Half-life: a prophecy
They died; they all died, without a moan;
their final passage writ in stone.
Dark shadows here and there you see
where Jews passed to eternity.
In these silent streets no children play
No trees survived the heat that day.
A suicide martyr some call a hero
was detonated at ground zero.
Nine hundred thousand are believed lost
in this second, instant, holocaust.
The suitcase he held in his hand
was the latest weapon from Iran.
My team has come here to retrieve
the evidence from Tel Aviv.
No one will be living here
Not for another fifty years.
• * * * * *
A damsel with a dosimeter,
in a vision I once saw,
warned me that appeasement
nearly always leads to war.
poem by John F. McCullagh
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Related quotes
The Final Old Hero
The final old hero has faded away
His bones even beyond the state of decay
He gave rise to many a patriotic song
But to Mother Nature he finally belong.
He was a great King in a Land from here far
And he was one who led his army in war
He died a true hero on the battle-ground
And stories about him in folklore abound.
No heroes amongst the war leaders of today
From the heat of the battle they stay far away
The children of others for them fight and die
And the rewards of renown and wealth they enjoy.
I see them as manipulative deceitful and sly
Yet that the majority cannot see through them I do wonder why
For what they truly are many them cannot see
And the hero to many is a coward to me.
Though his legend inspired the bards for to rhyme
The final old hero almost forgotten in time
He led his men in war and in battle he died
And true greatness of him never can be denied.
poem by Francis Duggan
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A Valentine in Pain
A dream of hidden death,
Embedded in her flowers –
Dripping; drenched in nectar tears
Now the dream of dying soul;
Confined, a trembling heart is
Squeezing out the ember years
And in her dream of youth,
Abounding buttocks writhe,
Acting out the careless dares
But the dream of hideous beauty:
Self-delusion, begging fears
Evolving from an agonising birth, her
Blacker days eclipsing; draining worth
‘So ugly living calls to die –
Forever in the dreams I cry! ’
Erotic debt; a laughing lie
Were done for her –
A blade for sure!
The dreams to cure!
A calming sigh…
And in a smile of pain
She bled and waned
Her cold pathetic bye
Copyright © Mark R Slaughter 2010
Suicide Suicide Suicide cried
Suicide Suicide Suicide died
Suicide Suicide Suicide sighed
Suicide Suicide Suicide lied
Suicide Suicide Suicide cried
Suicide Suicide Suicide died
Suicide Suicide Suicide sighed
Suicide Suicide Suicide lied
Suicide Suicide Suicide cried
Suicide Suicide Suicide died
Suicide Suicide Suicide sighed
Suicide Suicide Suicide lied
Suicide Suicide Suicide cried
Suicide Suicide Suicide died
Suicide Suicide Suicide sighed
Suicide Suicide Suicide lied
Suicide Suicide Suicide tried
Suicide Suicide Suicide ride!
poem by Mark R Slaughter
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~You're Dead Because Of Me~
At times it may seem
That living life is to hard,
Mybody cries and screams
And my trust has been scarred
I'm sick of living but what else can I do
Perhaps suicide?
Everything would be better if I died
But what if I died where would I go?
Would I finally see you?
After all these years,
Through all my tears,
Would I finally be with you?
I saw you going under, I saw your hand,
I saw you reach for me, but I didnt understand
I didnt understand, but now I do,
You were reaching for me,
To help you onto safety,
At the time i didn't see,
And now you're gone, because I didn't help you,
You're dead because of what I didn't do
It's because of me,
That you died,
Because of me that you commited suicide,
ALL MY FAULT! ! ! ! ! ! !
poem by Cara Green
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Shaving cream
Shaving Cream
On the day that yet another car bomb exploded
in Baghdad, I forgot to buy shaving cream and
had to go back to the shop, there is weariness
about bad news from Iraq. I also forgot to buy
a litre of milk and a goat cheese.
Four thousand US troops killed, which, after
five years of war, as an amazing small number;
but then, this is a war where civilians get to do
the dying.Six hundred thousand or near a million
dead, no one knows or cares, but it might end up
as being as great a crime as the holocaust:
Was it five or six million Jews who perished?
This is a number that concerns deniers greatly,
who are of the opinion that only about 2oo Jews
died, regrettably of typhus, on a train journey
between Poland and Russia.
