"cholera" poems
A melancholy ***** we came to adore
in mournful tone, finish the tale abruptly
and sob, uncontrollably;
"Memories of my melancholy ******
including "Love in the times of cholera"
are now part of our folklore, this land
of cashew groves and banana plantations
in Indian landscape, far far away from Latin American shores.
Her lascivious days are over
death visits the house of love, blood splattered
and a haunt of dark happenings, that begets children with tails,
shame, honor and secrets creep out of manuscripts.
Gabo is no more, no more"Living to tell the tale"
the Part Two, promised before.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, after three false starts
goes to his final abode for rest, now.
A coded manuscript, written in
in classical Sanskrit,
(the language of all divine texts
of Indian sages of yore)
scripted by the mysterious gypsy,Melquiades
predicts the wipe out of Buendia clan
of five generations
Torrential rain and deluge engulf Macondo,
ends "One hundred years of solitude".
Gabo you point towards east
what is the answer to the conundrum of Buendias?
In Mexico city
they were preparing to take Gabo to his last ride
to the origin of all magical realism he'd return
In a land far away,
yet exactly the same landscape as Latin Americas
we grieve his death as that of one of our own
Gabo, in past thirty years, you mysteriously taught us
to discern the magical realism of cosmos
Apr 19, 2014
Apr 19, 2014 at 12:35 PM UTC
You lived alone in the solititude
Of pure hundred years in Colombia
Roaming in Amacondo with a Spanish tongue
Carrying the bones of your grandmother in a sisal sag
On your poverty written Colombian back,
Gadabouting to make love in times of cholera,
On none other than your bitter-sweet memories
Of your melancholic ***** the daughter of Castro,
Your cowardice made you to fear your momentous life
In this glorious and poetic time of April 2014,
Only to succumb to untimely black death
That similarly dimunitized your cultural ancestor;
Miguel de Cervantes, a quixotic Spaniard,
You were to write to the colonel for your life,
Before eating the cockerel you had ear-marked
For Olympic cockfight, the hope of the oppressed,
Come back from death, you dear Marquez
To tell me more stories fanaticism to surrealism,
From Tarzanic Africa the fabulous land
An avatar of evil gods that are impish propre
Only Vitian Naipaul and Salman Rushdie are not enough,
For both of them are so naïve to tell the African stories,
I will miss you a lot the rest of my life, my dear Garbo,
But I will ever carry your living soul, my dear Garcia,
Soul of your literature and poetry in a Maasai kioondo
On my broad African shoulders during my journey of art,
When coming to America to look for your culture
That gave you versatile tongue and quill of a pen,
Both I will take as your memento and crystallize them
Into my future thespic umbrella of orature and literature.
Apr 20, 2014
Apr 20, 2014 at 4:57 AM UTC
Her man had left for California.
Left her with nothing but the dog
to fight the emptiness of her apartment.
She told me she couldn't sleep anymore,
told me she couldn't eat anymore.
She got sick,
so sick— swore that it was
tuberculosis, malaria, typhoid fever—
My experience led me to my own diagnosis;
another case of a love long lost.
I didn't have the heart to tell her.
Instead I slept with her,
despite the risk of sickness.
She was afraid it was contagious.
I laughed, told her I would
take the risk.
I stayed there two weeks, laughing.
She could eat again,
she could smile again,
she made up love late into the night.
It seemed like this
quarantine was paradise.
Till up one night there was a
knock on the door.
It seemed like her bags
were already packed.
It seemed like she was gone
within the few moments it took to see
who it was behind the door.
Told me to lock up the
apartment, leave the key under the
*** of wilted hydrangeas.
He was back from California.
It seemed like she was cured—
of her malaria, her yellow fever, her cholera—
Just like that, a clean bill of health.
A modern day
miracle.
It seemed to have been
contagious,
after all.
