personal history poems Archives - Best Poetry Online

Extremities | Judy Moskowitz

Some use cremes to soften
The rough edges
But hands don’t lie
From birth to death
The telling of time’s imprint
Extraordinary
With fingers like tendrils
Reaching
For tactile sensations
Through well traveled veins
Thinned skin
Sandpaper
Dirty fingernails
Hands have toiled
Earth’s promise under
A scorching sun
Lived a thousand summer
Dreams that satisfy an itch
Telling the story of where
We’ve been and how
We’ve lived
Extensions of our mind
Beyond the palm reading
A life lived

I Came From | Judy Moskowitz

July 2, 2023 / Best Poetry / cool poetry, example of poem, identity poems, personal history poems, poems about life, read poetry online / Leave a Comment

I came from bagels and
Nova Scotia lox
Sunday mornings when
families would sit
At the table together
I came from Brooklyn and
Queens N.Y.
Family circles and
Cousins clubs
Parents from Russia
With suitcases filled with Oppression depression
I came from despair and Anger from the womb of
A mother who should
Not have been
The youngest of four
Two sisters and a brother
Some in between my birth
Whom I will never know
They just came and went

The Numb Generation | Andrew Darlington

December 13, 2022 / Best Poetry / fractured parental relationship poems, human condition poems, personal history poems, poetry, poetry websites / Leave a Comment

my grandfather marries in 1915
plants a son, goes to France
and never comes home…
Len grows up among doting women
who wipe his tears, care and cosset,
always there for his pleasure…
until after the second war
he meets my mother in 1947
to plant his own son…
no post-traumatic stress disorder
for his numbed generation
no support counseling in a
bewilderment of stunned peace,
becalmed in the unreal aftermath,
they just go for a pint at the Crown,
Yorkshire puddings with lots of gravy,
on Sunday hoe the allotment,
hear ‘Forces Favourites’ on the Light
and never talk crawling nightmare,
be Kenneth More or David Niven,
never betray the heroic narrative,
keep your silences to yourself
don’t betray your screaming dreams
with night-sweat horrors of the dead,
cry for Churchill, even though he
advocates shooting 1930s strikers,
as their darkest terrors retreat into
‘Dad’s Army’ and ‘Allo Allo’,
watching their longhaired lout
children dancing free love
drugs and revolution…

More at http://andrewdarlington.blogspot.com/.