Violence Poems
At The Quinte Hotel
by Alfred Wellington Purdy
I am drinking
I am drinking beer with yellow flowers
in underground sunlight
and you can see that I am a sensitive man
And I notice that the bartender is a sensitive man too
so I tell him about his beer
I tell him the beer he draws
is half fart and half yellow horse piss
and all wonderful yellow flowers
But the bartender is not quite
......
Last Tuesday
by Kara Prince
I have survived 5 active shooter situations.
At work this morning, my pepper spray was confiscated due to heightened security following yet another hospital shooting, but the security guard told me “a pretty student” like me should keep some in my car anyway.
It didn’t do me much good in the Fall of my senior year.
Even my dad told me to pick up some pepper spray on my way home because he’s nervous about the girls' trip I have coming up.
I wanted to tell him it's just a camping trip, but that doesn’t matter. Walmart keeps pepper spray in the back of the store with hunting and fishing equipment.
I got groped on aisle L20.
In other news, I turn 22 next month.
Child of War
by Saleh Ben Saleh
I was never asked to choose a side, it is to fate I must abide. I am the child that war has aged, I am the soul that time has caged.
I am the breeze, lost in a storm, I am that flower whose stem was torn. I am a dream never achieved, I am the innocence that war conceived.
Among the rubble I stand alone, my precious home a pile of stone. Out in the cold without a cover, I starve to death or may recover.
I am the cries and all the screams, I am the victim of corrupt regimes. In every battle or every war, it is my blood they always draw.
I am a bird without his wings, I am the child who lost his limbs. Amidst the fear and all the dread, I am a body amongst the dead.
......
Daddy Monster
by Louis Zo
Daddy, daddy, what is it you do,
Your green bleak skin, blotched and chewed?
I serve our kin, our Kings, to name a few,
who, with Their big, black arms, have ruled and rule the rules.
I kiss Their boots, lick Their hooves and pledge to do
anything a fanatic, a fool, a tool would do;
Ah-woo, Ah-woo.
Daddy, daddy, what is it you do,
......
Hope for My City
by Michele Bandler
No hope for this city they say
no hope
Kids doing time, for
Crime, for the crimes
Committed against their ancestors here,
Long ago and now.
On a jury I put a boy behind bars
Because of the laws,
I had no choice.
......
Last Tuesday
by Kara Prince
I have survived 5 active shooter situations.
At work this morning, my pepper spray was confiscated due to heightened security following yet another hospital shooting, but the security guard told me “a pretty student” like me should keep some in my car anyway.
It didn’t do me much good in the Fall of my senior year.
Even my dad told me to pick up some pepper spray on my way home because he’s nervous about the girls' trip I have coming up.
I wanted to tell him it's just a camping trip, but that doesn’t matter. Walmart keeps pepper spray in the back of the store with hunting and fishing equipment.
I got groped on aisle L20.
In other news, I turn 22 next month.
Sweet child in time
by Mario Odekerken
The child stands before the slow turning of the world,
unaware of the full measure of its cruelty.
There is a stillness in the air,a fragile quiet that feels almost safe,
yet beneath it something restless stirs.
They look ahead with eyes unmarked by experience, but already the shadows of conflict brush against their gaze.
Somewhere beyond the horizon, lives are being broken by the cold mechanics of violence,
though the child cannot yet name it.
They have not learned the language of loss,
but they will.
......
Speechless
by Michael R. Burch
We are left speechless by man's inhumanity to man. This collection includes poems about the Holocaust, Auschwitz, Gaza and the Palestinian Nakba ("Catastrophe"), Hiroshima, 9-11, war, and other forms of human violence...
Speechless
by Ko Un
translation by Michael R. Burch
At Auschwitz
piles of glasses
......
Adipocere
by Jessica Leininger
Something is rotting inside me.
Nauseatingly sweet release.
I cross the street, looking around.
Safety has a price.
Banana condom taste test.
Red light’s gone out.
Nervous tic motion
......
Child of War
by Saleh Ben Saleh
I was never asked to choose a side, it is to fate I must abide. I am the child that war has aged, I am the soul that time has caged.
I am the breeze, lost in a storm, I am that flower whose stem was torn. I am a dream never achieved, I am the innocence that war conceived.
Among the rubble I stand alone, my precious home a pile of stone. Out in the cold without a cover, I starve to death or may recover.
I am the cries and all the screams, I am the victim of corrupt regimes. In every battle or every war, it is my blood they always draw.
I am a bird without his wings, I am the child who lost his limbs. Amidst the fear and all the dread, I am a body amongst the dead.
......
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Sri Chinmoy Ghose (1 poems about Violence)
27 August 1931 – 11 October 2007 / Shakpura, Chittagong / Bangladesh (British Era) -
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