Aug 21, 2013
Aug 21, 2013 at 1:06 PM UTC
The truth about poets
Is
They’re not all alike
Some are derelicts
Scalawags
Lovers
Sisters
Some say they’re writers
Instead of Poet
For they know what that puts
Into the minds of others
Romantic
Lethargic
Gypsy
Some will never write novels
Poems are their Ulysses
Their ‘Love in the Time Of Cholera
Some are sad
Withdrawn
Choose to live there
While some poets
Use their words
To claw their way out
Some have fallen out of love
&
Want someone
ANYONE
to listen
While some have fallen in
the deepest ocean
&
Want to tell the world
What this man
This woman
Means to them
Most write their verses
Alone
Some at midnight
Some at sunrise
Some with coffee
Most with bottles
Most will never see the reaction
Of many
Will never hear
‘I like that...’
And most don’t want to be famous
Or sometimes heard
We
Just want to be
Ourselves
Feb 20, 2018
Feb 20, 2018 at 1:24 PM UTC
As the wind blows across the fiery desert,
The desperate people of Yemen sigh.
How many more will suffer today?
How many more children will cry?
A Saudi-led coalition
Strikes with a heartless disregard,
Leaving behind misery--
Death and destruction its calling card.
Choking the poor country, the Saudis
Organized a major blockade,
Cutting off vital medicine,
Food, and water, and stopping all trade.
Cluster bombs have fallen on cities.
Thousands of innocent people have died.
Hospitals and schools have been hit.
How can such horror be justified?
Millions of people risk starvation
If all the bombing does not end.
The Saudis hunger for more and more weapons,
And they have billions of dollars to spend.
A bomb made by Lockheed Martin
Hit a Yemeni school bus
Killing fifty-one people, and hurting
Many more, thanks to us.
A U.S. bomb hit funeral mourners;
One destroyed a marketplace.
That our support causes such
Atrocities is a disgrace.
The people suffer from cholera--
Something that is hard to avoid
When a country's sanitation
Facilities are being destroyed.
A massive humanitarian crisis
Plagues the country despite appeals
To end the conflict by caring nations,
While major players dig in their heels.
Sunni-Shiite conflicts continue
With innocent citizens caught in between.
Callous leaders turn their heads,
Afraid to speak up or intervene.
-by Bob B (10-17-18)
Oct 17, 2018
Oct 17, 2018 at 11:05 AM UTC
The Syrian process is a serial problem
When the disenfranchised
Cause a landslide
Of historical hatred
The key that ignites
Business and commerce
Wildfire hearts
And boiling skin
The harsh outbreak of deadly cholera
The blockade of the forceful armada
The coalition forces
Run wild like horses
The bombs keep falling
The people cry
The engine keeps stalling
The car dies
The white phosphorus
Brought by the white prosperous
Can burn to the bone
And wounds can ignite up to three days later
But the people of Raqqa
Are used to reigniting scars
They're used to searing flesh
That melts like tar
Where this will go
No one knows how far
Machines must be sustained
Hearts will be untamed
Lives constantly rearranged
A human rights activist attempts to send a report
What he's witnessed in Raqqa
Injustices; perceived and objective
But Hellfire
Turns the Internet cafe
Into a senseless violence display
The dirt, blood, and bodies
Mixed and spread like the art
That was ignored to lead to this quagmire
Whether this calamity started
At the Melian dialogue
Or a market diagram
Or a martyr's diatribe
What we need now is an m.d. to suture the wounds
But who will save us?
When noble protectors are blown up
And the reigniting scars scorch the hands that heal
Jun 12, 2017
Jun 12, 2017 at 7:48 PM UTC
They told me the only thing that could cure heartache was war, and since the war wouldn't take me I figure the only thing to do now is take up a life of crime. Gabriel Garcia Marquez says in Love in the Time of Cholera that the only cure for heartache is to find other hearts to break. Five years have passed and I still remember without fail the flint of a lighter, the squint of an eye, and the bell of your dress. I dream a dream each night, sweet variation of the story of you. It comes down to a letter sometimes, I go to the window well with a notebook and a pencil and I draft a sonnet, sometimes a verse, any form of an expression to idle the time it takes for me to find you. I know stars that haven't lived as long. The way I cupped my hands over your ears, the way rapture lived and loved, you kissing me in the shade of the palm trees up their on Notre Damen Ave. I know the curve of the Earth wrapped in the shades of the skin on your body. I live every day for the chance that I will meet you again.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 3:24 PM UTC
He lives in a time of plague.
