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A Corpse

It was afternoon and the month of June
The Sun shone full in the Asian skies,
Sending down scorching rays,
Enough to cause death to those who sleep,
On the cozy beds made of sponge.

Beside the public place, upward face,
I did see a corpse of a child lying
With belly exposed, legs stretched wide,
The arms folded on the unbuttoned chest,
Slight afar from the callous crowd,
Flies hummed around as if the Death Angel,
Had done his job early in the morn.

With chilled blood in the veins,
And fearful heart in the chest,
Riveted gaze at the frightening scene,
Advanced I timidly forcing legs,
Stood beside examining from top to toe,
And shook it from the sooty arms,
To certify belief occupying my mind.

At the jerk first he sprang up,
Sat, squatted rubbing the eyes,
Yawned, snorted breathing aloud,
To make me believe, he was not dead,
But it is pity he knew not,
He was a living corpse.

poem by Muhammad Shanazar
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In a coffin

Hands folded over the chest
she lies forever stretched out
as if death out of the blue holds her calm
and nothing will wake her up,
from the last sleep folding coldly round her
and strangely changed from princess to rotting dirt.

Hands folded over the chest
she lies forever stretched out.
with no fingers clenching hot around mine
and drawing me nearer,
no arms embracing me to her body
and I am totally alone
and stare at hands folded over her chest.

poem by Gert Strydom
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Day for you (3)

may the grey arms of the morn'
turn into life for a day
may silver meet you just there
where your chest is hollow bare
feeling like a ladder on a stair
sturdy ladder legs standing stronger
on the grey arms of early morning
silver legs staring seeing
seven doves' innocent love
in grey arms of the dawning

poem by Elna Nel
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Motion

My body’s always in motion
running through unseen routines
forcing air, chest rising and falling,
heart-blood coursing
through a million small chambers
to glow red again.

Even at rest
my chest rises to cold air
and drinks it in, clean and clear,
and with heady ambition,
I run,
my aging legs pounding
this treadmill
to nowhere.

But I know this
is a temporary condition.
Soon enough
my blood will congeal and
pool into still, cool wells.

No more will I wake
though bright morning itself
should shake my shoulder
and with swelling song
bid me rise,
for I am not made
for eternity’s day.

Death waits
and will not
be turned away.

poem by Steven Federle
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Disingenuousness

Here lies another box for nature,
Carbon ready;
Black to eyes down here,
Where death is at its job.

Up there you’ll hear a rhythmic sob
Or two from living yet-to-dies –
A humming lacrimoso –
It all but cleans the eyes:

Forget it –
The dismal show of grief –
Life is only chemistry –
Our stay is only brief.
It’s we who hype it up!

Diaphragms jerk again;
The jet monotone of hearses
Feeds the disingenuousness
Of undertakers –
They seem to stare at something up ahead –
For them, it’s in the blood,
To taxi off the dead.

The March of Death

Death death death death death death death death death death death

poem by Mark R Slaughter
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Faithless Nelly Gray

A Pathetic Ballad

Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war's alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms.

Now as they bore him off the field,
Said he, 'Let others shoot;
For here I leave my second leg,
And the Forty-second Foot.'

The army-surgeons made him limbs:
Said he, 'They're only pegs;
But there's as wooden members quite,
As represent my legs.'

Now Ben he loved a pretty maid, --
Her name was Nelly Gray;
So he went to pay her his devours,
When he devoured his pay.

But when he called on Nelly Gray,
She made him quite a scoff;
And when she saw his wooden legs,
Began to take them off.

'O Nelly Gray! O Nelly Gray!'
Is this your love so warm?
The love that loves a scarlet coat
Should be a little more uniform.

Said she, ' I loved a soldier once,
For he was blithe and brave;
But I will never have a man
With both legs in the grave

'Before you had those timber toes
Your love I did allow;
But then, you know, you stand upon
Another footing now.'

'O Nelly Gray! O Nelly Gray!
For all your jeering speeches,
At duty's call I left my legs
In Badajos's breaches.'

