The Sum of Absolution
The wall of his cell was self imposed
from the moment of his entrance
to his untimely exit.
His sentence was executed
from the time of his birth
to his unexpected death.
He lived for a while
in this absurd existence
seeking absolution
for a crime he had not committed
Continually experiencing guilt
for sins uncommitted.
His hulking form meaning no more
than those diminutive
his crimes of thought no less
soluable
At the end of his experience
was a truncated pause
An imagined resolution
which produced no salvation.
poem by George Murdock
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Related quotes
Law and claw
Convicted of the crime that you committed,
You will absolve the guilt.
Convicted of the crime that you uncommitted,
You will curse the guilt.
Acquitted of the crime that you
uncommitted,
You will evict the guilt.
Acquitted of the crime that you committed,
You die of the guilt.
To escape from law
is to succumb to conscience’s claw.
29.12.2001, Palakkad
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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In the name of God
Atrocities committed when crusaders fought
Women, children murdered
Were Non believers of Antioch/Marat
Jerusalem sieged for a noble Cause
Saracens slaughtered, plundering by holy squad
History sometimes renders us distraught
All crimes committed in the name of God.
It's the Ideal everyone wants to reach
Closer to God is the sacred haught
The politics and economy is secretly sought
Are selling dreams, these fanatic bigots
Yet all crimes committed in the name of God
Shia against Sunnis or Deobandi, Barelvie
All worship same God, still at odd
Conspiring and scheming
Considers oneself a believer, but others NOT
Yet all crimes committed in the name of God
Slaughtering innocents, calling it Jihad
Ruthless are these savage lots
Salvation of afterlife seeking
Atonement for this one, never thought
Yet all crimes committed in the name of God.
poem by Samima Shah
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The Mechanism Of Life
He was a handsome soldier, respectful and rich,
And lived a charmed life, without a single glitch.,
But life is an endless labyrinth, with temptations at every turn,
Put a leash around your desires or let your insides churn
The soldier gave in and stepped into the abyss,
Someone was keeping a count of his sins, he knew not of this.
He set in motion the wheels of a concept of great antiquity,
A mechanism created by a superior entity.
He lived a great life, satisfying every urge,
And finally the skies opened its gate for him, as the mortals sang his dirge.
At the gates of heaven, he was told his sins were far too great,
So his dreams of living in heaven for now, had to wait
He was sent back stripped off his memories, new birth, new life,
To struggle as a tramp, No elation only strife.
Not in a position to do any good, he was forced to steal,
Not a roof above his head, no clothes not a single meal.
He starved to death and left the world unheard,
At the gates of heaven he was a wounded bird.
Sent back as an ant, because of the sins he had committed,
His undying love for emancipation, still unrequited.
Without purpose, without thought, trapped in a body so incapable,
He knew no difference between good and evil, the blankness in its head was inescapable.
It wandered aimlessly along with its clan,
To finally be crushed under the foot of a man.
Thus the poor soldier who once fought for his nation,
Suffered for eternity and never achieved salvation.
Every man makes a mistake and no one is here to stay,
Everybody gets punished, the mechanism is built that way.
It leaves a man to rot without a dime,
In a different life, unaware of his crime.
For what attaches a man to his life are his memories,
Without it, he learns nothing, lost are his past glories.
A few men tried to warn us, through words, a dictum,
About this absurd cycle that continues, ad infinitum.
poem by SaviorsLavish Human
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That's Death
There are bodies laying on the floor
Blood seeping from the room
Covering their wounds
But that’s death
A sound of consequence
Echoing through existence
Finding a deaf ear
But that’s death
People walk away to their lives
Leaving those behind
Forgetting us
But that’s death
We walk the crowded streets
Looking for our salvation
Never getting redemption
But that’s death
A sad existence of life
Once lived vibrantly
Forgotten the same
But that’s death
Twenty-Seven years lived strong
Fighting for what is right
Dying for what is true
But that’s death
poem by C.R. Ebowski
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Finding Life In Death
I spend so much time doting on earth and what it has,
Enjoying what's mine to use, to take, to squander.
I keep modeling myself to what I think will work,
But for my mistakes there is no remedy.
All my light, no matter how hard I shine,
Cannot overcome these stains of dark, of perversion, of guilt.
I look around and am without excuse, there is success, there is right,
But where does this over powering light, that is not subdued by death come from?