The tag team of cholera and dedication killed his father, for all Dr. Juvenal Urbino knows, his father was faithful to both work and love.
The good doctor knew from an early age that his work would be his love, and from a slightly less tender age he discovered that his love of flesh and the body ran deeper than mere science could take him.
He met Fermina Daza in the doorway between clinical curiosity and obsession over her doe’s gait, and as he walked through his heart made room for a new kind of dedication.
He thought his devotion would be equally as precise as his practice.
Fifteen or so years of marriage, between years in Paris they bled together like a Van Gogh after a rainshower, the intricacies of their companionship were jointly held in a contractual cradle, but neither of them felt obligated.
Dr. Urbino was before my time, but my story will know the life of Carlos Mucharraz, Pre-Med major, they both dedicate themselves to their love. I’ve never seen her, but I can imagine Carlos likens her gait to that of a doe. He fawns over her from 17 hours away, for nearly a year.
Like a Texas dust devil, he sends his love through the air to Minneapolis to brighten her phone screen and her day.
They’ve only ever spent time together twice.
I’d like to think of his devotion like a boulder, immovable, but twisters slither across prairies as wicked winds push them towards seas of lust, but I’d like to think his love flew above turbulent skies.
I thought Dr. Urbino as a rock.
He must have thought of his fidelity as a disease. His father died fighting cholera, and Urbino would not let his affliction of faithfulness **** him. He thought himself ill, and the mantra of his practice taught him one thing only: cure.
In a slum of San Juan de la Cienaga, pants around his ankles, holding a mulatto girl’s legs around his waist, he crumbled like stale bread as he plunged himself into infidelity.
This man of granite broke and fragmented, his sin etched a crooked cobweb of fractures into his back, I wonder if the beads of sweat stung his spine, or dulled the pain.
But maybe I should put my faith in dust devils.
Humans may be able to shatter the hardest stone, but no one commands the sky, for it straddles North and South, East and West, Fort Worth and Minneapolis.
Jul 1, 2013
Jul 1, 2013 at 7:20 PM UTC
Not so long ago we were made orphans Plucked form the family tree that grew us into a nation Phobia struck us like cholera Religion armed us against our brothers Leaders occupied with zero point agenda.
.
Blood, our special kind of rain poverty, the only completed government project Corruption, our newly designed flag And breath, our only hope.
.
Empty caskets call silently for our body As we shoved old bones to make room for new ones Our pain covered with GREEN and WHITE paints Pain, pain all over and over again.
.
We've found a new home Back in the ruins, where we came from Let's mske our tents,and forget fishing traps Because we might be here for an hundred while.
_Drunkpoet_
Jul 6, 2018
Jul 6, 2018 at 5:02 PM UTC
there is cholera in the time of love.
quarantined feelings
making sure this fever
will not spike to five hundred
sixty-one.
there is cholera in the time of love.
gas masks of affection
hazmat suits of admiration
latex gloves of love.
is it the cholera infecting
the love or the
love infecting the
cholera?
May 9, 2010
May 9, 2010 at 10:25 PM UTC
~
*Ragged mist of stalled horizon,
from dry dock
to disadvantage point
second hand shops
of sackcloth and ash,
they contain multitudes
treading the outside edge
of perception,
rehearsing disaster
in fistfuls of earth,
and the immaterial:
the stuff of pure shadow
a bevy of dead buildings
resemble a fallen actress
in the throes of dance,
with emaciated figurines leaning
forward in the temple,
listening for clues
too far to whisper
work will never resume
on the tower,
and it will remain painfully scanty,
a place to bury strangers
or raise up cholera
the third world summer
sun on sacred walls,
red before orange,
let the rays burn away our sins,
we contain multitudes
but one step inside doesn't mean
we understand anything*
~
Mar 22, 2023
Mar 22, 2023 at 5:29 PM UTC
Zero One and modern blight
Travel at the speed of light.
We wondered on the Wandering Jew,
Or, in lieu,
Orthon, Urian or Lilitu.
We trepanned our empty skulls,
Searched our humours,
Were touched by Rulers!
Now troubling symptoms of want and need,
Have blighted growth of yesterseed.