What we do know, is that the holocaust was
worst criminal act known to man; it is therefore
an eternal shame that Israel uses this tragedy to
silence us when they continue to unlawfully take
more of Palestinian land
It is much easier to take up Tibet’s cause, isn’t
strange that the riots it happens know as
the Olympic in Beijing looms? Forget Iraq and
the Gaza strip, where our hands are bloodied;
this new cause will make us feel morally superior
poem by Jan Oskar Hansen
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The Dying Ex Football Champion
Around his bed his friends and family but of them he's not aware
His life's journey about to end old Joe the ex footballer player
On his back his eyes closed to his surroundings the life from him ebbing away
Last month he celebrated his eightieth birthday and today his life's final day.
Pre-deceased by his wife Mel she died five years ago
The last two years of his life's journey for him painful and slow
Most of those he played with and against in his football years to the Reaper long gone
But like the battler that he is to the end he's battling on.
Fifty five years ago the Captain of the great Premiership team
By football fans from near and far he was held in high esteem
But time takes care of everyone and everyone means all
And time has also taken toll of the champion of football.
Around his bed his friends and family a silent vigil keep
The end of his life's journey no more than an hour away he is in his final sleep
'Tis a fact those who love life do find it hard to die
But 'tis also a fact that all human beings are mortals and facts do never lie.
poem by Francis Duggan
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The Woman Five Doors Down
The woman five doors down tells me her son Ted is the best player in the school football team
And that one day he will play in an A.F.L. Grand Final and that more than once of late she's had this dream
Of watching him receive the Coleman medal for best on ground on football's biggest day
Watched by well over ninety thousand people who cheer him on with a loud hip hooray.
But locals who know of football and watched Ted play say he will never play at the top grade
That he won't go down Swanston Street in the back of a lorry
to loud applause in the Grand Final Parade
They say his mother greatly over rates him and that in his team he's just an average player
And that not one in his club will play A.F.L. football with good under age players they do not compare
Ted's mother believes her son will be a football hero and she seemed so convinced that she convinced me
But others who have seen him play say different and with her opinions they do not agree
They say that she will end up disappointed that her dreams for her son will not come true
That he won't make a career out of football another line of work he must pursue.
The woman five doors down tells me her son Ted will one day play in the famed M.C.G.
And be the hero of a great Grand Final in a game that will go down in history
And though others seem to think that she's only dreaming I hope her son will be a football great
And that she will applaud him in the Grand Final and the football fans his name will celebrate.
poem by Francis Duggan
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The World Was Silent Then
THE WORLD WAS SILENT THEN
The world was silent then-
Six million Jews among them more than one- and one- half million children murdered by the Nazis and their helpers-
And now when from one end of the world to another
One hears ‘The Jews are cancer’ and ‘We will wipe out the microbe Israel’ and ‘Every one of the Zionist dogs must be shot’
And when Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah and Kardawi and Imam this and Imam that scream for the blood of every Jew in Israel-
It is business as usual at the U.N.
And more North Koreans missiles in Iran
And Russian uranium at Bushehr
And Chinese technical help for the Revolutionary Islamic regime
And cowardice from the West,
And mild mild mild protest from an occasional leader here or there-
The world is largely silent again
The Jews are a small small people and Israel is twenty-thousand kilometers all in all-
And after all who has the oil and one eighth of the earth and more than fifty nations and with them too the most progressive of the most enlightened of the most extreme Left?
‘So why not let it be done
Another few million Jews gone
What difference does it make anyway?
They’re troublemakers aren’t they? ’
The world is largely silent again
And we can we our friends contend with them all
And overcome?
Pray pray for Israel good people wherever you are
We are in a long struggle to survive
And it is not going to be easy.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Narrative of Death
As the patriot rounds the corner he sees a man, and there lies a sturdy rusted object in the gentleman’s hand. The man stabs the heroin in the back, object held in his fist. The hero’s body starts to relax, unable to resist. As the martyr’s blood flows over the unsheathed blade, the murderer lets out a laugh. The man in a puddle, a victim of raid, pleaded with a gasp, Please sir don’t kill me I have a wife! I have two sons and a daughter. Please, I do want my sad life, I wish not be a prey of your slaughter.