Nothing I have within me can overcome me,
Who is this intercessor that magnetically pulls me towards him?
This light, somehow familiar with death, a death, many deaths,
my death.
How is his death on my hands because of my death?
My death, my dying, my deeds deserving death...
For my death he died?
How redemption suddenly eclipses all other pursuits,
I switch from seeking sin to seeking salvation.
And it is found.
poem by Benjamin Feliciano
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The Great Gift Of Youth
The great gift of youth is a thing to enjoy
And the crimes of the man are not the crimes of the boy
That all children are innocent to all children apply
And why we lose our innocence don't ask me why?
That time changes us as people does seem sad to say
We lose our youthful innocence as we grow old and gray
And some even become more hardened with the passing of time
Lose respect for self and others and turn to crime.
Any crime against children cannot be seen as small
And the abuse of a child one of the greatest crimes of all
Any crime against a child a hard crime to forgive
Those who commit such crimes with their sins have to live.
It's praises the singers and Songwriters sing
For the great gift of youth is a marvellous thing
And sad to say some children at a young age have innocence stole
From them by damaged adults who lack in self control.
poem by Francis Duggan
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for John on his first frustration
let me draw you a house
with an entrance gate
leading to an entrance
door and some windows
to let in air.
just that, there will be no
exit doors, no exit gate,
all the windows open,
not designed to close,
that precisely is success
and failure.
there is a sense of
entrance triumphant
ditto an exit for some
ordinary and even
inevitable failures of
our lives.
the windows are some
of our other options, we
let in air to breathe
for a while. we must.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Love Is A Crime
Oooh Yeah
Chicago
If love is a crime baby
I'd do my time
Whether it's wrong or right
You can sentence me to life
If love is a crime baby
I'd do my time
Whether it's wrong or right
You can sentence me
Sentence me to life
Some might say I'm guilty of loving the first degree
If the jury wants to lock me up and throw away the key
There's no greater punishment than what I face inside
Won't tamper with the evidence cause there's nothing to hide
(He lives inside my heart)
(I'm in the middle too)
I'm in the middle too
(You never had a clue)
Unless you felt it too
(If love is a crime) baby
I'd do my time
(Whether it's wrong or right)
(You can) sentence me
Sentence me to life
(If love is a crime) baby
I'd do my time
(Whether it's wrong or right)
You can sentence me
Sentence me to life
Better tell the truth, just let me plead my case
The thief who stole my heart from me I couldn't let escape
He's my only alibi, but I won't drop a dime
So how can I give up to you, my partner in crime
(He lives inside) my heart
(I'm in the middle too)
Ooh yeah yeah
(You never had a clue)
Unless you felt it too
(If love is a crime) baby
I'd do my time
Whether it's wrong or right
You can sentence me
Sentence me to life
(If love is a crime) baby
I'd do my time
Whether it's wrong or right
You can sentence me
(Sentence me to life)
You can take away my freedom
But you can't take my love from me
I won't die a lonely prisoner
'Cause my heart will set me free
Oooh ooh yeah
Whooh!
Chicago
-acapo
song performed by by Anastacia
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Life-Giving Spark (Revised)
Creating meaning for ourselves is a sublime
experience, the young are instructed to believe
life is meaningful, yet cannot feel it that way,
we only learn through experience
If we don’t learn to create meaning we will
suffer senseless phenomena instead of life;
some exult in depressive sensationalism as
it is more exciting than unfounded optimism
Most prefer the pain of rebellion to resignation, yet
as long as we create our own meaning, those who
indulge in the macabre by seeking suffering in
depressing intrigues, cannot touch us
Since life seems meaningless a quest is needed
to make sense of existence; I learnt meaning was
not hanging around just waiting to be found but
existed only in feelings
Mixing life’s ingredients like ancient alchemists
produces results, adding our own passion as the
life-giving spark, attaching ideals to beautiful scenes;
I honour these visions in my dreams
Pay homage to origins by cherishing favourite
stories and authors, find new perspectives and
unexpected aspects in the same, well-known
material whenever I look again…
poem by Margaret Alice Second
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Death and Birth
Death leads to birth rather than birth, to death.
Birth is close to death and not vice versa.
Every birth is at the result of a death.
Death to birth, not birth to death, is the path.
The death of clay is the birth of a pot;
The death of the pot is the birth of clay.
Ice melts to water and water forms ice.