Patient Zero left no lead.
East fingered West
(and vice versa)
Was Ireland really the cause of cholera?
Did Blacks languish in Tuskegee squalor?
We christened Mary, but drank the water.
Fracked Incubus and Succubus
From son and daughter.
Patient Zero left the slaughter.
We deprived women of their tea
To cure wandering womb hysteriae.
Deviances and leaking lesions
Were headwaters of women's *****
Patient Zero has no season.
The barber sensed it might be smell,
So our widened streets became a sulfurous hell.
And wastelands swelled
Where curled cats dwelled.
(no talk of Michelangelo)
II
Our children's blight has a techno name,
Like the rose, IT smells the same.
With zero tolerance I lay blame
On screens and phones and video games.
The world wide box stores flipped their lids,
Touching all who crawl the social grids;
From the base of Mammon's pyramid.
Now Jake believes he's a gangsta dude
Since posting whatever on You Tube.
Nothing to gain, nothing to lose:
No services rendered but expects what's due.
Inflated egos are a system symptom,
Clearing firewalls, reaching children.
Patient Zero is no phantom.
There is no tale of rat or flea
As cause of lost immunity.
There is no open sore to fester,
The Selfie is the X-ray picture.
Patient Zero is so much quicker.
In our gel of techno bliss,
On our elliptic petrie dish,
Bathed in more than we could wish,
Patient Zero will finish,
And with that whimper
All vanish.
Mar 8, 2014
Mar 8, 2014 at 8:53 AM UTC
head split apart
erupting galaxies
cheshire smiles
hanging within
a bubbling atmosphere
too bent and deformed
to house life
but dead beating hearts.
stuck inside a beehive
with stinging ringing
rubbed raw skin.
a yellow
fever
running rampant.
Nov 17, 2014
Nov 17, 2014 at 11:48 PM UTC
This is a place where you can see everything coming
from far away;
a place where people come
to leave;
a place where people pack in the middle of the night,
and wake the children
while it's still dark out,
hoping for hope in the cholera
of a sunrise
and the 5 a.m. Greyhound;
this is a place where there is no flea
market, just a strand of people
on the side of the road
a table and a parti-colored distress,
while their kids play in grass lots;
this is a place where factories are built,
clandestine factories; factories with no
signposts, and no barbed-wire fences;
this is a place where there is always something green
in the tilled rows crowding up against the road,
not necessarily growing,
but maybe the signs of an arbitrary decay;
this is a place for old trailers and rust tears;
telephone poles more than a stake in humanity,
communication rather than introspection,
redemption more than salvation,
revitalization more than pleasure,
insight more than hope,
promise more than dreams,
this is a place where a father rushes up to the bus,
pushing the kids,
as he ushers his wife on board,
the little children hopping up each step,
as he says
"Get on, and we outta here."
This is a place where families don't have belongings
where you don't belong to anything.
This is a place you can leave easily,
because it is a place with a name
you can't remember.
Feb 6, 2012
Feb 6, 2012 at 10:34 AM UTC
This is the story of Felix Riley
An Irishman from County Cork
Conceived during the great famine
And delivered by the stalk
He was one of ten; 6 brothers, 3 sisters
All of whom he cherished
Both of his parents passed away
From starvation and cholera they perished.
His father was a peasant farmer
From the port town of Kinsale
Working every single day
To bring home bread and ale
He died in the summer of 47
A year that many did
His wife Breanna heartbroken
But from the kids she hid
Not long after, she died too
Taking with her 3 little chislers
Poor Felix Riley was left solitary
When split from his brothers and sisters
He learned to fend for himself
And then met his lovely wife Bria
He never saw his kin to that day
And probably wont again, he'd fear
Like his father he worked and worked
To bring home food for their little one
And one day hoped he could earn enough
To buy a table to eat it on
He worked every hour he physically could
Almost every one god sent
But every week when he got his envelope
The money was already spent
Never disheartened he loved his wife
And his little daughter too
He remained optimistic in any weather
And through tough times powered through
Alas his determination was futile
In the face of the aftermath of the blight
He died at a tender age of 26
After putting up a hearty fight
His story is one of over a million
Who's stories are somewhat hidden
From the books and lessons given in schools
Their telling is almost forbidden.