There in a puddle they found him the next day, the knife in his back and the blood in his face. The world never noticed the crime happened to pass. He could have died calmly, died in the grass, but he died horribly died gory as the original mass. His family did mourn for he died for no cause. He was murdered in coldness, and it was all for his loss.
poem by Axiom Wheeler
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The Day Old Shep Died
it's been thirty years,
that he's been gone,
the day he died, brought tears,
all day, i played his song.
for nine long years,
i loved him and he loved me,
the day he died, broght tears,
toward the end, he could barely see.
when he died, i was seventeen years,
my child hood died that day,
the day he died, brought tears,
during his youth, we were always at play.
him and i was, so close in years,
when i got shep he was five and i eight,
the day he died brought tears,
he always ate his meals, off our plate.
he died at eighty-four in human years,
he lived to a ripe old age,
the day he died brought tears,
for this poem, he set the stage.
i can't believe, its been so many years,
i think about him, all the time,
the day he died, brought tears,
but old shep, was all mind.
of all these many years,
no dog has taken the place of old shep,
the day he died, brought tears,
i'll always remember, that dog with pep
in memory of old shep 1946-1960 written june 21,1990
Lady Of The Lake
Today I talked
to the old lady
who lives across the way
she said she died
a hundred years ago today
She told me
of the time she saw me
fishing in the lake
I had to laugh
I said
if You've been dead
for a hundred years
it couldn't have been me
you saw fishing in the lake
I'm not even fifty yet
She said
have you ever seen me
walk out of this garden
or talk to anybody else
I said
you've got me there
but like I said
if you died a hundred
years ago today
it couldn't have been me
you saw fishing in the lake
She said
a hundred years ago today
you drowned trying to save me
now it's time to except
that you are dead
poem by Dave Alan Walker
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Dublin
The children play in the streets, they say
The children play in the streets
While the ships dock fast in Dublin Bay,
The children play in the streets.
Och aye, the blarney blunderbuss,
He's corked, and who's to blame?
'Tain't that his wee son with a pint,
Too soon to walk the same?
Across Ha'penny Bridge his Molly
Bends to scratch for coal,
And one last fire to celebrate:
Today she quits the dole.
But what of Barry? What of Shane?
Who'll give the tykes their bread,
With Pap in one dyke stone-cold drunk,
In the other Mam stone-cold dead?
The children play in the streets, they say
The children play in the streets
While the ships dock fast in Dublin Bay,
The children play in the streets.
The Day I Died
The air was close, but it would not rain
The day I died.
And smog enshrouded Gotham town
The day I died..
I should have stayed in Oceanside
The day I died.
Instead of a hellish subway ride
The day I died.
It started with a stabbing pain
The day I died.
Then waves of nausea deep inside
The day I died.
I fell to earth, I could not breathe
The day I died.
Co workers rushing to my side
The day I died.
Sirens scream on distant streets
The day I died.
bringing hosts of E.M.T.’s
The day I died..
Too late for me, this proud heart fails
The day I died.
I thought” This is the last of Earth”
The day I died.
poem by John F. McCullagh
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One Hundred Thousand Marching
One hundred thousand marching
One hundred thousand men
One hundred thousand heading
To a place and a time when
One hundred thousand dying
One hundred thousand cold
One hundred thousand praying
Forever young and never old
One hundred thousand lives were lost
One hundred thousand felt the pain
One hundred thousand maimed and slaughtered
And yet those armies march again.
poem by David Keig
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In a Greek Amphitheatre: George Seferis, poet
Noon here in hot summer in this quarter-sphere of stepped stone;
the smell of herbs rolling down from the mountainside,
the light so strong that it seems to have bleached away all thought;
time is taking a siesta.
come sit with me here in this almost deserted amphitheatre
which has stood for more than two thousand years,
only the bees are quietly moving,
searching the flowers which grow between these huge blocks of stone
which someone quarried, someone brought here,
someone acted out the world upon, some many sat
and were moved to fear and tears;
someone ate olives, spat the pits between the blocks of stone;
now an olive tree bears witness,
its bleached roots like an arthritic climber,
splitting the stone blocks with the insistence of history.
‘Memory, wherever you touch it,
hurts’…
merciful gods might have removed these stones
with two thousand years of rain, of wind, of searing sun,
so that the insistence of history might not be
so painful to a Greek.