'Why, then,' said she, 'you've lost the feet
Of legs in war's alarms,
And now you cannot wear your shoes
Upon your feats of arms!'

'O false and fickle Nelly Gray!
I know why you refuse:
Though I've no feet, some other man
Is standing in my shoes.

'I wish I ne'er had seen your face;
But, now, a long farewell!
For you will be my death' -- alas!
You will not be my Nell!'

Now when he went from Nelly Gray
His heart so heavy got,
And life was such a burden grown,
It made him take a knot.

So round his melancholy neck
A rope he did intwine,
And, for his second time in life,
Enlisted in the Line.

One end he tied around a beam,
And then removed his pegs;
And, as his legs were off -- of course
He soon was off his legs.

And there he hung till he was dead
As any nail in town;
For, though distress had cut him up,
It could not cut him down.

A dozen men sat on his corpse,
To find out why he died, --
And they buried Ben in four cross-roads
With a stake in his inside.

poem by Thomas Hood
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A Burial

A lifeless house sparrow lays dead
In the middle of the towpath
As if asleep on a green sheet;
Its body still warmed by the sun
That one could mistakenly guess
Its demise was moments before
My arrival except that its
Only exposed eyeball was gone
Indicating an earlier
Death. No decomposers arrived
As yet, usually the maggot
Flies are the first at a death scene.
I picked up the feathery corpse
And buried it beside the path.

poem by Albert Ahearn
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Of Him I Love Day And Night

OF him I love day and night, I dream'd I heard he was dead;
And I dream'd I went where they had buried him I love--but he was not
in that place;
And I dream'd I wander'd, searching among burial-places, to find him;
And I found that every place was a burial-place;
The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is
now;)
The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago,
Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, were as full of the dead
as of the living,
And fuller, O vastly fuller, of the dead than of the living;
--And what I dream'd I will henceforth tell to every person and age,
And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream'd;
And now I am willing to disregard burial-places, and dispense with
them; 10
And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently
everywhere, even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be
satisfied;
And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be duly
render'd to powder, and pour'd in the sea, I shall be
satisfied;
Or if it be distributed to the winds, I shall be satisfied.

poem by Walt Whitman
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City of Death

The city reminded her
Of a room full of dark flies;
The constant sound of buzzing;
The frightening hitting of

Bodies against the sides; but
Something more disturbing was
Brought to mind: the memory
Of Mr Danzinki who

Died in a room up on Eastside,
And no one found him for months
On end, and the flies got in
And laid their seeds, and they came

To fruition and buzzed in
Turn, and when his rescuers
Opened the door of the room,
There was that awful smell of

Decomposition, and a
Swarm of flies, and the image
That someone told her as a
Child of the sickening find,

Took up residence in her
Mind and stayed there, and somehow
Related to the city, and
The whole buzz and noise of the

Place, and maybe some dying
Corpse down there in the moving
Throng, and a sense of death and
Dying in the city's air.

poem by Terry Collett
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Love, Salvation, And Goats!

she said...
'i still love you as a person,
but not as a man...'
he was silent for a long moment...
and then answered,
'when we go off to war,
do we cut the arms off our enemies,
and leave the legs?
do we cut the legs off,
and leave the arms?
do we pluck out one of their eyes,
and cut off one of their testicles?
do we rip out their tongues,
and demand that they speak? '

she shook her head, crying softly...

'then, declare war on me! '

he walked out, slamming the door,
to sleep with the goats.
while she knelt under a bare lightbulb...
praying for the salvation of his soul!

poem by Eric Cockrell
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New Mirror

My wife brought home a new big mirror
She wanted to see all of her glorious self.
I was happy with the old one that showed
my face, upper arms and chest.
This damned mirror makes me look like
a child’s drawing of a man, a rotund body,
matchstick arms and legs. My image took
offence walked away in disgust, left me
standing there in my elderliness, staring
into blank eternity.

poem by Oskar Hansen
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Kicked A Dog To Death

