"ague" poems
Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
and how the wind doth ramm,
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, ’tis why I am, Goddamm,
So ‘gainst the winter’s balm.
Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm,
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.
7.2k
Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.
Daffodil bulbs instead of *****
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.
Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,
He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
. . . . .
Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.
The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonette;
The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.
And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.
7.2k
Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one:
Inconstancy unnaturally hath begot
A constant habit; that when I would not
I change in vows, and in devotion.
As humorous is my contrition
As my profane love, and as soon forgot:
As riddlingly distempered, cold and hot,
As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none.
I durst not view heaven yesterday; and today
In prayers and flattering speeches I court God:
Tomorrow I quake with true fear of his rod.
So my devout fits come and go away
Like a fantastic ague; save that here
Those are my best days, when I shake with feare.
5k
O' agrestrial daisy, don't lose hope; for mine love is not fading. Ague hast hit me, thirsting to touch just one finger from thy hand.
Im a child within a man;
Im weak, hurting, eyes worn,
Drowned in no time,
One pocket and a dime,
As I seek out thy soul,
Mine soul wails and mourns.
Seeking a vessel, to sail the sea's,
I'd do anything, to get to mine queen;
Anything tis, tis I'd do, even if still far, I love thee mine muse.
Dost thou not seest, mine heart beating quick; it quiver's, it aches,
From the fears that I get.
The fears tis I get, to be thine own best, even in mine sorrows,
Darkness, distress.
I smile to impress, to show thee warmth, because O' how I love thee; even in mine own hurt.
Even in mine own pain, with crooked teeth, and an ancient way; im a soul of the past, not one of today.
When thou art cold, mine hair wilt be thy quilt, when the world try's to hurt thee, I'll take all it's filth.
When the cloud's overcome thee, I shalt be thy sunlight; when thou only knowest wrong, I'll make it all right.
When the bird's no longer chirp, i'll be that baby bird; that whisper's it loves thee, even in all of it's hurt.
©Brandon nagley
©lonesome poets poetry
©earl jane nagley dedication
Jan 13, 2017
Jan 13, 2017 at 11:25 PM UTC
This is not to say I pulley you down
And spread your Level to consort with my Ague
Your Bones, better than mine, to my Nerves frown
This Season as a Misbegotten Plague
A Blessing ideal is; Though disappoint
That Everyday Recorder plays again
Of Busy Trough's Effort spares to anoint
The very Oil you inspired since then
Come to think - Oil - its property slips by
And hard it is to keep the Dirt in-check
Though by Creed to be Faithful still - then lie,
As a Well-Mannered Specimen in-wreck.
All-in-all, we only wish for your Youth
To one day Understand the Better Truth.
Mar 15, 2013
Mar 15, 2013 at 3:24 AM UTC
‘There were icicles hung from the window-sill
At dawn, when I thought to peep,
And the snow’s built up to the top of the door,
It must be six feet deep.’
Diane was shivering under her gown
When she crawled back into bed,
‘You’d better go out and fix it, Phil,’
‘Too late for that,’ I said.
I’d peered on out of the window and
The sun was shining bright,
The birds were twittering in the trees
Awake in the early light,
There wasn’t a sign of ice or snow
At the door, or window-sill,
I went to check on Diane, because
I thought that she must be ill.
She lay, still shivering in the bed
I thought that she had the ague,
‘The ice is deep in your soul,’ I said,
But her eyes were cold and vague,
‘The ice is there on the window ledge
And the snow is piled at the door,
Go out and clear it away for me
Before it spreads to the floor.’
I stopped to look at the mantelpiece
At the picture of our son,
She’d cut him off with never a word
For some trivial thing he’d done,
We hadn’t seen him for seven years
And he never phoned or called,
She’d not shed even a single tear
And for that, I was appalled.
‘The cold is eating my very bones
I can feel it creeping in,’
She seemed so suddenly old and grey
(There are several types of sin).
