Least Read Poems About Conflict

My phone rang in the middle of the night
The number looked familiar  
but I didn't have the contact saved
So I answered the phone,  
might as well as find out who it is

'why did you stop talking to me?'

I couldn't recognize the voice
Yet her tone was clearly upset

'well um...' - for some reason I didn't ask who this is

To which she proceeded

'You see I bring value to people's lives and I cannot be where I am not valued'

We got ourselves a motivational speaker I thought to myself.  

I...

A poem for each day of the month in which I was born

DAY 17
frag M ents

the fragments of a broken love
cut sharper than a polished silver sword;
in futile efforts to reprove
its wrong, such love has never faith restored.

the fragments of a broken heart
must bleed their splattered raindrops, till the pool,
vext with the surge of plasmic quartz,
explodes upon the night sky, swift and cruel.

the fragments of a broken life
find ether in the painlessness of death,
whose crypt knows naught of human strife, ...

silence.


respect
my
wishes

Priest kissed those cold clay lips
Form mutilated on battle between ships
A gift given back from grey seas
Fish and brine ate up everything below the knee

Once a man of honor, strong and bold
A warrior forged in fire and mold
He sailed beneath both storm and star
To find his fate in realms afar

A tale of powder’s burn and sabres’ flash
Of cannon’s roar and timbers’ crash
Where mortal form on reefs was dashed
And hope, like sails, to tatters lashed

The waves bore witness, fierce and grim
As bloodied waters...

I recognise him straightaway. Gordon Day, even though he looks nothing like the Gordon Day you and I knew once. Back then, Gordon was a small boy, ruddy faced, with a mop of reddish-brown hair – lovable, in a way, but impish, I suppose.  The guy in the gym looks like a tough nut capable of taking someone round the side and laying into them.  He's wearing a blue gym vest with the gym logo on, the sort of vest that shows off serious muscle, and his cropped hair and the grin make him appear more youthful than a person in their mid-thirties.

He stops talking to the henna hair...