John Keats
Coughed tuberculosis all over his sheets
And died at 25
And remains unalive.

Hope is drying up
Like a Well dries after the monsoon,
Sitting in this room, alone and aloof,
I have counted the stains on the wall,
None of it is more prominent than the
One I have with me, I'm a social pariah,
like an untouchable, polluted with death;
Run, Run away from me,
I hold death in my lungs.

I pursued my disease
With a virulent persistence
Like the plague
Or your pestilence
I fed upon your opulence
Walking red death
I marked your flesh
The whooping cough
The symptoms most forgot
Dreaming darkly
Poets cry sadly
Artists die crying
As the fever kept eating
All of their sanity
Inch by inch I crept
Awake while you slept
Burning holes in your brain
Until nothing of you remained
Just a cold cart to carry
The carrion left behind
But I still miss
That delicious mind