‘Will you not go out and shovel the snow
For the wife that you used to love?’
‘I would if the snow was at the door,
But the sun is bright above.’
‘You haven’t loved me for years,’ she said,
‘You never do what I want!’
‘Love is a two-way street,’ I said,
‘Not a one-way covenant.
Before we take, then we have to give
So the feeling is returned,
But you’ve locked yourself in your tiny soul
And you’ve left me feeling spurned.’
‘I give you what you deserve,’ she said
‘Since you let our daughter go,
You let her marry beneath her,
As I said, ‘I told you so!’
‘You made our daughter unhappy, by
Rejecting the one she loved,
You wouldn’t go to the wedding, so
She said that she’d had enough!’
‘The ice has formed on the ceiling now,
Why can’t you feel the cold?’
‘The ice and snow that you’re seeing is
The ice cave of your soul.’
‘I’ve hated you for many a year,’
She spat, and she said it twice,
‘That’s sad, for I’ve always loved you,’
I began, but her eyes were ice.
David Lewis Paget
Aug 29, 2013
Aug 29, 2013 at 7:06 PM UTC
If, in the month of dark December,
Leander, who was nightly wont
(What maid will not the tale remember?)
To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont!
If, when the wintry tempest roared,
He sped to Hero, nothing loath,
And thus of old thy current poured,
Fair Venus! how I pity both!
For me, degenerate modern wretch,
Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think I’ve done a feat today.
But since he crossed the rapid tide,
According to the doubtful story,
To woo—and—Lord knows what beside,
And swam for Love, as I for Glory;
’Twere hard to say who fared the best:
Sad mortals! thus the gods still plague you!
He lost his labour, I my jest;
For he was drowned, and I’ve the ague.
1.7k
Mr. Wall Street,
Yes, YOU
You in the Perfect Suit
Here are your instructions:
Take off your polished handmade Italian shoes
Yes, take them off, right here in the street
Don't ague with me!
Peel off those long thin black dress socks
Feel the pavement under your
Smooth, clean white feet
Leave your former shoes to
Cry for their former owner
Some panhandler will grab them
and give them a very different life
Now walk into the cheap barber shop
And tell the barber to shave your head
Yes - all of your hair
That full head of thick corporate hair
Falling to the floor in a pile of silver silk
As the barber hides his laughter
Now walk barefoot and bald
in your $3000 pinstriped business suit
and your silk tie and cufflinks and starched white shirt
and cashmere overcoat
Walk barefoot though the financial district
Everyone will stare
Your colleagues and friends and competitors will laugh
As dust collects on your smooth, supple clean white soles
Destroy your privilege
Cut ties
Burn your bridges
But first cross over to the other side
Become an outsider
Barefoot bald and humiliated
You can start again
Mar 7, 2015
Mar 7, 2015 at 2:32 PM UTC
There was always an odour of sin around
The nave of that ancient church,
I knew of it as a choirboy,
I didn’t have far to search,
The smell welled up in the vestry,
A sulphur and brimstone tang,
It leached on into our cassocks
When the bell for the matins rang.
The priest, he was old and doddering
And didn’t look ripe for sin,
Old Father Coates may have sowed his oats
With nobody looking in,
But sin was there for a century,
It wasn’t of recent time,
The stories told of a Father Golde
I heard from a friend of mine.
Back in the days when the church was strong
And it ruled the lives of all,
A Father Golde was the priest of old
And preached of the devil’s fall,
When women came to confess their sins
And spoke of their evil deeds,
The priest took them at the altar there
In sin, and down on their knees.
The Nuns attached to the convent were
Obedient to his whim,
And many a cold and frosty night
He would call a sister in,
Her place, he said, was to warm his bed
To deter his chills, and ague,
And many a child was born in dread
To the parish, since the plague.
But one day after confessional
He had ***** a Colonel’s wife,
Who came to him with her petty sin
And described what it was like,
The priest, inflamed by her words and deeds
Had her pressed by the vestry door,
And who could know what she had to show
But the flagstones on the floor.
