,
Earth is not hell;
Now, too, as when it first began,
Life is yet life, and man is man.
For all that breathe beneath the heaven’s high cope,
Joy with grief mixes, with despondence hope.
Hope conquers cowardice, joy grief;
Or at least, faith unbelief.
Though dead, not dead;
Not gone, though fled;
Not lost, though vanished.
In the great gospel and true creed,
He is yet risen indeed;
Christ is yet risen.
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough

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I Know This Poor Bloke
I know this poor bloke in the mood for suicide
And he has felt heavy hearted since the day his wife died
Some five years ago his ache of loss from him not gone
And till the day of his death his grief with him will live on.
I do meet him often though not every day
And for words to him I always feel stuck to say
He always talks of his dead wife and the grief that he feel
And for him I feel sorry since his sorrow is real.
On his sense of loss with him I sympathize
And each time I see him he has tears in his eyes
My condolences to him I already did pay
But the grief that he feels it is with him to stay.
The price of true love it can come at a great cost
And he is left to mourn for what he has lost
One in his late sixties his hair silvery gray
And the clock on his life it is ticking away.
A man due to grief in the mood for suicide
Though he is one now I would rather avoid
Since each time I meet him he talks of his dead wife
And I am one who needs laughter in my life.
poem by Francis Duggan

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Wear my Skin
You want to know how it feels
Being hollowed out
Apple cored, centre lost?
You want to know how it feels
Leaking salt water
Filling oceans with tears?
You want to know how it feels
To hear your heart break
And catch the pieces in your hand?
You want to know how it feels
To have your soul rent;
Half in a grave, half out?
You want to know how it feels
To lose your gentle lover;
Your own sweet man?
You want to know how it feels
When your grief is not valid
In the eyes of the world?
You want to know how it feels?
You have to wear my skin;
But I doubt it would fit.
P H Brookes © 1997
poem by Paul Brookes

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A spouse is a partner
A parent dead, one feels one’s root is cut.
A child dead, one feels one’s shoot is cut.
In one’s spouse’s death, a support is lost.
One’s spouse is one’s partner, not one’s part.
18.08.2010
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar

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The Conversation of Prayer
The conversation of prayers about to be said
By the child going to bed and the man on the stairs
Who climbs to his dying love in her high room,
The one not caring to whom in his sleep he will move
And the other full of tears that she will be dead,
Turns in the dark on the sound they know will arise
Into the answering skies from the green ground,
From the man on the stairs and the child by his bed.
The sound about to be said in the two prayers
For the sleep in a safe land and the love who dies
Will be the same grief flying. Whom shall they calm?
Shall the child sleep unharmed or the man be crying?
The conversation of prayers about to be said
Turns on the quick and the dead, and the man on the stair
To-night shall find no dying but alive and warm
In the fire of his care his love in the high room.
And the child not caring to whom he climbs his prayer
Shall drown in a grief as deep as his made grave,
And mark the dark eyed wave, through the eyes of sleep,
Dragging him up the stairs to one who lies dead.
poem by Dylan Thomas

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Dead Prayers
hearts trek
feet travel to the road
leading to unknown tombs
forgotten by the winding clocks
never remembered by the heart
and troubled souls
reach the unpainted walls
of a moss decorated crypt
and the dead souls
shouts dead prayers
only the dead can understand
what are halloween prayers anyway?
for uncaring bones
became stout by the earth
addicted by the rain of forgetfullness
and drugged by dreams gone wild
of wisdom lost
in a maze of unknown heavens
in a hell never found..
yet it is Halloween
so hearts still murmur
souls still recite
dead prayers for all
dead souls
encaged on dead tombs
poem by Villiamor Calventas

