Poetry competition CLOSED 19th February 2015 7:27pm
WINNER
LobodeSanPedro
LobodeSanPedro
RUNNERS-UP:
kriticool
and toniscales
Holocaust
arches
orphaned twins
umbilical cords severed
and bound
as they are cast off from
mothers and fathers
brothers and sisters
Salomon's grandpapa.
systemically broken in
until they are devoid of life.
laughter and joy abandoned.
pockmarked by the wrinkles and cuffs of what once was.
tattooed with numbers
stock piled soles.
who'll sit shiva?
the grain
now a mountain.
yet still Yehowah weeps
http://www.ushmm.org/lcmedia/photo/lc/image/77/77028.jpg
orphaned twins
umbilical cords severed
and bound
as they are cast off from
mothers and fathers
brothers and sisters
Salomon's grandpapa.
systemically broken in
until they are devoid of life.
laughter and joy abandoned.
pockmarked by the wrinkles and cuffs of what once was.
tattooed with numbers
stock piled soles.
who'll sit shiva?
the grain
now a mountain.
yet still Yehowah weeps
http://www.ushmm.org/lcmedia/photo/lc/image/77/77028.jpg
Zazzles said:[quote-292319-Chiyo]I'd rather not dare to write a poem from the perspective of someone who'd suffered in many ways in the concentration camps. But this is only my opinion.
Then why comment? who cares what you think unless u enter
your just clogging up the thread...
this is a competition.. Whatever...
Petrified under constant guard,
no motion, no thoughts, dead inside..
famish, debased, disease and death
a daily grind, no way out a long way from home.
It's over now, no one can hear you now
There is no fight only death
Dear Zazzles, I surely haven't clogged up the thread as we both can see. I wrote what was on my mind and I guess I'm allowed to do that? Or am I forbidden to give my personal opinion? As others here do, too? No offense ...
[/quote]
Then why comment? who cares what you think unless u enter
your just clogging up the thread...
this is a competition.. Whatever...
Petrified under constant guard,
no motion, no thoughts, dead inside..
famish, debased, disease and death
a daily grind, no way out a long way from home.
It's over now, no one can hear you now
There is no fight only death
Dear Zazzles, I surely haven't clogged up the thread as we both can see. I wrote what was on my mind and I guess I'm allowed to do that? Or am I forbidden to give my personal opinion? As others here do, too? No offense ...
[/quote]
Prisoners of War
They kept us separate for several months. The last time I saw them they were throwing us on trains. As they ordered us to face the front.
I felt the fear rise from my feet to my head. As they closed the doors of the trains and I saw my wife’s tears shed. They took me to a camp in Poland with the name Auschwitz overhead.
They herded us like cattle pass the rotting dead. Killed off because they were unable to work or because they fled. But all I can think about is the women’s camp a few miles up the road instead.
I heard about the rape and murder that goes on in the women’s camp. And I look for a way out morning noon and night. I familiarize myself with the routines of the camp before I decide to take flight.
The way I choose to escape is revolting but it gets me out tonight. As I climb into the pile of bodies a Jewish prayer I do recite.
They throw the bodies in a truck to be taken to a mass grave. I have no fear of death for it’s better to die than to live as a slave. I grabbed a pair of German army fatigues an image I hope to portray. I jump off the back of the truck and walk in to the camp a few hours before the break of day.
The darkness hides my true Identity one I will never betray. I stay behind the buildings trying not to give myself away. I search shack after shack hoping not to find my family in a pile of decay.
Suddenly a scream wails out and I know it is they. The sounds of laughter and moans from the shack across the way. I snap the neck of the guard peeking in the door just as I was trained. I collect the guard’s weapons and grenades as I here my wife sobbing in dismay.
I walk in and pull the trigger before he can lift his head from my daughter’s breast. Watching his blood rundown her naked body as she breathes her last breath. My wife knows she is gone and joins her in death.
Malnutrition and disease have taken their beauty what a cruel and horrible theft. Soldiers surround the shack as I stood and wept. I did one last thing before they rushed me, I did accept.
I pulled the pins of the grenades and I forever slept.
http://deepundergroundpoetry.com/poems/195154-prisoners-of-war/
They kept us separate for several months. The last time I saw them they were throwing us on trains. As they ordered us to face the front.