A troop of soldiers had marched on in
To assuage the Colonel’s rage,
The moment the wife had gone back home
And told of the priest’s outrage,
They seized the priest and they ran him through
With a sword right to the hilt,
Then tied him onto the cross outside
Where a sign outlined his guilt.
And every year on the first of June
You can hear the feet outside,
Marching up to the old church door,
The day that the father died.
A sense of sin that is coming in
As the church doors swing apart,
And blood appears on the altar in
The shape of an evil heart.
David Lewis Paget
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 5:28 PM UTC
When the rain is cold and pelting
When the windstorm shreds the trees
Do you find your courage wanting?
Is there weakness in the knees?
Have you faced the dark intruder?
Have you stared that challenge down?
Have you summoned forth the fortitude,
To keep humiliation gowned?
Camouflaged the leaden spinelessness,
That dreaded empty space,
Where once there was a warrior
Who wore courage on his face.
Felt the thrashing of the current
As the waves come pounding in,
Inexorably it lacerates
And tears the fair white skin.
The brutality of bedrock,
The blackness of the night,
And the fear that runs like mercury
Through the torment and the fright.
The uselessness of effort,
The lassitude of limb,
It’s the cramping ague of gutlessness
That is consuming him.
Dissipating storm clouds
The skies begin to clear
And with it go emergencies
And with it goes the fear.
Residually it lingers
As a gnawing hollow blend
Of anxious blue inadequacies,
Of unsubstantiated end
To performance under duress,
Compared to that which is the norm,
It’s just a blinding lack of courage
Whilst in the torment of the storm.
Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
24 November 2008
Jan 22, 2010
Jan 22, 2010 at 10:00 AM UTC
Seldom do you come,
Lighting up my dreams,
Anxiety wakes me up,
Vague memories though,
Escalating my heart beat,
Raving behavior,
Yelling for no reason.
Sep 23, 2015
Sep 23, 2015 at 12:07 PM UTC
Hello, Mr Wall Street
Mr. Wall Street,
Yes, YOU
You in the Perfect Suit
Here are your instructions:
Take off your polished handmade Italian shoes
Yes, take them off, right here in the street
Don't ague with me!
Peel off those long thin black dress socks
Feel the pavement under your
Smooth, clean white feet
Leave your former shoes to
Cry for their former owner
Some panhandler will grab them
and give them a very different life
Now walk into the cheap barber shop
And tell the barber to shave your head
Yes - all of your hair
That full head of thick corporate hair
Falling to the floor in a pile of silver silk
As the barber hides his laughter
Now walk barefoot and bald
in your $3000 pinstriped business suit
and your silk tie and cufflinks and starched white shirt
and cashmere overcoat
Walk barefoot though the financial district
Everyone will stare
Your colleagues and friends and competitors will laugh
As dust collects on your smooth, supple clean white soles
Destroy your privilege
Cut ties
Burn your bridges
But first cross over to the other side
Become an outsider
Barefoot bald and humiliated
You can start again
Mar 21, 2015
Mar 21, 2015 at 3:30 PM UTC
i.
She hath abated mine sorrow's, split mine manacles
Wherein afore day's, I was shackled and trampled;
I was left for expiry, mine soul felt retiring,
Ague gaveth me chill's, I got lost in opiatic pill's,
Death twas I, that I was admiring.
ii.
The world gaveth me none thrill- tis I wasn't meant for this life,
I besought at all costs, to find what was right.
Sent to me then, after all mine thirst and hunger for mine
One and true queen, camest Earl Jane, betwixt the dark shade,
Of Satan and his being's.
iii.
When she stepped in, Alleluia hit mine lung's, I found that one I sought, from so many year's ago, twas not love at first sight, I loved her from lifetime's humans do not knoweth; created in God's light. I loved her all along, ourn marriage was, hast been, and always wilt be abiding, timeless, in Cordelia strand's of song.
iv.