The only other figure in this huge amphitheatre -
you see him down there? In the white hat
and dark suit of summer cloth? He’s a poet;
but is his mind too, sitting in the audience? Or is he
on the stage? Is he
living the play; the hero with a tragic flaw,
the chorus commenting, the tragedy unfolding?
In Greek, the same word means martyr
and means witness.
He was born a Greek in a Greek colony;
at 22, the Turks flung them out;
he sailed in wine-dark seas of wars and occupations;
and when the sailor sailed into the port to take his place in his immortal court,
found Greece, not celebrating peace, but Greek fighting Greek;
the cruellest of wars.
It was not Odysseus but Greece itself
that wandering, had not yet come home;
the harbours boatless; silent the shepherd's flute;
the olive groves untended; hives deserted;
grapes that never tasted wine; figs that burst uneaten;
Olympia's grass, all silent and untrodden;
temples empty, marble columns
their cool beauty empty-armed without their worshippers.
Here at noon, the summer heat pressing and intense,
the air still, a bee passing across our laps
as we sit here on the higher tier;
a dark-suited poet, witness, martyr,
like an olive tree between hard stone,
suffers the playing out, the painful beauty
like a dark thought at noon,
the insistence of history.
‘Memory, wherever
you touch it, hurts.’
poem by Michael Shepherd
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I was not born because you died
I was not born because you died
And I'm not the dawn
because you wanted to be the twilight
And I'm not a stone statue
You keep circling about
The way the mist spins around a treetop
Because a treetop is the map without a city
You are looking for
Each bough leads back to its root
In watered shadows foretold
Because a treetop is a barren autumn lightning
Burning the skylinks of earth hooks pinned on leaves
Except that the treetop it wants to stay and grow
Don't think I've got leaves because you pruned me
Or that the green is the colour of an ever life
I was not born because you died
And I'm not the light because you chose your dark
And I'm not the hope because you leave things hopeless
I'm neither your failure nor your success
And you cannot teach me because you know it all
Because you know better than that
Because there's no knowledge except for the heart
Eager to love and not play on oppositions
Spitting everybody's ‘but' flaws difference rising
I was not born because you died
I don't owe you anything
And my life I owe to Love
That will embrace us both
poem by Miroslava Odalovic
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The Peterloo Massacre
The people marched to St. Peter's Field
On a fair and a sunny day,
They'd gone to listen to Henry Hunt
A radical, in his way,
For Manchester was a ruin then,
The people could beg or starve,
For the looms were sitting in silence there
With the wages more than halved.
The government passed the Corn Laws
To protect the growers at home,
But the British corn was inferior,
And the price quite overblown,
The people, faced with a famine sought
To reform the parliament,
A million folk in Manchester,
With just two to represent.
And only a hundred and fifty were
Electors, here I quote,
Not like the rotten boroughs that
Survived on a single vote,
The people marched on St. Peter's Field
While the government sent Hussars,
Fearing the spread of dissidence,
After Napoleon's wars.
The police were there and the yeomanry
As they came from near and far,
And William Hulton, magistrate,
The head of the Northern Bar,
His name was writ on a plaque of blood
In the nether depths of hell,
When he signed the letters to start the charge
On a people that just meant well.
There was no honour or glory there
But a cry of endless shame,
When Lieutenant Colonel Guy L'Estrange
Blackened his soldiers name,
For the horses trampled the people
And the sabres flashed in the air,
While many a woman was trampled to death
By the horses hooves out there.
Margaret Downes was sabred, Mary
Heys was trampled and crushed,
William Bradshaw shot in the head,
They died, it was so unjust,
Martha Partington died on the spot,
Thrown into a cellar, she died,
While sabred and stabbed with a bayonet,
Tom Buckley, and others beside.
Fifteen died on that infamous day,
And seven hundred were hurt,
Henry Hunt was arrested, jailed,
And others were dragged in the dirt,
Napoleon suffered at Waterloo
But the English have suffered too,
It's writ in the annals of infamy
As the massacre, ‘Peterloo! '
22 September 2012
poem by David Lewis Paget
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Valentine Day
Six hundred and fifty six days passed
Since my wife left this world
And I still miss her dearly
For my love of her will never end.
Now she rests in a beloved land
In a remote grave
Surrounded by yellow sand,
Beyond dark mountains
And deep waters of the seas.
I am thousands of miles away from her,
In a distant city.
Crying over her pillow on the empty bed
I can embrace only her sacred memory.
