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Victor was a little baby,
Into this world he came;
His father took him on his knee and said:
'Don't dishonour the family name.'

Victor looked up at his father
Looked up with big round eyes:
His father said; 'Victor, my only son,
Don't you ever ever tell lies.'

Victor and his father went riding
Out in a little dog-cart;
His father took a Bible from his pocket and read;
'Blessed are the pure in heart.'

It was a frosty December
Victor was only eighteen,
But his figures were neat and his margins were straight
And his cuffs were always clean.

He took a room at the Peveril,
A respectable boarding-house;
And Time watched Victor day after day
As a cat will watch a mouse.

The clerks slapped Victor on the shoulder;
'Have you ever had woman?' they said,
'Come down town with us on Saturday night.'
Victor smiled and shook his head.

The manager sat in his office,
Smoked a Corona cigar:
Said; 'Victor's a decent fellow but
He's too mousy to go far.'

Victor went up the his bedroom,
Set the alarum bell;
Climbed into bed, took his Bible and read
Of what happened to Jezebel.

It was the First of April,
Anna to the Peveril came;
Her eyes, her lips, her *******, her hips
And her smile set men aflame,

She looked as pure as a schoolgirl
On her First Communion day,
But her kisses were like the best champagne
When she gave herself away.

It was the Second of April.
She was wearing a coat of fur;
Victor met her upon the stair
And he fell in love with her.

The first time he made his proposal,
She laughed, said; 'I'll never wed;
The second time there was a pause;
Then she smiled and shook her head.

Anna looked into her mirror,
Pouted and gave a frown:
Said 'Victor's as dull as a wet afternoon
But I've got to settle down.'

The third time he made his proposal,
As they walked by the Reservoir:
She gave him a kiss like a blow on the head,
Said; 'You are my heart's desire.'

They were married early in August,
She said; 'Kiss me, you funny boy';
Victor took her in his arms and said;
'O my Helen of Troy.'

It was the middle of September,
Victor came to the office one day;
He was wearing a flower in his buttonhole,
He was late but he was gay.

The clerks were talking of Anna,
The door was just ajar:
One said, 'Poor old Victor, but where ignorance
Is bliss, et cetera.'

Victor stood still as a statue,
The door was just ajar:
One said, 'God, what fun I had with her
In that Baby Austin car.'

Victor walked out into the High Street,
He walked to the edge of town:
He came to the allotments and the ******* heap
And his tears came tumbling down.

Victor looked up at the sunset
As he stood there all alone;
Cried; 'Are you in Heaven, Father?'
But the sky said 'Address not known'.

Victor looked at the mountains,
The mountains all covered in snow
Cried; 'Are you pleased with me, Father?'
And the answer came back, No.

Victor came to the forest,
Cried: 'Father, will she ever be true?'
And the oaks and the beeches shook their heads
And they answered: 'Not to you.'

Victor came to the meadow
Where the wind went sweeping by:
Cried; 'O Father, I love her so',
But the wind said, 'She must die'.

Victor came to the river
Running so deep and so still:
Crying; 'O Father, what shall I do?'
And the river answered, '****'.

Anna was sitting at table,
Drawing cards from a pack;
Anna was sitting at table
Waiting for her husband to come back.

It wasn't the Jack of Diamonds
Nor the Joker she drew first;
It wasn't the King or the Queen of Hearts
But the Ace of Spades reversed.

Victor stood in the doorway,
He didn't utter a word:
She said; 'What's the matter, darling?'
He behaved as if he hadn't heard.

There was a voice in his left ear,
There was a voice in his right,
There was a voice at the base of his skull
Saying, 'She must die tonight.'

Victor picked up a carving-knife,
His features were set and drawn,
Said; 'Anna it would have been better for you
If you had not been born.'

Anna jumped up from the table,
Anna started to scream,
But Victor came slowly after her
Like a horror in a dream.

She dodged behind the sofa,
She tore down a curtain rod,
But Victor came slowly after her:
Said; 'Prepare to meet thy God.'