In each conversion, occur death and birth.
The death of a night is the birth of a day;
The death of a day is the birth of a night.
New Year means the death of the old year too.
In each transition, takes place death and birth.
The death of a seed is the birth of a plant;
The death of gametes is the birth of an embryo.
Salts die to form cells; cells die to form salts.
In each growth, form death and birth of matter.
The so called death and birth is nothing but
Deaths and births of forms made of matter.
The matter itself does not die to be born
But is converted to different forms.
Elements disappear to form plants.
Plants as food add to the animals’ flesh.
Plants and animals on death liberate
As elements, serving through worms and germs.
When a child is born, there’s no birth of life.
The embryo transforms into a child.
When a man dies, there is no death of life.
The body disintegrates to salts.
Matter, energy and life have no death
They have got one birth since when they’ve been.
They interact and come different stages
In which the pattern is death and birth.
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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Another Book Written By The Heavenly Author
I was intricately woven upon Your heavenly loom
as You carefully knit me together in my mothers womb.
In that most secret of places when my conception took place
You prepared me for my birth and entry into the human race.
Before the first moment of my earthly existence began
You had written in Your book my inmost being and life plan.
Each syllable penned with words in calligraphy composed.
There as each sentence was handwritten the paragraphs flowed.
From the first chapter of my birth to the last one of my death
each had been lovingly written before I'd taken a breath.
I praise You that I am fearfully and wonderfully made
the handiwork of my Great Creator is in me displayed.
My life is like a book that can be read by everyone
because it tells of Your Grace and the wonders Jesus has done.
For in Your mercy before the world was made and time began
You had included this poor child in Your great Salvation plan.
Choking
Like a quivering leaf climbing
unreachable thighs of a cloud
in naked shelter of sun.
I lament the fall
of a colossus
who would not live in a glass house.
Ash smeared on face
a name walks on the book
of barefoot poems.
Today I am going to morph
into a death sentence
for an uncommitted crime.
Who had lost himself
in unslept awakening
of a disaster?
poem by Satish Verma
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Imagined
Imagined the world described as heaven
Imagined the world all is even
Imagined everywhere without evil
Imagined the absence of soldier only civil
Imagined a quest between good nature existence
Imagined people, place and body with no cause for defence
Imagined air, love, soul and all virtues show their face
Imagined the extinction of all the different race
Imagined we always praise him who live above
Imagined nature ruffs all calm like pure dove
Imagined that you are not imagining
But all this is happening
poem by Kemurl Fofanah
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Death and I
When death comes
I’ll need not love –
Consumed,
No wreath or dove
Could offer me salvation,
Not when I’m no more.
A weathered stone will bear my name –
Identity of once a being
Living out existence in
A world of risk, and never seeing
Sense of why we’re here.
My genes will die away thro’ child –
Hue of eyes and hair, the way of thought,
Will quickly dim with generation –
Bow to future dominance –
Memories of provenance
Resigned to curious few.
When death comes
I’ll need not grace
Below; no grieving face
Will call my resurrection,
Not when I’m at ground –
Death and I so bound.
Copyright © Mark R Slaughter 2011
D eath Crawl
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poem by Mark R Slaughter
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Resurrection
speaking metaphysically...
if you've never carried a cross,
or wore a self-imposed crown of thorns,
you cannot experience resurrection!
the life we're trained from birth to live,
on a see-me, feed-me premise,
is a form of death,
aka, a type of hell!
in order to redeem ourselves,
to validate the experience of the human condition,
all that is body, the outer body,
the body that sucks and grinds,
has to die.
we have to let go of the concept
of freedom in order to be free.
the image has to be shattered,
in order to find the truth...
in the cold dark night of time,
we can either have fire,
or a picture of fire.
the picture is useless!
the cross - the picture!
the crown of thorns - our attachment.