And tis when I do wrong, she sets me on better path's, she straightens me, she relates to me, she's mine kindred soul once again I found at last; she's the consort to mine well-being, she's beautiful, elegant, perfection is her key. Perfect to me, she aligns with the star's. Tis she, yea she, hath broken me from mine own prison bar's.
©Brandon Nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©Earl Jane Nagley dedicated ( Filipino rose)
Dec 27, 2015
Dec 27, 2015 at 7:39 PM UTC
I need not permission
to resign from my physical self
I can sit under the oaks
and listen to their sense
Shadow and raze out my
earthly bane and exisence
the flowers protest against discovery
for their treatise are sooth
and i will lay here for eternity
with no ague or war
accept their word
I will harness myself
with leavy quilts
In this shining state of mental perfection
Nirvana, I am intrenchant
Sweet notes from ancient trees
and young fawn with flower
palter through wheat
and into my soul
we are all hand in hand
Mar 10, 2014
Mar 10, 2014 at 11:38 AM UTC
Mr Wall Street
Yes, YOU
You in the Perfect Suit
Here are your instructions:
Take off your polished handmade Italian shoes
Yes, take them off, right here in the street
Don't ague with me!
You submit and obey
Not knowing why
You are my slave
Peel off those long thin black dress socks
Feel the pavement under your
Smooth, clean white feet
Leave your former shoes to
Cry for their former owner
Some panhandler will grab them
and give them a very different life
Now walk into the cheap barber shop
And tell the barber to shave your head
Yes - all of your hair
That full head of thick corporate hair
Falling to the floor in a pile of silver silk
As the barber hides his laughter
Now walk barefoot and bald
in your $3000 pinstriped business suit
and your silk tie and cufflinks and starched white shirt
and cashmere overcoat
Walk barefoot though the financial district
Everyone will stare
Your colleagues and friends and competitors will laugh
As dust collects on your smooth, supple clean white soles
Destroy your privilege
Cut ties
Burn your bridges
But first cross over to the other side
Become an outsider
Barefoot bald and humiliated
You can start again
Jun 17, 2015
Jun 17, 2015 at 11:24 AM UTC
Mr Wall Street
Yes, YOU
You in the Perfect Suit
Here are your instructions:
Take off your polished handmade Italian shoes
Yes, take them off, right here in the street
Don't ague with me!
You submit and obey
Not knowing why
You are my slave
Peel off those long thin black dress socks
Feel the pavement under your
Smooth, clean white feet
For the first time
Leave your former shoes to
Cry for their former owner
Some panhandler will grab them
and give them a very different life
Now walk into the cheap barber shop
And tell the barber to shave your head
Yes - all of your hair
That full head of thick corporate hair
Falling to the floor in a pile of silver silk
As the barber hides his laughter
Now walk barefoot and bald
in your $3000 pinstriped business suit
and your silk tie and cufflinks and starched white shirt
and cashmere overcoat
Walk barefoot though the financial district
Everyone will stare
Your colleagues and friends and competitors will laugh
As dust collects on your smooth, supple clean white soles
Destroy your privilege
Cut all ties
Burn your bridges
But first cross over to the other side
Become an outsider
Barefoot bald and humiliated
You can start again
Jan 7, 2016
Jan 7, 2016 at 3:32 PM UTC
Deuce Brother States, embrace your own Define
One which assigns your Profile to be Real
Another, by flip belongs to your Lime
Which in your Comfort does merrily Steal
Is this such Bulb, which you chose to Enjoy
Even though its Pockets carry a Plague
If, by Tempt's timing by reason deploy
Morning smoothes a Tan; Evening crumps an Ague
For a Coin as Janus begot is Enough
Even as it Matures your Chronology
Would better the Memoirs be Pure though Tough
Multiply this Peace your Anthology.
You're Ripe enough, at least in your own Crop
Whilst waiting for the Owl to perch its Drop.