Yet by her grace,
She visits me sometimes in my dreams
As the frosty wind weeps and sweeps
Through the white nights of deserted streets.
Now on Valentine Day
I reread a poignant poem
By the Sung Dynasty poet Su Dong Po.
It created a bridge to my Valentine.
Almost a thousand years ago,
On the night of the twentieth day of the first month,
Su Dong Po had a dream about his spouse
Who died ten years earlier.
In the dream she sat before a little window
Sorting her dress and make up.
And then the poet and his wife
Looked at each other without a word
And a thousand tears began to flow.
Su Dong Po himself did not think of his spouse often.
Neither could he forget, but his heart was broken.
Oh, reading his moving words I understood again
That all love is one domain
And the throbbing past
Is intense present.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Tel Aviv
The afternoon, its one maybe two
Sipping away my last gold star, not so much to do
Dream away the sunny day until its time to leave
Ill just watch you pass on by
When Im on my own in tel aviv
With the blocks to one side
The beach on the other
And the trees and the leaves
On my own in tel aviv
And the trees and the leaves
On my own in tel aviv
song performed by by Duran Duran
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Partisan
When they poured across the border
I was cautioned to surrender,
This I could not do;
I took my gun and vanished.
I have changed my name so often,
Ive lost my wife and children
But I have many friends,
And some of them are with me.
An old woman gave us shelter,
Kept us hidden in the garret,
Then the soldiers came;
She died without a whisper.
There were three of us this morning
Im the only one this evening
But I must go on;
The frontiers are my prison.
Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing,
Through the graves the wind is blowing,
Freedom soon will come;
Then well come from the shadows.
Les allemands etaient chez moi,
Ils me dirent, signe toi,
Mais je nai pas peur;
Jai repris mon arme.
Jai change cent fois de nom,
Jai perdu femme et enfants
Mais jai tant damis;
Jai la france entie're.
Un vieil homme dans un grenier
Pour la nuit nous a cache,
Les allemands lont pris;
Il est mort sans surprise.
[the germans were at my home
They said, sign yourself,
But I am not afraid
I have retaken my weapon.
I have changed names a hundred times
I have lost wife and children
But I have so many friends
I have all of france
An old man, in an attic
Hid us for the night
The germans captured him
He died without surprise.]
Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing,
Through the graves the wind is blowing,
Freedom soon will come;
Then well come from the shadows.
song performed by by Leonard Cohen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Vampire Suicide
She walks through the graves,
Passing them one by one,
They all passed like they should, but she couldn’t, she remained times slave,
Even though she whished she could.
She walked by the people,
She read the stones like a book,
She read them all she knew all the people,
She watched as she began to look.
She looked at their names, their stones,
She studied their bitrthdays,
She knew them, she knew they were only bones,
But still she feels their pain, and what happened in their last days
She watched in sorrow, in hate,
She knew she should be one of them, she should be under ground,
She knew that she was supposed to suffer the same fate,
But now she wanders through eternity, her fate never to be found
She stopped at the end of the row one stone catches her eye,
She knew this person, this child,
She looks at the birth only eighteen years from when she died,
Her eyes fill with tears, and her still heart goes wild.
She knows she has eternity but that’s not what she wants,
She is the being of forever, the vampire,
“you don’t have to die” her mind taunts,
Her heart so cold her mind so wild, her soul filled with fire.
She drops to her knees the stake in her hand,
She lays the teddy bear one the s grave, her grave,
She lays unable to stand,
Now its not time but that she craves.
She takes the stake to her throat,
She pulls it across her marble skin,
The blood appears but not from her throat,
She feels eternity fade from her skin.
She lays feeling holding onto its’ thought,
She takes the stake away feeling the burn of the wood,
She lowers it to her heart she feels her skin get hot,
The burning begins just with a touch of the wood.
She lays in front of her grave with the flowers,
And she presses the knife deeper into herself,
She feels her body drain of all power,
She watches her eternity slip away, as she gets what she wants for herself.
The she never had now came to her side,
She held to it like a child to the mother breast,
She lost the grip of light and her grip on life began to slide,
She let it slip away, away with all the rest.
She watched as it all left her as she died above her grave,
She Walked with, she walked by its’ side
But now She is no longer times slave,
For this is the vampires’ suicide.
poem by Bethany Maxwell
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