Oct 19, 2018
Oct 19, 2018 at 5:49 PM UTC
I am sick of the way I'm treated.
Tricked, thrown in the trash like a piece of chewed up gum.
Being cheated into thinking utter lies.
I am no marionette any longer.
I live by my own rules
And I break them as I please.
It doesn't matter if I am cast from the little island of society.
I've been living on the rocks anyway.
I'd rather be independent than popular and queenly.
I leave behind the liars
Evil-doers
Users
Abusers.
I'm sick of it and I'm sick of you.
You're the flu, he's cholera, and she's AIDS.
Give me my freedom vaccine now.
The side effects aren't important.
Jan 13, 2011
Jan 13, 2011 at 3:11 PM UTC
In Petticoat Lane she sells her wares
by the toilets for Gentleman's granite stairs
shoe laces and buttons colours abound
bids good morning to all that are around
Her cheeks are flush with meadow fever
and with a touch of fatal cholera too
yet there she stands all a sweating
to give pennies to her father, with all his betting
Then when she gets home and gives her pennies
her father will walk out without a thank you
she will again bathe her crippled mother
and with tears of an Angel, will cry
By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris
Nov 13, 2013
Nov 13, 2013 at 9:11 PM UTC
Solitude helps me find shelter in pain
the inspiration comes as a form of retaliation
against the incertitudes of the heart
interludes of interwinding moments.
Words only write themselves
if there's suffering to be had;
ageless solitude is immortal
like ghosts of loves past.
Love in the time of cholera
love in the time of aids
uncertain loves in the times I live
I roam the Earth without being part of it
only certain of my own existence
in any given moment, time or place
I live where I don't belong
and yet I don't belong where I live.
Solitude has bonded
with what is left of me
scrapping together the remains of my soul
becoming one with my bones.
Like a mortal disease
and yet its bitterness
taste better than any sweets
I wouldn't trade it for anything that breathes,
anything that touches the Earth
anything that sees the Sun.
My notepad becomes
engulfed with it's aroma
and it's aura escapes through my pores
turning this pen into a sword
stained with my revenge
there is nothing I wouldn't dare to say
if my heart is ravaged with pain
painted with disdain
repossessing my very being
that it wouldn't dare to lose;
Solitude feeds my spirit
better than any muse.
Anything that ever needed
to be said or written
has seen the light of day
Solitude finds a way
to re-arrange the alphabet
when words are scarce,
when nothing comes my way
I will take these scribes
when my flesh only knows darkness
not seen by the sun,
but in one with the Earth.
Dec 26, 2009
Dec 26, 2009 at 2:47 PM UTC
It's already hard enough to say anything accurately
without further obfuscating and camouflaging the soul.
The faces in the funeral pews are impassive, impatient
and the dead woman cares not what's said, isn't even present.
The poet gets innumerable do-overs, it's one of man's wonders,
revises his vision of his mother and plays her piano, posthumously.
Why not say it simply? Hers was a comity and a tragedy.
As are ours. And perform the history that surrounds us.
Are caskets boats? The ship of death rides Charon's waves
or perhaps on that solitary day you happily kayak to the huckleberries.
Is the deeper sadness incomplete achievement or never to have tried?
Any attempt to decide this question for others is to badly behave.
The pablum of Christianity, esp. the Catholics, re the after life
must be rejected. It's necessary. To be replaced by community,
perfection of the human project, nature's intelligent partner.
Dusty, sadly habitable houses along the funeral route, shapeless
people crossing themselves when ambulances or hearses pass.
I wanted to describe the sweetness of her life, how she was part
of the problem and part of the solution. How love and evolution
are passed like loaves from person to person down the generations.
Find the humor in the cholera. When my father died
he waved like a surfer riding a wave or a clown riding
an elephant out the circus tent. Mom follows the same law.
The many ways a spear can pierce a brave warrior's jawbone or armor.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 4:44 PM UTC
It's highway robbery. Grand theft.
