Danny Draper Poems

When all the children mature in fear and ignorance
When all essence of nature is expunged and despoiled
When all that was good is unsound and despised
When all solemn trust has been sacrificed to avarice,
...

Deadest
Was a term when I was a lad
It meant to be honest or
An exclamation or incredulity.
...

Arab Spring lanced all deeper scars
Populace wounded, festered an abyss
Violated a prophets' sacred words
Sacrificing innocents to the void
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Aleppo children hung their art of war
They and school proud survivors of its score
It showed their trauma without and within
Each knew life and death and chances were slim.
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Wounds gape in the rueful earth
Seeds of qualm succumb to fear.
Current crops' resilience wanes
Cracks open tearing deep, deep down
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If opposite bad is good
Where does that leave evil?
Those times un-ordinary
When the fabric unravels
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Wings discarded on a headland, found;
On coarse rock clean and worn
Honeycombed salty bitter, fragmented
Wrenched by the rowing sea
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A good rain fell, muddied waters,
Pooled in my head, fixed and assimilated
Discord with earth and breath
Vanished, estranged by night,
...

Looking through the window
There is a broken heart
Cracked right down the center
Like broken fine china,
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Self-righteous be the order short
The base camp days away
The reason without purpose
Grand hubris belayed,
...