When that hound
Came around
The first time
It was wagging its tail
We were all smiles
We were all smitten
No one could know
I'd kick the dog to death

Oh when we lay out on the beach
Burning in the sun
The wind playing tricks
On the heat we thought we felt
Another of nature's illusions
There was no way of knowing
There was no way to guess
I'd kick that dog to death

I made a joke
You made a mess
And we both lay in bed
Eyes wide and hearts beating
Trying to focus my thoughts
You were trying to focus your thoughts
But we would have never thought
I'd kick a dog to death

I was living
You were living
We were breathing
Like it was all we knew to do
You were staring
My mind was snapping
Like it was all I knew to do
The dog was barking
The day descending
Like it was all it knew to do
I heard it growling
I heard you screaming
And my body answered the moment
And I kicked a dog to death

In those slow beating moments
Right there on the pavement
All the sounds of the world faded out
The contrast of the colours increased
You were on mute in my head
But you were saying something
Over and over
On mute in my head
As the dog lay there dead

I was living
You were living
We were breathing
Like it was all we knew to do
The dog was bleeding
The pavement darkening
Like it was all it knew to do
The sound slowly came back
The colours returned
Like it was all they knew to do

Waking that morning
We could never have known
We would never have guessed
I'd kick a dog to death
The moments before it
All erased
The years before it
All erased
When I kicked a dog to death
Like it was all I knew to do...

(2008)

poem by B. Alexander
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The Carcass

Remember that object we saw, dear soul,
In the sweetness of a summer morn:
At a bend of the path a loathsome carrion
On a bed with pebbles strewn,

With legs raised like a lustful woman,
Burning and sweating poisons,
It spread open, nonchalant and scornful,
Its belly, ripe with exhalations.

The sun shone onto the rotting heap,
As if to bring it to the boil,
And tender a hundredfold to vast Nature
All that together she had joined;

And the sky watched that superb carcass
Like a flower blossom out.
The stench was so strong that on the grass
You thought you would pass out.

Flies hummed upon the putrid belly,
Whence larvae in black battalions spread
And like a heavy liquid flowed
Along the tatters deliquescing.

All together it unfurled, and rose like a wave
And bubbling it sprang forth;
One might have believed that, with a faint breath filled,
The body, multiplying, lived.

And this world gave out a strange music
Like of running water and of wind,
Or of grain in a winnow
Rhythmically shaken and tossed.

Form was erased and all but a vision,
A sketch slow to take shape
On a forgotten canvas, which the artist finishes
From memory alone.

Behind the rocks a fretting bitch
Looked at us with fierce mien
Anxious to retrieve from the corpse
A morsel that she had dropped.

Yet to this rot you shall be like,
To this horrid corruption,
Star of my eyes, sun of desire,
You, my angel and my passion!

Yes, such you shall be, you, queen of all graces,
After the last sacraments,
When you go beneath the grass and waxy flowers,
To mold among the skeletons.

Then, oh my beauty! You must tell the vermin,
As it eats you up with kisses,
That I have preserved the form and essence divine
Of my decayed loves.

poem by Charles Baudelaire
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Death On Two Legs (Instrumental) (1980-12-08: London, England)

You suck my blood like a leech
You break the law and you breach
Screw my brain till it hurts
You've taken all my money - and you want more
Misguided old mule
With your pigheaded rules
With your narrow-minded cronies who are fools
Of the first division -
Death on two legs
You're tearing me apart
Death on two legs -
You never had a heart of your own
Kill joy, bad guy
Big talking, small fry
You're just an old barrow-boy
Have you found a new toy to replace me
Can you face me -
But now you can kiss my ass goodbye
Feel good, are you satisfied
Do you feel like suicide (I think you should)
Is your conscience all right
Does it plague you at night
Do you feel good - Feel good
Talk like a big business tycoon
But you're just a hot-air balloon
So no one gives you a damn
You're just an overgrown school-boy
Let me tan your hide
A dog with disease
You're king of the 'sleaze'
Put your money where your mouth is Mr. Know all
Was the fin on your back part of the deal ... (shark)
Death on two legs
You're tearing me apart
Death on two legs -
You never had a heart of your own
(You never did, right from the start)
Insane, you should be put inside
You're a sewer-rat decaying in a cesspool of pride
Should be made unemployed
Make yourself null-and-void
Make me feel good
I feel good

song performed by by Queen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Single Candle/Death Herself