My vaults stand empty, their contents
Given by me freely, and
I TRUSTED YOU
the metaphor breaks down
falling falling
splat
And for a second I thought I
saw the gold at the end of
The rainbow NOW IT'S SOUR ALL FOR
hold the lines
unity
The kiss of betrayal I JUDAS GUILTY WHY
god structure
maintaiN coRPSE stench ROTten UNFAIR
try
Okay.
The scales are out of
Whack. Lead on one end and air on Y stop
The other. The scales of HATEFUL GODS
breakdown
abort
RIPPED UP IN MY FACE please
hOw and WHy and
love in the time of cholera
Nov 24, 2013
Nov 24, 2013 at 8:10 PM UTC
As you sit at your table on Thanksgiving Day
Voraciously gorging yourself on your feast,
Remember those who are suffering
In a proxy war in the Middle East.
The poor Yemenis have died by the thousands.
Many are on the brink of starvation.
Fourteen million, some people say,
Experience serious deprivation.
Blockades limit badly needed
Medical supplies and food.
It's a humanitarian crisis
Of unspeakable magnitude.
Warring ideologies place
Innocent people in between.
Yes, people are still committing
Atrocities in twenty eighteen!
A hospital hit by Saudi bombs…
A school bus blown to bits…
How many more will die before
Responsible parties call it quits?
Cholera is pervasive, and drugs
Cannot get to the people who need them.
Babies are dying because their mothers
Cannot produce the milk to feed them.
As of now our president
Would rather keep an open door
To weapons sales to Saudis instead
Of trying to stop the ghastly war.
Don't just send your thoughts to Yemen;
Let your thoughts turn into actions,
Lest your sincere hopes for peace
End up being worthless abstractions.
-by Bob B (11-22-18)
Nov 22, 2018
Nov 22, 2018 at 11:40 AM UTC
A recently revived drowning victim
I'm judging picture books by their centerfold
All the wit in the world won't
save me now
and even though I've made it
This far
I'm still too afraid
to keep ********* through the pages.
You should see
All of my paper cut scars
This is a courtesy call
I hope to hear you
Say you're sorry
and just because
I saw you dancing along the wall
doesn't mean we're friends
In fact
quite the reverse.
You're a man
And I'm ******* insane
There's no way for you to know
how much I've hated
You
I guess it's been years since we talked
So that's my fault.
Retraced steps lead me
to the lip of the pool
Cholera never looked
like my scene
But I feel your genes spreading
Like Jesus and Peter
you'll pass me down this legacy
of hatred, strife and
Pestilence. My god.
I bind my books
into your back
and read you bedtime stories
each period forming a
caldera in your skin.
I touch it.
And this tastes so good
Almost like another life
if I can stay here forever
you may never find me again.
Don't you see how beautiful it is?
I'm not afraid of you anymore.
I think I realized
I just know you
Too ******* well
it's like looking in a mirror
Oct 21, 2014
Oct 21, 2014 at 3:10 AM UTC
My pen is mourning the agonies and the sufferings
Of my people, who are drowning in the sea of misery.
My keyboard' strokes are shadowing the slow rhythms
Of the wandering beggar, who's lost in the sanctuary.
My voice denounces the filthy cholera and the injustices,
Which are punishing the weakest souls of the valley.
A tiny oligarchy is meagerly being rewarded;
What a shame for a man-made world corrupted with vices!
My daring pen defaces the inequality and the imbalance,
Which fool the image of a so called free world.
My laser beams burn the iris of the blind peasants,
Who can now see clearly the mini-sketch of my people.
I am the brother-in law of the cowardly executed poet
And the great-grandson of the poorest assassinated emperor.
I abhor the vanity and the lowliness of mankind in horror,
Oh! Lord, I'm going to read aloud twelve psalms, from my seat.
My pen is mourning my beloved people,
Who are innocently digesting the giant toxic apple.
My voice is seduced by the wind of liberty,
Which echoes the piercing screams of the hungry babies of Haiti.
P.S. Translation of 'Ma Plume Pleure Du Sang' by Hebert Logerie.
Copyright© November 2010, Hebert Logerie, All Rights Reserved
Hébert Logerie is the author of four books of poems:
May 17, 2025
May 17, 2025 at 11:34 PM UTC