She managed to wrench the door open,
She ran and she didn't stop.
But Victor followed her up the stairs
And he caught her at the top.

He stood there above the body,
He stood there holding the knife;
And the blood ran down the stairs and sang,
'I'm the Resurrection and the Life'.

They tapped Victor on the shoulder,
They took him away in a van;
He sat as quiet as a lump of moss
Saying, 'I am the Son of Man'.

Victor sat in a corner
Making a woman of clay:
Saying; 'I am Alpha and Omega, I shall come
To judge the earth some day.'
44

If she had been the Mistletoe
And I had been the Rose—
How gay upon your table
My velvet life to close—
Since I am of the Druid,
And she is of the dew—
I’ll deck Tradition’s buttonhole—
And send the Rose to you.
In the meantime in the Állos kósmos or Ultramundi, Wonthelimar after hearing the speeches and paragraphs of the speakers saw from paradise how Calypso Lepidoptera appeared, approaching in great magnitudes on the dry land on the banks of the blue and golden stones of Skalá. In torrents of rushing from the water-sky with wind-water, by geomorphological hydraulics of the collapse of the irresistible capacity to harass each other in the ears of Seleuco's dialogues, after they piled up in the sneaking curds of him on the island of his speech. Right there it settled from the koelum or sky of the Lepidoptera from the Orofí or ceiling, on the natural arches of aeolian erosion and its devastating plumage, appearing in the subaerial splendor of Chauvet and its gloomy darkness, changing the morphology of the bank of Skalá turned into enchanted turquoise light also with Calypso nuances. From here Wonthelimar obscures the circumflex arc or circumflexes, which pierced and eroded the surface, piling up the ex-generals of Alexander the Great, to skewer them on the stump that was languidly seen supporting them, after the tides of Lepidoptera that avalanche in destined per capita towards the destined underworld of Wonthelimar.

Wonthelimar was separated from everyone by the moat that was separated from the gods of the surface, but now where the supporters of Seleucus were predestined by imbibing themselves in the bilocated kingdom of Chauvet and its darkness, where they were put into agreements of suitability and clarity of words discursive for the eagerness to persuade his major general. But they all fell into the middle of a dark Ultraworld, judging themselves to be dying in stockpiles of biosystems where no one helped them and gave them some indication or diagnosis of being separated from the canopy that drained them from spectral affairs, speaking as vivid visions of benefits and sovereignties that escaped from themselves without contemplation or quietism of the human race, which procreates xenophobia to kings without throne or nation. Under the Attic, calendar were the months here were only eighth, Anthesterion, received them with the name directly of the main festival celebrated in this month, Anthesteria. In goods of name contests in the semester of Pyanepsia, Thargelia, and Skira where they were relatively significant, in some of the greatest celebrations in the life of a Polis, which is not recognized in the name of the month. Some sparkled in the sound of the Great Dionysia celebrated in Elaphebolion (ninth month), and the Panathenaia in which they are only indirectly recognized in Hekatombaion (month one), named after the hecatomb, of the sacrifice of "one hundred oxen" celebrated at night. End of the Panathenaia. This is where the suspicious fondness of both families of Seleucus and Alexander the Great differed in the accent that marks the written line of the infra Polis, where the leaders of Haides or Hades are lost, for the purposes of Aïdes, as not indivisible, but with the presence of Wonthelimar, who is invisible but epically static on his balustrade in all the rings that chorally wore them for each patronage of the diádocos generals, even so he had betrayed the Hellenic legacy, by a Hellenic-Orthodox one in the disappearance of Alexander the Great in Babylon without knowing that it had been rescued by Wonthelimar, surpassing the limits of the rings of stefánes ibix, or Aros de íbiz, as nano kvantikoí daktýlioi, quantum nano-ring that augured to sensitize the dermis of its carpal phalanges, from the eighth, Anthesterion to Elaphebolion (ninth month), minus the one hundred and twenty days of gestation in a month of the attic of imníbiz, that it was of wise advice to receive him in the new engend rivers of Wonthelimar in the depths and bundles of marrow with gestation forms of an Ibex goat, with their embedded bases of stalagmites, filing the meaning of each life that was lodged in the depths of the caves and its opacity. The Eygues of Valdaine was the Acheron, but with half the deceased who sat in rows and unleashed their laurels that possessed poor aids tormented by mandrake root hands.