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A Mother Does Not
A mother does not raise her child for to fight and die in war
Or to kill another Human Being in a Country from home far
That her son or her daughter should at someone else shoot to kill
A person they have never known or who have never bore them ill.
Picasso's 'Screaming Woman' is for all woman kind
The mother weeps for her dead child with grief 'out of her mind'
Mothers do not raise their children for to be remembered on War Memorial Day
For to fight in war for war mongering non combatants and throw their lives away
A mother raises her son or daughter so her seed of life will live on
That her genes will still be around when she herself has gone
From the World of the living to be numbered amongst the dead
I wish for my children to outlive me that's what the mother said.
A mother does not raise her child for to meet with an early death
Not for her War Memorial Day or the words 'Lest we forget'
She wants her son and daughter for to grow old and gray
And she does not wish to hear of War and War Memorial Day.
poem by Francis Duggan

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Lamentations of an Abortus
God knew me ev’n before I was conceived;
He blessed me to be formed wholesome in womb;
He had great ideas for me to do;
I was so eager therefore, to be born.
Just when I was all set to be born live,
I knocked the womb’s door. My mom did not heed;
I knocked for long and pleaded to be born;
How I wished to make my parents happy!
I longed to see my daddy and my mom;
I yearned to be fondled and kissed by them;
I loved to show the baby doll, I was;
My dreams were shattered: I was aborted!
Oh, mother dear, what folly had I done?
Did I ask God to be born as your son?
Was I not life like daddy and my mom?
I had been murdered for no crime of mine.
The love of God which formed me must be shocked;
How foolish men and women try to be;
They do not hesitate to kill their own;
How mean to kill the baby that’s unborn!
Forgive my mother’s mortal sin, O God!
For, if you don’t, she’s bound to land in hell;
Forgive my father’s iniquities, Lord;
Forgive them both; I wish they will REPENT.
O God, I pray to meet them in Heaven;
Shower your mercy on them both, O Lord;
Forgive them for their heinous crime and sin;
Control your wrath and forgive mom and dad.
This is my prayer to you Lord, O God;
This is my final wish for now, I’m dead;
Please spare my parents from your stern just rod;
Dear God, by devils, they were both misled!
Copyright by Dr John Celes 3-16-2008
poem by John Celes

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May Mother Be...
May mother be felt like a love garden
My mother feels me just like fragile flowers
May mother be just like a huge sky
My mother keeps me a star in the sky
May mother be just like a love stove
My mother feels me just innocent smoke
May mother be just like a imaginary picture
My mother feels me a coloured picture
I might be cloud to my mother
My mother feels me just like a rain drop! !
Sonnet: A Bard’s Constitution
My hands tremble when sinful thoughts appear;
My body’s bathed in sweat when act’s over;
What guilt, remorse fills my heart, Oh dear!
My soul is in penitential fever.
My heart is grief-stricken when things go wrong,
And anger fills my mind when world’s at fault;
I feel like cursing men/ women for long;
If given chance, how well they somersault!
A sensitized heart/ mind are found in bards;
The world in which they live, has gone crazy;
Their emotions keep jumping like leopards;
Their life is most often misty/ hazy.
Whatever feels their heart, must become words,
To drive into the heads of human herds!
6-25-2001
poem by John Celes

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Sadness and grief
Sadness and grief are not like horror, fear,
They are much lighter, don't press to ground,
Sadness and grief - are the necessary feelings
To live on earth, without any doubt.
When you are born, you can't avoid the grief,
If you lose the essential in life,
And sadness follows you for years,
Trying to tie you to the moments of light,
Where there was no grief and sadness...
That moments - are the miraculous creatures
Of the Reality and of the Mind...
And all in them - are closely united,
And at the same time distant and untied...
--
In russian:
http: //www.stihi.ru/2012/02/11/10141
poem by Lyudmila Purgina

