Memory Poems
Sun
by Michael Palmer
Write this. We have burned all their villages
Write this. We have burned all the villages and the people in them
Write this. We have adopted their customs and their manner of dress
Write this. A word may be shaped like a bed, a basket of tears or an X
In the notebook it says, It is the time of mutations, laughter at jokes,
secrets beyond the boundaries of speech
......
Lara
by George Gordon Byron
LARA.
CANTO THE FIRST.
I.
The Serfs are glad through Lara's wide domain,
And slavery half forgets her feudal chain;
He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord —
The long self-exiled chieftain is restored:
......
Death
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Come thou, thou last one, whom I recognize,
unbearable pain throughout this body's fabric:
as I in my spirit burned, see, I now burn in thee:
the wood that long resisted the advancing flames
which thou kept flaring, I now am nourishinig
and burn in thee.
My gentle and mild being through thy ruthless fury
has turned into a raging hell that is not from here.
Quite pure, quite free of future planning, I mounted
......
She..
by Nehal Mistry
She sits there beautiful and quiet..
Is that who she really is?
What if she lets the storm out,
Be visible to all those around her..
Will they ever look at her the same again?
Will they love her for who she is?
Or will they tell her to go back to how she was?
Will they hold on to her?
Or will they let her disappear into the shadows?
Will she once again blossom in the light?
......
War Is Never Over
by Cecil L. Harrison
War is never over
Thought the treaties may be signed
The memories of the battles
Are forever in our minds
War is never over
So when you welcome heroes home
Remember in their minds they hold
Memories known to them alone
......
Protocol 1 (After Walter Benjamin)
by Jessica Leininger
You tread the worn paths
Of oft recalled memories
Though now they appear
Strewn with roses.
Carefully you pick up a stem,
Wonder where the beauty came from.
Suddenly a prick;
......
The Effects of Memory
by Michael R. Burch
The Effects of Memory
by Michael R. Burch
A black ringlet curls to lie
at the nape of her neck,
glistening with sweat
in the evaporate moonlight ...
This is what I remember
now that I cannot forget.
......
Landscape
by Stuart Payne
Find me a place where stories have grown old,
and wound about the lands where they were told
in other times so that they seem as one
with all that lies beneath a foreign sun,
like vines that grow on warm and weathered stones
or veins that stretch about their living bones.
Or lie to me and say this is that place
and in that story you and I will trace
the past that never was, so that this seems
......
Rewind the Film
by Stuart Payne
I wish I had a film of you.
I’d love to see you move again,
to see the gestures that I knew
when you were here, as we were then,
and know I’d not forgotten what
was true of you and what was not.
I’d watch as if through window panes
and you still moved beyond the glass,
knowing memory remains
......
Roses for a Lover, Idealized
by Michael R. Burch
Roses for a Lover, Idealized
by Michael R. Burch
When you have become to me
as roses bloom, in memory,
exquisite, each sharp thorn forgot,
will I recall—yours made me bleed?
When winter makes me think of you—
whorls petrified in frozen dew,
......