The underworld was a swamp that covered the heels of the diádocos in the immense blackness of the cavern that wounded them one and the other with its Kopis, by more than a hundred blows and slashes that covered them with mud and moans in their buried half bodies. That they had been intruded from linear entrances to the underworld of Wonthelimar. In the thick musts of the quagmire where objects with ornaments of fear and cavalier materiality lay, such mangrove deserts satiated with gloomy fibromyalgia and amnesia, refiguring in the wandering bones, that sinned in lights and destinies that were adopted in the sub-world with incorporeal needs., more than the exhaustion that tore the skeletal muscle of each one behind the meager compromise openings, in the strong ligaments of the host Wonthelimar that took them at forced steps towards paradises where there will never be consciousness from a Theseus typology, but from a sub taxonomy - Verthian mythological, for purposes and among others that unleash it by propelling self-infernos that are not those born by a Macedonian force or Satrap into puny kings turned into a servile, mute and decayed.

It is necessary, that solitude of all the entrances from the abyss into which they fell, was titanic and of ultraphobic acquiescent inspiration, and in the acid gestures of search of Persephone or Aerse that in random gestures fled from their persecutors, like females who ended fleeing from themselves falling into the back room where the end of souls is never exceeded or Psyché re emigrating from the punishments of a satire or a static that resulted in a ghostly wandering, or in tendentious spinners that tribulated in belated bundles of repentance. From primitive times, subjugations have been longed for in kings who would never think of leaving their cracks and washing their hands behind the backs of others who stood by, leaving the courage to lose themselves in the perversity of a body deposited in the Tartars, having to give them their prehistoric debts and meadows of carpeted debts and caged rooms.

The generals commanded by Seleucus walked barefoot along with the stump that wounded them in seams for their plantar areas, and in extreme distress, they did not dare to ask mercy from the cave host who transported them through the deep pit of perpetuity, where the frigid bullet of angina of Wothelimar, filled them with memories that protected their survival. In unworthy caprice and watery *****,… it ran frivolously down their legs, even after each impulse to recover the flashes of estimating being scared of oneself, after finding dead fruits subsisted halfway, feeling voices from the origin of the abyss that I quoted them.

Etréstles says: "Mashiach allow me to enter this grave, I do not know if I should go to rescue them, because I know what will happen..., I only ask that if I enter with courage, help me to find the same light of the exit, with the same memory of not to waste arrests, and not to lose myself in my entrustment by those who I know will not return”

Behind some Sabine poplars, it is seen how the elytra of the Lepidoptera were opened for those who crossed from the darkness without the appearance of their fruitful eyes that tickled praises of surrender, and not of ibid in the ibid that surrounded them, as if they were violated that heal at the moment when their faces departed from the miracle of privacy, and from the solitude decreed of non-existent company, companionship calming any dogmatic symptoms and hypoxia that the glimpse of the Eygues and the Acheron left them, further behind in which Saint John the Apostle and Vernarth, Reader and Petrobus to bring Etréstles back.

Saint John the Apostle says: “Vernarth go for your brother,… he wants to protect the souls of Seleucus and his comrades, go soon because there is little left to fill them with darkness which will even besiege in their reasoning and anti homelands that will not be from the din of the campanile, out of tune with joy that runs on the graces of the gift that frees you from the worst virus by not being anti-viral… ”.

Vernarth replies: “Etréstles is the slogan of Erebus, perhaps of Bumodos…, I have to stop him for his profession, since the comrades of Seleuco will not return, the effigies of Wonthelimar have made them of his children in Ultramundi, and what is Solstice of the underworld, it is only a small Sun that fits in the buttonhole of the orthogonal slot that confines it”.