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Sonnet Of Motherhood XLV
Dearest, your mother feels (though dead) this birth—
Laughs at the fire within your shining eyes—
Your eyes, yet mine, wherein such glory lies
Never before beheld upon the earth.
She scents the fragrance of the lily-mirth
Lilting this body that I drew all-wise
Out of your own, so hers, and with low sighs,
Mellowed in mine to what a wondrous worth.
Kiss me. Kiss her. The miracle is wrought—
The simple beauty out of simple love—
Mother and father, child and God—all One—
Eternal trinity for ever sought.
O, blessed from her quiet place above,
Your mother kisses us—a life’s work done.
poem by Zora Bernice May Cross

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All Dead, All Dead
Memories, my memories
How long can you stay
To haunt my days
She came without a farthing
A babe without a name
So much ado about nothing
Is what shed try to say
So much ado my lover
So many games we played
Through every fleeted summer
Through every precious day
All dead all dead
All the dreams we had
And I wonder why I still live on
All dead all dead
And alone Im spared
My sweeter half instead
All dead
And gone
All dead...
All dead all dead
At the rainbows end
And still I hear her own sweet song
All dead all dead
Take me back again
You know my little friends
All dead
And gone
All dead and gone
Her ways are always with me
I wander all the while
But please you must forgive me
I am old but still a child
All dead all dead
But I should not grieve
In time it comes to everyone
All dead all dead
But in hope I breathe
Of course I dont believe
Youre dead
And gone
All dead
And gone
song performed by by Queen

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Jamie's Puzzle
There was grief within our household
Because of a vacant chair.
Our mother, so loved and precious,
No longer was sitting there.
Our hearts grew heavy with sorrow,
Our eyes with tears were blind,
And little Jamie was wondering,
Why we were left behind.
We had told our little darling,
Of the land of love and light,
Of the saints all crowned with glory,
And enrobed in spotless white.
We said that our precious mother,
Had gone to that land so fair,
To dwell with beautiful angels,
And to be forever there.
But the child was sorely puzzled,
Why dear grandmamma should go
To dwell in a stranger city,
When her children loved her so.
But again the mystic angel
Came with swift and silent tread,
And our sister, Jamie's mother,
Was enrolled among the dead.
To us the mystery deepened,
To Jamie it seemed more clear;
Grandma, he said, must be lonesome,
And mamma has gone to her.
But the question lies unanswered
In our little Jamie's mind,
Why she should go to our mother,
And leave her children behind;
To dwell in that lovely city,
From all that was dear to part,
From children who loved to nestle
So closely around her heart.
Dear child, like you, we are puzzled,
With problems that still remain;
But think in the great hereafter
Their meaning will all be plain.
poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

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A Mother
A mother shows the child the world
A mother is its world when small
A mother shows the child what's love
A mother loves her child like a doll!
A mother makes the home and bed
A mother cares for all at home
A mother trains the child to walk
And stand on own, perfectly talk.
A mother is the teacher prime
A mother moulds the character
A mother shows the child to pray
And trust the unseen God all life.
A mother is the child's best friend
A mother knows its needs and wants
A mother cares for child when sick
And feels so proud, when child achieves.
Children, thank God for a good mother
On ‘Mother's day! '
Copyright by Dr John Celes 13-05-12
poem by John Celes

