The Straits of Hell

by Yavar Khan Qadri

Murky waters with pinging depths,
the sounds of silence carefully kept,
went the sailors through the bay,
night by night and  day by day

Waiting for the muffled sounds,
of enemy ships that made the rounds,
ears would strain for the telltale ping
rippling out in endless rings

That life was truly a precious thing;
was the epiphany that wars did bring
to skinny boys and seasoned men,
waiting for their passage home;
they never knew  if or when

Most would drown in their iron crypt,
while some lay bloated in the water's drift
Others, though, are still being found
where the sea hides the sandy ground

Those who lived to tell the tale
narrated it with faces pale,
of friends that were lost at sea
and that's how tragic war can be

Those sailors still must haunt that place;
their bones laid in twisted ways
And, in torment must those souls still dwell
in the bottom of the straits of hell

Bio

I am of Kashmiri origin and I am inspired by the Romantic Period and I typically write lyric poetry in free verse. I am a member of The Ontario Poetry Society and the subject of my poem ranges from social (political to romantic, and the morbid. I believe in the healing power of imagination and I write in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed thoughts and emotions of individuals and groups in society. I am an anarcho-syndicalist.

I have written poems for the Labour Movement (As printed on this year's May Day flyers, through the Toronto Airport Workers Council.) And I have been a guest speaker for a socialist group. Above all, I love writing about the morbidity in our thoughts and don't hesitate to bring it out on paper. Here's my blog: Acids of Thought.