At that time Raeder paraded where he before they reached the omega of the gully pit, running swiftly over the eyelets of Wonthelimar, leaving both completely naked, to tear them away from the contrived spell and bring Etrestles back all the way together and running., but both stripped of lightness and acceleration escaped from the centripetal bodies. After the tortured walls of the pit, they no longer supported themselves in their Skotos or Erebo of Wothelimar in such a primordial deity of this theogonic and fantastic event in the bilocated cavern of Chauvet in Skalá. Here all the densities and units of physical genres, from above and below surrounded them in the thick sulfur atmosphere, Ananké in such a goddess of inevitability ran after all who tried to reverse the situation of the diádocos, for the purpose of consenting their paragraphs Hellenics and to save their lives, but the mother of the Moiras went behind Etréstles and Vernarth along with Rader and Petrobus who were basking in the glow of Persephone that imbued them as they stagnated drinking mead with the Canephores who followed him. From this cryptic moment or from the bombastic insignia of Crete, Kanti's trotting from his Cretan figure was felt united with the Lepidoptera Calypso, redeeming Demeter from her crying on the edge of some Bern olive trees, emptier now that the last gradients of the agonic and venous voices in the hilarious of some diádocos that were completely absorbed by the benevolent illusion of Wonthelimar, snowy in the harrowing tenuity of his gestures and of the great Iberian that took them towards the heights of the hillocks and towards the Ultramundi that It turned them into proles of the mountainous areas, and into super aquatic monsters with thousands of loose eyes in the arches of the generals bleating, which transposed ****** subjugations of primal deities, and philastics of phantasmagorical genres of Hellas that is plucked from the peritoneum of their stomachs, and that guttural eradicated them from the blue adrenaline of Apollo.

This odyssey dispelled the orthogonal lines of the poetic affliction of those who could see the sunset and the Spyché ***** that antagonized Ananké's numinous efforts to extubate them, and perhaps exile them to the Theban plains to graze Achaeans of the first degree alongside Shamash. Lamenting of young afternoons and of the abysmal with beautiful hair of the generous of effects, swampy and of feverish Hadesian or Hade's rounds that crippled their districts, they emanated from some Marie Curie junk and vapors radiating this Parapsychological Quantum to them from their own holy final body., for a virtuous and rout of the Ultramundis of Wonthelimar.
Wonthelimar Ultramundi
g Aug 2013
There is a 93 year-old man. He has been driving for years
trying to unlock his lover's jaw
it is stuck tight with the thoughts which have become lost somewhere
near the back of her head.

He thinks about the mist in her eyes, how once they were islands.
She was a child surrounded by the sea. He was a soldier.
Sat next to two bombs they both went off,
when he met her
he told everyone he was the luckiest man alive. They were stranded together.

Now he drives around the Hebrides. Thinks about the summer
when the ferries stopped, they ate nothing but salted fish.
He is desperate for her to remember. Somedays she does.
The winter he met her father her family
had never seen an Englishman before. It was so bleak.
She only used to wear shoes when the snow fell like an apology,
now her feet are so lost they barely carry her
from bedroom, to bathroom, to window.
She looks out over walled gardens, everything she once had was an open space.

She tells me about the day he came home from the army.
Threw his pistol in the bin
like he could ever throw the war away
I think of the irony: a man trying to throw the pieces of his life away
that he could never forget. Now all he can do is look
through flesh and heartbreak
and too many stories to tell.
All the addresses in his book, like they're not just bricks and bones
and nursery rhymes
like it's all falling down now
through curtains
and IED's breaking through bodies over screens.
Like a train crash.
Like a house fire changing everything you know
holding it to your chest like it's more than ash.
More than this.
Looking out on a bank holiday wondering what goes on
behind all those closed doors
counting all the things you miss.

