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John F McCullagh Apr 2015
At Seventeen, a girl might buy a dress and look towards her prom;
music and dancing through the night with a Beau upon her arm.
At Seventeen the night might end in a gentle tender kiss
As couples watch the Sun rise as it gives the waves the slip.
At Seventeen, a girl might think of college and career.
She might listen to loud music and maybe sneak a beer.


For a victim of progeria, life holds no such charms;
At Seventeen, her time is short, too soon she will be gone.
At Seventeen, in human terms, this girl was ninety-five;
every day a battle in the struggle to survive.
Like a comet burning brightly coming too close to the Sun
Hayley, wiser than her years, burned brightly and was done.
A young woman of seventeen named Hayley has died of old age due to a terrible genetic disease known as Progeria
Allan Mzyece Sep 2018
Once upon a time was I a prodigy,
Wandering and drifting to find a phrontistery,
A fantasy beyond thinking,
I was a child of precocious virtuosity.

But now time has liberated from my corpsic avatar,
And to God, I was announced a groom to a bride called progeria,
Not only I but now the entire human race seems to undergo ephemera,
A phenomena not to be taken dilemma,

Death do us part dear poet
Though through our good deeds our work serves eviternal, sempiternal-and eternal.
I know not who I am,
But the tombstone that is scarred with my name cements a legacy that
Buries everybody's histories.

Death is but void and will lead me to become  a martyr,
For I deeply believe that poetry is the finest art And  not a literature,
I am certain that a spiritual minister on the day of my burial will fail to point out that I was a sinister,
They will all say great things about me-
Where is the wrong, where is the perfect picture?


I once decapitated a seraph for I but thought it was a boobook,
Look!
Now I can be pseudocodenymic numerical, alphabetic artist.
Yet, what am I rather than being a poet?

For the reason that death will deprive me of my rights and belongings,
I don't wish to fall in love but sometimes I get caught up that she might be the daughter of Jesus,
Because I can't get my mind off her celestrial features.

Who else but her makes my story worth telling?
But yet I was in bedlam because of her,
Yelling like a certified lunatic playing,
I however can't forget the asylum's floors and ceilings,
The horrible medicine that got me to be always day dreaming.

Is this the same "cycle of psychopathic love that all these poets failed to describe?"
Affirmatively! This is something they will never outmatch,
Sadly, this all seeing sun never saw
That me and her were a match since this world begun,
Hence, I had to give her up to win everybody's heart,

I gained a voice of thunder to be crowned the darkness author alive,
So I ask,  where are the poets of yesteryear? The nail biting, acerbic, alcoholic nighthawk ******* who truly knew how to write?
WHERE IS WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE?  WHERE IS EMILY DICKINSON? WHERE IS EDGAR ALLAN POE?
indeed I outmatch them all, do you know why?
It's because I am still alive!
C  Jul 2016
Adalia
C Jul 2016
Adalia Rose.
9 years old.
Sassy, funny, lively and cheerful.

But her identity is incomplete,
without the blaring neon sign
DIAGNOSIS. DIAGNOSIS.

Yes wherever she goes,
at first, she's not Adalia Rose.
Her diagnosis is the first thing that shows.
She has progeria, you see.
But she is tired of all the pity.

She doesn't dream of being a man's princess. She never did.
But she likes fairy tales and Finding Dory.
She never dreams of being swept off her feet into a castle with glass stairs.

She just wants to live, smile and be happy. She finds reasons to smile about,
instead of holding on to the biggest reason she's got to frown about.
She is Adalia. 9 years old. More mature emotionally than I could ever be. She's a doll.
No acknowledgement could be
commensurate nar e'er
equivalent to countless years (scores of orbitz  
of unexplored wonder) – left...
(with millstones around neck)

to atrophy on severe truncated
limb mitts, now cause
for silent lachrymose as this
brother doth brook a wake

his pained self actualization
(particularly predicated on
decade number six
unavoidably approaching) uptake

analogous to 2001 A Space Odyssey,
when closing scene
of the film - image of embryonic
"Starchild" left a slake

king unshakable reverberation
Also Sprach Zarathustra
echoing in me noggin since
opening soundtrack did quake

of a much younger self, when seeing
the movie did overtake
puzzlement until I read the book
"aha" awareness did make

that minor mystery resolved, and
now childhood's end keepsake
recalled as the time thy vulnerable
psychological state did intake

pelting asteroid storm cratering a boy
who shied away, to forsake
growing up, and now haunted (akin
to ghost of Marley) not "FAKE"

shackled to an un freed spirit, that
got squelched as if a sudden brake
got jammed propelling this then puny
body electric...now doth ache.

Even though days of life lived with
(all my children now grown) ail
ling soul of stifled for want of indulging
in ordinary experiences bewail 
ling deprivation of accomplishing
healthy milestones regret a cold detail

reminding me as aging process speeded
as if an onset of late progeria fail
lings in this once skinny as twig youth,
now thinning hair bothersome - hail
yes (suspected cause underactive thyroid,
blood test will confirm), a jail

unseen by anybody even me finds spontaneity
bound from within this male,
whose counterproductive antics sought
to compensate for lost time did imp pale
and figuratively crucify myself at the
emotional expense of "star student" rail

ling (recent time gone by), thee (to her)
unforgivable hurt, the stuff of a true tale,
this papa does resign himself unintentional
misery untraversable unbridgeable gulf  
the expanse of a yawning Rhode Island
sized Leviathan whale.

oh...thank you for the Trader Joe's gift card
this dirt poor mortal doth leave ye 
with his cumulative loving re:guard
aware hiatus of estrangement (FROM ME) 
the sad story of my life with mom, dad, 
two loving sisters, who tried so hard

to reach out only to be rebuffed, as well 
Abby, Eden, Shana deserving of so 
much more joy...sorry girls dada starred
and created in his own living nightmare - 
alone in a wilderness more bleak than Siberia, 
within a solo battle pierced by my
own Damoclean Sword!

— The End —