Apr 10, 2013
Apr 10, 2013 at 10:23 AM UTC
Madison mounted her coal black mare
In the yard of the Smugglers Inn,
Her coat was black and her hair was fair
And her jodhpurs tucked well in,
The sky was in a threatening mood
With its thunderheads from hell,
As lightning forked on the ancient rood
And the rain teemed down as well.
‘You need to get to the Laird,’ I cried,
‘Tell him to haste to me,
Another day and she may have died,
I’m trying to set her free.
But the Pikemen stand outside her door
And they say they guard her skin,
There were locks and chains on her door before
Up there, in the Smugglers Inn.’
‘Tell him to bring his gallant troop
To dismay the Duke of Bray,
He means to imprison his daughter
In his tower, the Lady Grey,’
The Pikemen said that I’d lose my head
If I tried to breach her door,
And wouldn’t answer whenever I asked,
‘What is she locked in for?’
So Madison wheeled the mare around
And she put it to the spur,
If any could ride a horse to ground
I knew that it was her,
She headed off to the Castle Croft
Head bent to the driving rain,
With lightning flashing around her mount
I watched her across the plain.
What seemed to take forever, I thought,
Was merely an hour or two,
But then my fears were set at naught
As the troop came jangling through.
Each man had raised his sabre and
He’d kept his powder dry,
My heart was surging within me as
The troop came riding by.
And then, at last, was Madison
Still riding with the Laird,
Determined then to save her friend,
To show her that she cared.
The Pikemen soon were beaten down
Were lost in the affray,
I never did catch a glimpse of him,
Their lord, the Duke of Bray.
It took a moment to smash the locks
On the door of Lady Grey,
And all the troop had cheered out loud
As the chains, they fell away.
Madison was the first in line
To embrace the one within,
But we were not to know what lay
Up there, in the Smugglers Inn.
The Lady, held in a firm embrace
Had staggered out through the door,
But blood and pustules were on her face
Like we’d never seen before.
A dying Pikemen called, ‘You fools,
You’ve unleashed a bitter ague,
And then he sighed just before he died,
‘Behold, you have the plague!’
David Lewis Paget
Oct 12, 2015
Oct 12, 2015 at 6:16 AM UTC
it was a saturday night when i promised myself never to fall again because i knew it would only leave me scathed to the bone and lost in the desolated world that i had unnecessarily created in the past. i had come to the realisation that there was an inevitable slough of despond, waiting to pull me mercilessly into the black hole that i knew held a despicable love that i would refuse to ignore if i did not steer clear. though, steering clear was never my forte. instead, diving idiotically into cold waters without caution was where my roots stayed, in love with the fray of things. lost in my welter of thoughts, my little pandemonium, i dreamt of you and slowly tried to fathom how we ended. was it the loss of attraction, transient chemistry or the indubitable end that had already been set in stone? because all my life, i had tried so desperately to search for nonexistent formulas for why things ended, only to accept the fact that every thing was made to be ephemeral. stop, stop, just stop! my mind never failed to repeat, yet my heart failed to comply; my stream of consciousness always led back to you. i felt alone, pathetic, mawkish even, as i dialled your number with the dignity i no longer possessed. with each ring, i tried to stop the shivers down my spine that felt like a terrible ague, knowing that you had already given up on me, on us, and wanted nothing to do with me. you were obdurate on your decision, happy to move on.
but as for me? i remain that hideous book you indifferently hide on your shelf, in the shadows of your newfound lover.
(( yet, even now, that saturday night repeats itself every single day, the vicious cycle of an ancient spiel that i cannot seem to let go, because the thought of you coming back still remains, engrained into whatever pieces of my heart i have left. ))
Dec 1, 2014
Dec 1, 2014 at 1:25 PM UTC
*(After reading Dorothy Allison’s “To The Bone”)
That winter I did go crazy:
like a growing tire tear,
like naked sacked scrappers,
like the water waning sand
in the desert of your bones.