I would give up sleep for you.
I would live my life five hours behind.
I would spend my inheritance money.
I would leave like breaking in the morning
just slip out through the door.
I would swim the ocean, loose my body to the current
like a broken bottle frayed and battered until I was all green frosting and smoothed edges
and opaque.
I would wash up on your shore.

I would drive for miles. I would purpose build.
I would tear up the books, rewrite them with your name
over and over, out though the skies,
climb up through the atmosphere
paint the moon with your face.
Loose myself to gravity. Just give me something to blame.
Give me water. Give me tidal waves. Give me ocean hearts,
your storm-wall, ocean heart, breaking-wave kisses
wear me down gently.
Tell me your life story. Write me into it.

Remind me when I forget who I am,
even, when you have nothing else to give.
Take me home.
Tell me something true.
Pin me on your chest like a buttonhole,
wear me to your wedding.
Show me off
like I was ever something to be admired.
grace beadle 2013
(Handbook for Quarreling Lovers)I THOUGHT of offering you apothegms.
I might have said, "Dogs bark and the wind carries it away."
I might have said, "He who would make a door of gold must knock a nail in every day."
So easy, so easy it would have been to inaugurate a high impetuous moment for you to look on before the final farewells were spoken.
You who assumed the farewells in the manner of people buying newspapers and reading the headlines-and all peddlers of gossip who buttonhole each other and wag their heads saying, "Yes, I heard all about it last Wednesday."
  
I considered several apothegms.
"There is no love but service," of course, would only initiate a quarrel over who has served and how and when.
"Love stands against fire and flood and much bitterness," would only initiate a second misunderstanding, and bickerings with lapses of silence.
What is there in the Bible to cover our case, or Shakespere? What poetry can help? Is there any left but Epictetus?
  
Since you have already chosen to interpret silence for language and silence for despair and silence for contempt and silence for all things but love,
Since you have already chosen to read ashes where God knows there was something else than ashes,
Since silence and ashes are two identical findings for your eyes and there are no apothegms worth handing out like a hung jury's verdict for a record in our own hearts as well as the community at large,
I can only remember a Russian peasant who told me his grandfather warned him: If you ride too good a horse you will not take the straight road to town.
  
It will always come back to me in the blur of that hokku: The heart of a woman of thirty is like the red ball of the sun seen through a mist.
Or I will remember the witchery in the eyes of a girl at a barn dance one winter night in Illinois saying: Put off the wedding five times and nobody comes to it.
Oscar Mann Dec 2015
I’ve been mistaken for a conquistador
When really I just break hearts by accident
There’s no evil in my deeds
And no wickedness in my words
I’m just looking for lovers who are lost

I’ve been trying to fix the unbroken
And all I do is break what can’t be fixed
There’s no cleverness in my words
And no thoroughness in my deeds
I’m just a lost soul looking for love

So you will know me by the trail of broken hearts
And the flower in my buttonhole
And that smug look on my face
And the searchlight in my mind
Aimed at nothing in particular
Garima Thapliyal Jun 2017
I know that that heavy burden has been clawing inside your heart,
Years has passed,
You never tell,
I never asked.

I've seen your fall from the catastrophe,
And I know your pain in immense.
But what worse it could be,
I am standing helplessly,
Feeling like a *****,
But not doing anything.
I wish you'd have allowed me just for once
To enter there
Where you have suppressed your pain so hard.

Just tell me once,
how is it valid
to share the laughter aloud
but when it comes to tears,
(your tears)
You back off.

Just tell me once,
Why is it easy
to talk about all the beauty and the bounty the life has given,
to buttonhole me with all your talks,
Squabbling around the irrelevant sometimes,
But it scares you to talk about the story of your scars.

Just tell me once,
how is it fair
that my pain, my trouble, my problem becomes ours,
and yours is always yours.

Just tell me once,
why you are so hard to explore.
It's been years of our being together,
why you are always this mysterious.

Just tell me once
how is it relevant in our strong bonding of ages.

May be it's too painful to talk about,
May be it's me who isn't worthy enough,
Whatsoever it may be,
but I know you ain't much healed,
And it bothers me.