A single flame lights her face
The face of death
A single candle holds her fears
The fears of death

Her hands clasped anrond their souls
The souls of the dead
She feeds of their screams
The screams of the dead

Her legs lay bellow her
Bellow death
Her black gown over her body
The body of death

Her chest rises and falls with her breath
The breath of death
Her cloak drawn over her long flowing jet hair
The face of death

Her eyes unmoved unfeeling
Do you see it?
Do you see the soul of death?
Do you feel it?

Her skin as white as snow as it fades into darkness
The snow of tears
Her cloths as dark as night that swallows the light
The dark we all shall see

Her eyes close as she feels their souls flow
Flow from the dead
She leaves them there to lay in darkness
She steals from the dead

A single candle lights their faces filled with her
Filled with death
They fall into the darkness of her eyes, of her heart
The darkness of death

A single candle shall stay to light their way
Their way through the dark
A single candle holds their past
The pain and trials

A single candle lights her face
The face of death
A single candle holds her fears
The fears of death herself

A single candle

poem by Bethany Maxwell
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In Your Sleep, I die

In your tender sleep, thy child cries
Bullied and tortured by ruthless foes
Amidst pain, I threw arms in the sky
Asleep thou are to comfort my woes.

In your slumber, they child weeps
My eyes grow wide, my arms go lame
Blood drips from me while thou sleep
Beyond that, lo! my heart aflame.

In your sleep, thy child dies
Preserving peace in my heart
Thy child dies so that your eyes
May open with a start.

poem by Geraldine Fernandez
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Death On Two Legs

Words and music by freddie mercury
You suck my blood like a leech
You break the law and you preach
Screw my brain till it hurts
You've taken all my money
And you want more
Misguided old mule with your pig headed rules
With your narrow minded cronies
Who are fools of the first division
Death on two legs
You're tearing me apart
Death on two legs
You've never had a heart of your own
Kill joy bad guy big talking small fry
You're just an old barrow boy
Have you found a new toy to replace me?
Can you face me?
But now you can kiss my ass goodbye
Feel good are you satisfied?
Do you feel like suicide?
(i think you should)
Is your conscience all right
Does it plague you at night?
Do you feel good feel good?
You talk like a big business tycoon
You're just a hot air balloon
So no one gives you a damn
You're just an overgrown schoolboy
Let me tan your hide
A dog with disease
You're the king of the 'sleaze'
Put your money where your mouth is
Mister know-all
Was the fin on your back
Part of the deal? (shark)
Death on two legs
You're tearing me apart
Death on two legs
You've never had a heart (you never did) of your own
(right from the start)
Insane you should be put inside
You're a sewer rat decaying in a cesspool of pride
Should be made unemployed
Then make yourself null and void
Make me feel good i feel good

song performed by by Queen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Death, The Lover

By which name Should I call you,
O, Death?
The shadow man, or the king of the dark
Realm?
I have, on you my full honest
Faith,
Since I heard of your enormous
Fame.
You too follow my every
Footstep,
Now, I have made friendship with
Fate!
My sobs and sighs get their
Shape.
I don't anymore them
Hate;
Take me in your masculine
Arms,
Love me as you only can
Tame,
My burning lust for earthly
Terms...
I shall give you back the
Same! !
I cherish to see your masked
Face!
Give on my lips your immortal
Kiss;
O, Death! Hold me in your tight
Embrace,
In your wide chest let me lie in
Peace! !
--------- ---------

poem by Nilakshi Das
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Hope Dieth: Hope Liveth