I felt the fear rise from my feet to my head. As they closed the doors of the trains and I saw my wife’s tears shed. They took me to a camp in Poland with the name Auschwitz overhead.
They herded us like cattle pass the rotting dead. Killed off because they were unable to work or because they fled. But all I can think about is the women’s camp a few miles up the road instead.
I heard about the rape and murder that goes on in the women’s camp. And I look for a way out morning noon and night. I familiarize myself with the routines of the camp before I decide to take flight.
The way I choose to escape is revolting but it gets me out tonight. As I climb into the pile of bodies a Jewish prayer I do recite.
They throw the bodies in a truck to be taken to a mass grave. I have no fear of death for it’s better to die than to live as a slave. I grabbed a pair of German army fatigues an image I hope to portray. I jump off the back of the truck and walk in to the camp a few hours before the break of day.
The darkness hides my true Identity one I will never betray. I stay behind the buildings trying not to give myself away. I search shack after shack hoping not to find my family in a pile of decay.
Suddenly a scream wails out and I know it is they. The sounds of laughter and moans from the shack across the way. I snap the neck of the guard peeking in the door just as I was trained. I collect the guard’s weapons and grenades as I here my wife sobbing in dismay.
I walk in and pull the trigger before he can lift his head from my daughter’s breast. Watching his blood rundown her naked body as she breathes her last breath. My wife knows she is gone and joins her in death.
Malnutrition and disease have taken their beauty what a cruel and horrible theft. Soldiers surround the shack as I stood and wept. I did one last thing before they rushed me, I did accept.
I pulled the pins of the grenades and I forever slept.
http://deepundergroundpoetry.com/poems/195154-prisoners-of-war/
Many thanks to our host, Vishal, for presenting such a thought provoking challenge, and kudus to Toni and Kriticool.
Just as importantly - many thanks to the mods especially MadameLavender for letting this competition play out.
Clearly the intentions of the host was not to offend but rather to further his own knowledge of a time - a place and a people, through poetry.
I'm just finishing an interview with Pulitzer Prize poet Tracy K. Smith in "Poets & Writers". In it she says her "epiphanic moment" came in reading Seamus Heaney's "Digging". She says "everything in that poem - the male speaker - the Irish setting - should have been completely foreign to her, yet I felt so much a part of the landscape and the family he was describing."
She (African American) was a twenty something grad student studying in NYC when she read the poem 30+ years after its publishing.
I don't know what it is to be a victim of the holocaust but I come from a people who've had to endure racial tyranny in the very country we've built (not to mention the systematic genocide of Native Americans to clear the land).
There are Irish poets here and those from from India who've spoken out on feeling the jack boot of a colonial oppressor.
The stories are one and the same, and we needn't feel guilty about taking on the perspective of a brother or sister poet.
Salud
Digging
BY SEAMUS HEANEY
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Seamus Heaney, "Digging" from Death of a Naturalist. Copyright 1966 by Seamus Heaney.
Just as importantly - many thanks to the mods especially MadameLavender for letting this competition play out.
Clearly the intentions of the host was not to offend but rather to further his own knowledge of a time - a place and a people, through poetry.
I'm just finishing an interview with Pulitzer Prize poet Tracy K. Smith in "Poets & Writers". In it she says her "epiphanic moment" came in reading Seamus Heaney's "Digging". She says "everything in that poem - the male speaker - the Irish setting - should have been completely foreign to her, yet I felt so much a part of the landscape and the family he was describing."
She (African American) was a twenty something grad student studying in NYC when she read the poem 30+ years after its publishing.
I don't know what it is to be a victim of the holocaust but I come from a people who've had to endure racial tyranny in the very country we've built (not to mention the systematic genocide of Native Americans to clear the land).
There are Irish poets here and those from from India who've spoken out on feeling the jack boot of a colonial oppressor.
The stories are one and the same, and we needn't feel guilty about taking on the perspective of a brother or sister poet.
Salud
Digging
BY SEAMUS HEANEY
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Seamus Heaney, "Digging" from Death of a Naturalist. Copyright 1966 by Seamus Heaney.