I can't assure you that unveiling your scars will heal you definitely
But the one thing I am sure of:
It feels good to be listened,
listened in enchantment.
I know it because you do the same to me
And It bolsters my strength.

Honey!
We all have our shadows
Pour it out &
Burn them down.
May be then you'll feel a little lighter.
mike dm Oct 2014
The scent
of an orchid
Pinned to war criminals
Buttonhole the tor of either/or

Fell lapel
smile say cheese
See the teeth crepuscular urns urge

They speak
And raise the untruth
Clubfooted
The living dread
Cecelia Francis Jul 2017
What tender hands
and lovely finger pads
thumbing cloth and
phone screens:

If tender buttons can
be pushed through
a buttonhole then

a rigid zipper
might also
bend and sigh
Richard Riddle Jun 2016
Chances are, you have to do a 'search', then order one on line. If you're under 60 years of age, you probably never heard of it, anyway.

Walking in to a pharmacy, or drug store, asking a young clerk, who is in their late teens, or early twenties, or even 40's to 50's, knowing very well what their reponse will be before you ask the question, becomes'comical', seeing the puzzled expression on their faces, especially when the companies web site indicates the store has it "in stock. A"simple little tool", inexpensive, but to some, of which I am one, 'priceless.'  It can relieve a huge amount of frustration in seconds, put a smile on your face, make your day "bright" again, saves time, can help prevent being late for appointments, and it has been around for centuries, long before the 'zipper' was invented. Approximately eight inches long, solid handle, with a curved wire tip, two and a quarter inches in length. I introduce you, to,"The Button Hook!", Tah-Dah!

This "simple little tool" is used by many who are afflicted with such maladies, as arthritis, or have neuropathy issues in their hands, making it difficult to button a shirt, pants, etc. Just insert the wire end through the buttonhole, loop it around the button, pull it through.
Some tools have a 'hook' on the opposite end of the handle, to help pull shoelaces through the eyelets.

I realize this is not a poem, but there are many on the site in my age range that may have similar issues, or perhaps physical issues due to injury or illness. Just wanted to pass this on to you.(I posted a photo on my Facebook timeline.)

richard riddle 06-06-2016
defines the mass, not the counting.

weight of notes, concerned her, no

looking up, she slightly apologised, nearly,

I went outside to the cash machine,

where she probably wanted me to be, really.

then buttons,  joy to spend the day working,

styles and colours.

i do like the feel , 50 grammes each time.

the comment on tedium, returned with memories

of grandmas box, phobias, trouser buttons,

linen with shanks.

I  have found the  buttonhole scissors.

sbm.
Zoe Hinks Mar 2015
My sweetness
The rose that tumbles into my path
I will twine you into my life
You will live, forever in my buttonhole
The adventures we have will be slow
The dew in the mornings
Will rest in your petals once more
You will shake in the wind as we run
Your thorns will scratch my skin
And we can drift down the lonely coast
Just me and you
I sit entranced by the silver screen
To watch and wait for your eyes,
To peer on out, as I sit and dream,
Between the clouds in my skies.
I’ve carried you in my heart so long
Without a kiss from your lips,
But sat and sighed till I almost died
For a touch from your fingertips.

I’ve traced the gentle curve of your cheek,
The noble arch of your brow,
The slow spread of the smile that said:
‘I want to be with you, now.’
I’ve watched the tears that we both have shed
For the years that were lost in time,
When you could well have belonged to me,
Or I could have made you mine.

But time and distance are so unfair,
I see you, bright like a star,
One I could wear in my buttonhole
If only it wasn’t so far.
We both reach out and we touch the screen
I trace my fingers on yours,
One day we’ll see, what will be, will be,
But your camera’s set on pause.

David Lewis Paget
Al Drood Oct 2019
An unseasonal warm damp wind blows,
dislodging decayed yellow leaves
that slide along humid currents,
down and down again onto wet,
algae-smeared tombstones.