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The Cemetery of Hearts
It was a Cemetery of Hearts
laid out in neat rectangular squares
tombstone engravings of individual stories;
of loves lost and betrayed,
tear-ravaged love trysts.
love cuts, severed
or grief-laden,
all buried in Innocent's Ground
from whence they came.
I peered at the writing on first tombstone and then some others:
'He led me on and then made love to my mother
all this to me unknown.' one said
'I died in childbirth alone after having been exiled
from my home to a nunnery.'
'She plotted against me with my best friend.'
'She told me the baby was mine.'
'I died of grief in a sex war and of an affection-less marriage.'
My love and I were shot lying together.'
One said:
'Dead hearts murdered by rage or fear are the worst;
these hearts die gnarled and alone.'
The caretaker addressed me:
'What are you doing here? ' he said.
'I came to bury my heart with the rest of them.' I said.
'Really he said. Let me have a look.
This heart, ' he said is not really dead.
'I can't bury a heart that is yet alive.
that would be murder and wrong;
away with you.
You are premature. Go. Take this heart
and feed it, make it live again.'
I was shocked. To me this rejection was
yet another heart-ache to endure.
'My heart is not dead enough? ' I said.
'That's right, ' he said, yours is merely slightly used
and a little bruised but not dead.'
'
This cemetery is Innocent Ground,
a healing place for deceased hearts,
not ones merely tired and bruised.'
'Go back out there, take some courage from this dream.
The sores on your heart will heal
and be stronger then
for someone else you'll meet.
'You are stronger than you think.
We are really short of space here
we take only the really bad heart cases.'
'Go he said
dive right back in.'
He was right.
'And, ' he said
'Never underestimate the human heart;
it is the human brain that most times
that's wrong and prematurely deceased.'
poem by Lonnie Hicks

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A Hymn For Christmas Morning
IT is the Christmas time:
And up and down 'twixt heaven and earth,
In glorious grief and solemn mirth,
The shining angels climb.
And unto everything
That lives and moves, for heaven, on earth,
With equal share of grief and mirth,
The shining angels sing:--
'Babes new-born, undefiled,
In lowly hut, or mansion wide--
Sleep safely through this Christmas-tide
When Jesus was a child.
'O young men, bold and free,
In peopled town, or desert grim,
When ye are tempted like to Him,
'The man Christ Jesus' see.
'Poor mothers, with your hoard
Of endless love and countless pain--
Remember all her grief, her gain,
The Mother of the Lord.
'Mourners, half blind with woe,
Look up! One standeth in this place,
And by the pity of His face
The Man of Sorrows know.
'Wanderers in far countrie,
O think of Him, who came, forgot,
To His own, and they received Him not--
Jesus of Galilee.
'O all ye who have trod
The wine-press of affliction, lay
Your hearts before His heart this day--
Behold the Christ of God!'
poem by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

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Winter Poem
Tonight the wind gnaws with teeth of glass
The jackdaw shivers in caged branches of iron
The stars have talons
There is hunger in the mouth of vole and badger
Silver agonies of breath in the nostril of the fox
Ice on the rabbit’s paw
Tonight has no moon, no food for the pilgrim
The fruit tree is bare, the rose bush a thorn
And the ground is bitter with stones
But the mole sleeps and the hedgehog lies curled in a womb of leaves
And the bean and the wheat seed hug their germs in the earth
And a stream moves under the ice
Tonight there is no moon
But a star opens like a trumpet over the dead
And tonight in a nest of ruins the blessed babe is laid
And the fir tree warms to a bloom of candles
And the child lights his lantern and stares at his tinsel toy
And our hearts and hearths smoulder with live ashes
In the blood of our grief the cold earth is suckled
In our agony the womb convulses its seed
And in the last cry of anguish
The child’s first breath is born
poem by Laurie Lee

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The Tears of Masho
She gave her child away
She had AIDS, they say
Her children should have
Parents to care of them
when she by death
should say goodbye to life.
And her dear own child was
sent to adoption
to a far away land, to a land
she had never been before-
A strange paradise
for her child and which
She as mother could not reach
by her bare feet or sandals.
She did not get the
address of the new parents
She could not write
them in her own tongue
She was not even allowed
to see the last glimpse
of her dear own child,
to give her last embrace
and words of goodbye.
And this child, Masho, who
used to be cuddled by her
own dear mother,
cried day and night
in the new land thought to
be a new paradise.
She watered her pillow
with her own tears and longing.
And she could not understand
why she had to leave her
own mother and playmates
in her own village far away
just because her mother
is condemned to die
by AIDS, they say.
_________
Response to the debate of adoption of children in Denmark, to a particular case of the Ethiopian child, Masho. November 27,2012
poem by Elizabeth Padillo Olesen

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