Strong are thine arms, O love, & strong
Thine heart to live, and love, and long;
But thou art wed to grief and wrong:
Live, then, and long, though hope be dead!
Live on, & labour thro’ the years!
Make pictures through the mist of tears,
Of unforgotten happy fears,
That crossed the time ere hope was dead.
Draw near the place where once we stood
Amid delight’s swift-rushing flood,
And we and all the world seemed good
Nor needed hope now cold and dead.
Dream in the dawn I come to thee
Weeping for things that may not be!
Dream that thou layest lips on me!
Wake, wake to clasp hope’s body dead!
Count o’er and o’er, and one by one
The minutes of the happy sun
That while agone on kissed lips shone,
Count on, rest not, for hope is dead.
Weep, though no hair’s breadth thou shalt move
The living Earth, the heaven above
By all the bitterness of love!
Weep and cease not, now hope is dead!
Sighs rest thee not, tears bring no ease,
Life hath no joy, and Death no peace:
The years change not, though they decrease,
For hope is dead, for hope is dead.
Speak, love, I listen: far away
I bless the tremulous lips, that say,
“Mock not the afternoon of day,
Mock not the tide when hope is dead!”
I bless thee, O my love, who say’st:
“Mock not the thistle-cumbered waste;
I hold Love’s hand, and make no haste
Down the long way, now hope is dead.
With other names do we name pain,
The long years wear our hearts in vain.
Mock not our loss grown into gain,
Mock not our lost hope lying dead.
Our eyes gaze for no morning-star,
No glimmer of the dawn afar;
Full silent wayfarers we are
Since ere the noon-tide hope lay dead.
Behold with lack of happiness
The master, Love, our hearts did bless
Lest we should think of him the less:
Love dieth not, though hope is dead!”

poem by William Morris
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Reasons To Insanity...

...For a twilight vale unfolds
From dawning of your skies
Passing through miles of cold
To where autumn can rise
Though summer dusts have rolled
When spring was breathing sighs
If you I can’t behold
Then blinded be my eyes...

...For a dimming sun’s fainting
From bright of moon afar
Reeling with dreams, acquainting,
To where sleep lives unbarred
Though shadows won’t be tainting
When midnights fray through blur
If your worlds I’m not painting
Then darkened be my stars...

...For a bleeding pigeon’s fleeing
From shores of loneliness
Searching a land of freeing
To where the heavens bless
Though evils win my being
When angels lose their place
If your face I’m not seeing
Then death be my embrace...

...For a dust fills my soil
From beds of destined slots
Lying with thieves and royals
To where my corpse shall rot
Though with the Gods embroiled
When with you I am not
If this life I have spoiled
Then maddened be that thought...

...For a red rose is blooming
From garden of your dew
Wreathed to jasmines, perfuming
To where a tulip grew
Though black orchids are zooming
With thorns upon their view
If to you I’m not grooming
May bouquets not renew...

...For a ballad is glancing
From walls upon my stare
Tumbling with pure romancing
To where a duet’s shared
Though feet may stop advancing
When I’m breathing your hair
If tuned to you I’m dancing
Then blessed be my prayer...

...For all I have is a poem
From mem'ry of your time
When I'm not chanting your name
Then silent be my rhymes...

poem by Rk
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Seven-Sided Poem by C. Drummond translated by Souza

When I was born, a crooked angel,
the kind who live in shadows,
said: Go, Carlos! Be gauche in life.

The houses spy the men
chasing after women.
Perhaps if the afternoon were blue
there wouldn’t be so many desires.

The tram passes by full of legs:
white black yellow legs.
Why so many legs, God, my heart asks.
But my eyes
never ask a thing.

The man behind the mustache
is serious, simple, and strong.
Almost never talks.
Has a few, close friends,
that man behind the glasses and the mustache.

Lord, why did you abandon me
if you knew I wasn’t God?
if you knew I was weak.

World world vast globe
if my name were Job
it would be a rhyme, not a solution.
World world vast globe
vaster still is my heart.

I ought not tell you,
but this moon
but this cognac
gives us heartache like the devil.

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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