Behind the church a tired sun sets,
casting vague shadows
across a dripping graveyard
where slugs slide effortlessly
destorying floral tributes.

An old man wipes his brow,
remembering a distant youth
when sharp frosts chilled October's bones,
and keen bright stars twinkled
beneath a Moon bleached-white.

Southern winds never blew back then,
not when he stole apples
from the burgeoning Rectory orchard,
and laughed as holy fury raged
behind diamond panes.

Leaning on the rotting lych-gate,
he mused on how times have changed.
Lost innocence of youth?
Now children walk abroad
like hooded demons, demanding gold!

And the old man sighed at his ***** suit,
his mildewed shoes, and faded plastic buttonhole.
His memory wasn't all that good,
and he didn't get out much these days.
Was it really a year since they'd buried him?
Al Drood Oct 2018
A mild, damp breeze blows,
dislodging decayed yellow leaves
that slide along misty currents,
down and down again onto wet,
algae-smeared tombstones.

Behind the church a tired sun sets,
casting vague shadows
across a sodden graveyard
where slugs slide effortlessly
destroying rotting floral tributes.

The old man wipes his brow,
recalling a distant youth
when sharp frosts chilled October’s bones,
and keen, bright stars twinkled
beneath a bleached and bone white moon.

Unseasonable winds never blew back then,
not when he stole apples
from the vicar’s bursting shed,
laughing with his pals as holy fury
raged behind diamond panes!

Standing by the open lych-gate,
he mused how times have changed.
Lost innocence of youth?  You can keep it!
He’d seen his own grandchildren laughing at him,
reflected in the corner-shop windows.

The old man sighed at his ***** suit,
his mildewed shoes and faded plastic buttonhole.
His memory wasn’t all that good,
and he didn’t get out much these days.
Was it really a year since they’d buried him?
Arlene Corwin Jul 2020
I cannot say what was my motive in writing this, believing all the time that I  was through with talk of amputation.  And then I saw and heard a splendid performance on TV and as one does in moments of exuberance, even while sitting in one’s living room, I was moved to euphoric applause.  The result? No sound, just blunt and muffled ache.

   Things I Cannot Do* (see bottom note)

I can no longer play a chord.
Cannot applaud,
Stand on my head,
(Joints stiffening, weak and one-sided).
Unattainable: the open can or zipped up pants
The coffee cup that’s minus handles.

Cannot roll up a left sleeve,
The right hand being less effective…
Buttoned blouses flatten me
Daunting, wearying and taunting me
While I, one-handed, work to fill
A much-too-narrow buttonhole.

Every day the list goes, growing
Markedly, perceptibly, unreasonably.
Turning up when breaching laws
An ordinary man ignores:

Reaching, stretching… temperatures:
The hot, the cold,
The simple, slippery things to hold:
All those courses now on hold
Until some bright, prostheticist
Comes up with some adroit device;
New, useful for this jazz pianist.

With not a soul to sue,
The things I can and cannot do
Continue to run neck and neck,
Tied for first place, stroking,
Karma, nature, God’s good grace,
The ever racing Time
Take trophies back to each their homes.

* August 3, 2020 will be one year since I collapsed with sepsis and had 7 fingers amputated.

Things I Cannot Do 7.30.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin
Cedric McClester Sep 2019
By: Cedric McClester

That *****-*** *****
Has found his niche
And is getting rich
But here’s the glitch
The Emolument  Clause
Because, because
Of what he exhibits
That it prohibits

That *****-*** *****
Finds himself in a ditch
But he refuses to switch
Because his palms itch
I swear to you friends
It’s all about the Benjamin
And he’s on a binge
You could say he’s  unhinged

That *****-*** *****
And his erstwhile friend Mitch
Both sing off pitch
Until you can’t tell which
One places first
At being worst
They both ignore the needy
And favor the greedy

That *****-*** *****
Like a buttonhole stich
Is only there to enrich
Things he has pitched
Like his property
With unusual glee
Which we all can see
He does nothing for free













Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2019.  All rights reserved.

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