Survivors Poems

The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
...

I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
...

I

My childhood's home I see again,
And sadden with the view;
...

Can I explain this to you? Your eyes
are entrances the mouths of caves
I issue from wonderful interiors
upon a blessed sea and a fine day,
...

A pathetic tale of the sea I will unfold,
Enough to make one's blood run cold;
Concerning four fishermen cast adrift in a dory.
As I've been told I'll relate the story.
...

Our life is a fire dampened, or a fire shut up in stone.
--Jacob Boehme, De Incarnatione Verbi

Outside everything visible and invisible a blazing maple.
...

Man, is the Sea your master? Sea, and is man your slave? –
This is the song of brave men who never know they are brave:
Ceaselessly watching to save you, stranger from foreign lands,
Soundly asleep in your state room, full sail for the Goodwin Sands!
...

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.

A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
...

. When first, descending from the moorlands,
I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide
Along a bare and open valley,
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.
...

Powered by the super power
of the sun of electricity
the peace prize promoting city
the vacuum cleaner, dusts
...

It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.
It is not the houses. It is the spaces in between the houses.
It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.
It is not your memories which haunt you.
...

A reign of impunity by Northern-led Federation
coupled with the anarchy of 'wild, wild west'
of mid 1960s-unrests, had ushered in the military
in a putsch that highlighted ethnic borders in blood.
...

In the late night listening from bed
I have joined the ambulance or the patrol
screaming toward some drama, the kind of end
that Berky must have some day, if she isn't dead.
...

No doubt they’ll soon get well; the shock and strain
Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.
Of course they’re ‘longing to go out again,’—
These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk.
...

ROSALIND, HELEN, and her Child.

SCENE. The Shore of the Lake of Como.
...

'Twas on the shores that round our coast
From Deal to Ramsgate span,
That I found alone on a piece of stone
An elderly naval man.
...

.
clouds of angry concrete dust
born of rubble
born of ugliness
...

THE Argonauts now stemm'd the foaming tide,
And to Arcadia's shore their course apply'd;
Where sightless Phineus spent his age in grief,
But Boreas' sons engage in his relief;
...

The beauty of the camel
seen only
in the desert,
...

THENCE, in his saffron robe, for distant Thrace,
Hymen departs, thro' air's unmeasur'd space;
By Orpheus call'd, the nuptial Pow'r attends,
But with ill-omen'd augury descends;
...

The lines of poetry and the scents of Frankincense & Myrrh make me rise as a rising Kemet as prayer changes mankind's nature and his mind limits.

The lines of poetry and the scents of Frankincense makes any human during Covid stand from a distance.
...

Survivors
Poetic Daughter
We are not victims, we are Survivors
We are stronger than we have ever been, we are Survivors
...

I B Singer
left his footprints,
his name
and number,
...

if suddenly one day there was a comet strike that cracked the earth
a paradigm change or fragmentary body breaking up with air shocks
possible surface impacts extreme temperatures pressures producing
nanodiamonds in sediments destroying contemporary civilizations
...

when distress disaster great tragedy strikes
urgent necessary great recovery can progress begin
after first cautious tentative careful steps
...

They are saying
That the hospitals
Are battling to keep
The survivors alive
...

Gordon Highlanders, sent to Changi prison,
Were told they were going to Thailand for a holiday

There they were set to work on the Death Railway
...

It was a heavy downpour. Monsoonal rains started. God's own country has its regular rainfall every year. Mostly houses are seen embraced with greenery and dew drops bathing Nature and her inmates.
Amidst the pandemic, people were seen on roads and streets with their hectic scheduled activities. Uncaring the changing seasons of life, people were seen running helter-skelter with their jobs and tasks to run their livelihood.
It was around quarter to eight at night. Colourful parasols were seen floating across the air. They looked shimmering with blinking dew drop light rays reflected through night lamps. Lamp posts were seen spreading their electric lights; head lights of the moving vehicles were seen scattering their eye-blinding splashes of light.
Suddenly everyone walking on roads felt a powerful tremor on the surface of the earth around. It was followed by a thrashing lightning blaze across the dew drops in the air. No sooner did each of the passers-by discover the reason of the tremor and lightning blaze than a piece of the wreckage of a passenger aircraft was thrown out on the road.
...

Survivors
by Michael R. Burch

(for the victims and survivors of 9/11 and their families)
...