Poetry Break: “Let Me Tell You How I Died” – Antietam: The Bloodiest Day

  Posted on November 10, 2022 By

 45 Comments

 

Hi Everybody! Can you believe November is upon us already? It’s been quite a year with the writing journey, and I can’t believe I’ll be wrapping up 2022 very soon. But 2023 is already shaping up to be an interesting one, as I just put my second manuscript on submission! How exciting! Cross your fingers for me! While we all wait for news on that front, I thought you could enjoy the latest installment in my war poem epic – this one covering the Civil War’s gruesome battle of Antietam. A terrible fight that would prove to be the deadliest day in the entire war. It’s hard to believe I’ll soon be wrapping up this giant poem, with only a few more segments to go! I sincerely hope you have enjoyed it so far, and I can’t wait to share the rest and more with you! 

 

 

Antietam – The Bloodiest Day

 

It’s a burning hot September Day

And in this jagged cornfield, I’ve lost my way

The place is bursting with enemy shell

It’ll be one of the worst, and it’s hell

 

The corn cuts my skin like blades as I run

If I can’t find my line, I will be done

But the corn is so tall, I just can’t see

And I trip over the bodies that are sprawled around me

 

A shell goes off close and knocks me to the ground

I’m buried under soil and corn by the pound

I claw my way up, I have to get free

I can’t let the shell with my name find me

 

I’ve got a life back home, a wife and kids

I can’t leave them here, not like this

But I find that’s not up to me to decide

I learn it too soon, and oh, how I cried

 

Another shell crashes into the bloody corn

My screams reach a fever pitch, my ligaments torn

My world goes black, I’m thrown to the ground

I died fast and easy, but I was never found

 

To Be Continued…. 

 

IMG_4881

 

 

 

Photos by M.B. Henry. For more from the Civil War, click here and here. 

And for some lovely fall colors pics – click here. 

 Category: History

45 Comments on “Poetry Break: “Let Me Tell You How I Died” – Antietam: The Bloodiest Day”

  2. Powerful, heartbreaking poem, MB. The first-person perspective is VERY effective. And the best of luck with your second submission!

    Reply

  6. I was there too MB, great poem. Hope your next book will get through the next stage without too much extra work 🙂

    Reply

  7. The imagery and tone are spot on. Best wishes for your next manuscript! I posted a review for the first on Amazon and my FB page. Wonderful read – bravo!

    Reply

    • Posting reviews is the absolute best thing anyone can do to help me, that and buying the book! So thank you from the bottom of my heart!

      Reply

    • Oh that’s very interesting to know! I took this picture at a butterfly house when I still lived in LA, but I can’t remember what time of year it was.

      Reply

  9. MB,…I’m your biggest fan. This had me in tears. I’m so proud of you. And I’m reading this on Veteran’s Day. I have your book and am so excited about the next one! I love you! Karla ❤️🤍💙

    Reply

      • I have been good. I spent the last part of the Covid isolation chasing a computer language down a rabbit hole. I never learned classic “C”, so I taught myself that and then went onto “C++”. The geeks will know what I am talking about. 🙂 🙂

    • They were truly sad times – hopefully one day we will learn to not repeat! Thanks as always for reading

      Reply

  19. Excellent peom! Thanks MB.

    I just finished your book; it was incredible! I am not trying to suck up or get on your good side. The book was simply amazing. I really loved how you told the story of D Day through the lives of these characters. Honestly, this was so well done. History is a “dry” subject for a lot of people, but the way that you put the story into the lives of these characters brought everything to life. Please put me on the list for your next one.

    The way that you made the main characters all female was awesome. Too many history stories only focus on the men. The perspective you used through these women was just wonderful. Boy, have you set the bar high. 👍👍

    Reply

    • I can’t tell you how much this comment made my day. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts about the book – it makes me so happy how much you enjoyed it! Hopefully I will have news about the next book very soon, please cross your fingers for me! 🙂 🙂 Hope you had a wonderful holiday and happy new year.

      Reply

    • I have not visited either place and I would really like to!

      Reply

      • Loved the poem. If you do visit Antietam go early in the morning before the park actually opens. I hope to head back there this summer.

      • Have your ever listened to Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris? It was a Broadway play at one point. It is The Statue. Check out the lyrics. It is from WWI and one of those soldier’s statue that you see.

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Quotes of the Week

“I do not mean to say that the scenes of the Revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten, but that, like everything else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. In history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read; but even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. Even then they cannot be so universally known nor so vividly felt as they were by the generation just gone to rest. At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son, or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family – a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related – a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned. But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but what invading foreman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done – the leveling of its walls. They are gone. They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-restless hurricane has swept over them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few more ruder storms, then to sink and be no more. They were pillars of the temple of liberty; and now that they have crumbled away that temple must fall unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason.”
-Abraham Lincoln

M.B. HENRY

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