Nov 30, 2012
Nov 30, 2012 at 1:35 AM UTC
Mr Wall Street
Yes, YOU
You in the Perfect Suit
Here are your instructions:
Take off your polished handmade Italian shoes
Yes, take them off, right here in the street
Don't ague with me!
You submit and obey
Not knowing why
You are my slave
Peel off those long thin black dress socks
Feel the pavement under your
Smooth, clean white feet
For the first time
Leave your former shoes to
Cry for their former owner
Some panhandler will grab them
and give them a very different life
Now walk into the cheap barber shop
And tell the barber to shave your head
Yes - all of your hair
That full head of thick corporate hair
Falling to the floor in a pile of silver silk
As the barber hides his laughter
Now walk barefoot and bald
in your $3000 pinstriped business suit
and your silk tie and cufflinks and starched white shirt
and cashmere overcoat
Walk barefoot though the financial district
Everyone will stare
Your colleagues and friends and competitors will laugh
As dust collects on your smooth, supple clean white soles
Destroy your privilege
Cut all ties
Burn your bridges
But first cross over to the other side
Become an outsider
Barefoot bald and humiliated
You can start again
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 3:28 PM UTC
The cloak of loneliness which you wear
Portends of drama, death, darkness, despair
You molt indigo shades of deep blue
Just to be near you is to invite ague
Your emptiness comes as no surprise
Why do you feel so smug as you despise
Anyone who tries to peek past your dark mood
The sun shines even though you exclude
Possible types of rational relief
You wallow in your irrational grief
Do you think the sun will no longer rise
Because pitiful tears will cloud your eyes
I cannot live in your world that's so blue
But I don't want to go on without you
Mar 18, 2017
Mar 18, 2017 at 10:06 PM UTC
It all started with a handshake
Looking back it didn't really matter
One moment I wish to take
Vague to clear so that I can remember
Even words can't express
Just how a simple smile can change
One's life to know what happiness is
Yet hearts can fully comprehend it's range
Jul 24, 2014
Jul 24, 2014 at 1:44 AM UTC
Family Tree
They come from far and wide
once a year to mingle and snack
on catered shrimp and small talk
in the long line that snakes around
the room to the open bar besieged
five deep, the beating heart
of the party until the string band
starts up and everyone hits
the dance floor, limbs loose,
knees high, hair down, skirts hiked
generations of farmers and drifters,
rail men and conscripts, schemers
and failures, a cacophony of native
brogue and broken English, long
lazy vowels stretched to breaking.
The men have my nose, the women
your eyes, but neither you nor I claim
the crazy cackle coming from
a skinny gal with electric
hair or the flat, vacant gaze of
a fellow in coveralls,
hands like hay rakes, yellow
fingers balled into fists. The bar
closes at twelve, they start to drift
away, arms draped, propping each other
up, telling the same old tearful tales,
falls down wells, battle axes
to the head, starvation in alarming
numbers and many iterations of
pox and croup, ague and catarrh,
bilious fever, dropsy and the flux,
melancholia, milk leg and screws,
a miserable game of one-upmanship
savored by all as they disappear
into the night, fore-bearers eyeing
us at the door, polite yet taciturn,
playing things close to the vest
mum on the matter of the higher
branches of our family tree.
Oct 10, 2016
Oct 10, 2016 at 7:40 AM UTC
O the orange tinge, of the clusters,
that lie fallen in the brevity of time,
snatched of their beauty.
Rise will they again?
Or does an ague pursue them,
will they not display their true colors?
Or lie sunken in the wilting grass.
Autumn! Autumn, you have come indeed.
The fall and rise, is spun by the webs of time,
they will come hence, and go nether,
to the pits of darkness, and lay threadbare,
when they will to appear.
How can humanity gouge its hidden veils, shrouded?
Oct 9, 2017
Oct 9, 2017 at 9:37 AM UTC