.....death,
........rebirth!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Broken Whispers
Whispers, like echoes of a faint past, crowd around me
They bathe me with their memories, their impositions
Laying pathways of guilt and gossip across my soul
Speaking softly of sins and sorrows that are not mine
they drive my nightmares to the brink of exhaustion
and beyond into the calm, quiet void of sociopathy
When the time comes, the voices fade away into slumber
visions of oblivion are overlayed with laughter and hope
I live to serve the good of the many, to subsume the one
To enter into love more deeply than that of romance
To eschew affecting affairs of absolute attrition,
begging death and bragging of the broken coffins
It is time to go soon, to my graded addiction
waiting for the wrong things to happen at the wrong time
to talk to my salvation and absolve her inheritance
hoping, maybe, that in that fire lies my own absolution
poem by Poet Dragon
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Birth Right
From the moment of birth
I am made to realize of a special birth right
To let not death dethrone me of my existence
But my right to wear death as crown
To live as a king, eternally ruling a kingdom within
Without the fright of letting the right to slip away
Again and again,
To conquer mortality, is,
My birth right towards immortality.
(220507)
poem by cyclopseven Ram
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150 Years
One hundred fifty years for Madoff
are surely an untimely trade-off
for billions that he ripped off traders,
abetted by his trading aiders
like Ezra Merkin, for example,
whose clients used to love to sample
the high returns they would earn,
invested Ponzily by Bern,
whom they believed to be a wizard
before their money in a blizzard
blew away without a trace
in the Wall Street marketplace.
Measuring his measured time,
those who’ve suffered from his crime
will find that such revenge is not
as sweet as they might hope. No knot
is tied around his neck, though they
might hope there would be one. Each day
that he survives they feel the pain
of loss from their aborted gain,
but money won’t come back again
despite their punitive disdain,
so prison has to be the trade-off
for fortunes they all lost to Madoff.
Lock him up and throw away
the key, vindictive people say,
as if the freedom they deprive
him of will help them to survive,
though barring of the prison gate
will in no way redeem their fate.
Serving at the haughty pleasure
of a judge is no fair measure
for measure. Custody vendettas
transform the judges to abettors
of the worst hubristic crime:
purloining, like death’s angel, time,
so prisoners are forced to dwell
outside the real world, in a cell.
Life sentences that judges give
are proof that they’ve failed to forgive
the trespasses of other men
as God will ours, we hope. Amen.
Inspired by the Judge Denny Chin’s sentence of Bernie Madoff to 150 years for having committed what was perhaps the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Judge Chin, a Princeton graduate who was born in Hong Kong, and appointed to the bench by President Clinton, says that he received a hundred letters recommending that Madoff be severely punished, and not a single letter arguing for clemency. Such unanimity invalidates a capital case, according to Jewish law, where a death sentence may not be fulfilled unless some judges dissent with the verdict.
While I wrote this poem, my genius granddaughter Ada, who is considered to be less a genius than her sister Eve, presumably because she is a poet and the world despises poets, wrote her first poem, which she called “Heart and Flowerbed”.
6/30/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Tension Makes A Tangle
[ music: john lombardo/lyric: natalie merchant ]
As frail hinges
Pivot on a cases door
Commemorative
Souvenirs from places
Containers change
With each occasion
A cellophane encased
Display of paper
Certificate
To credit years of service
A tool of central enterprises
The early hope
For permanence
The words
The rings
Consistency
The social security
A miracle is high tragedy
Thought mistaken
For a memory
Clear the dust from
Smiles in boxes
Pass a patterned wall
Recall their voices
A local post
Will list your friends
In order of
Disappearance
The lawn scattered
Tins feed birds
A portion baked for
Absent guests
And the mass edition icon
God sent comfort
Your salvation
But who grants absolution
For sins that
Never were committed
Tension makes a tangle
Of each thought
Becomes an inconvenience
Sound as it never penetrates
As servile edges
Break and
Feint
Thought mistaken
For a memory
A dress length
Assassination
A fractured family tie
Another christening
Christening
Christening
Christening
song performed by by 10000 Maniacs
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Confessing Sins
when guilt is full
there comes a time when we think of
the possibility of confessing our sins,
the usual sins of omissions
more than our sins of commissions,
to a friend perhaps, but you doubt
for he has more sins than you have
and it might as well end
on the reverse, you the listening tree
and he the barking dog,
or perhaps to a religious group but
you shy away because of their number
and you might as well at the end be the
subject of their gossip
in town for a week or so,
and so you become a catholic again
on a Sunday before your parish priest
you kneel down and confess your sins,
and your dismay the priest says,
'
my son these are not sins anymore
under the new doctrines
with an ending, don't worry my boy
you'll do penance just the same
say three our fathers and three hail Mary's
and don't come back
your sins are the same as mine'
what comfort is this, when sins are confessed
to a person on the same misery and guilt as we are.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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