"congealing" poems
This poem is dedicated to the fallen of the First World War, and also, to all those we have lost in the years since.
- Somme Harvest -
In the early morning
Dawn of the fiery horizon,
The sea of green caresses the land
And gave it gentle kisses
Of tender sadness.
On this day many an unlived life would find
Life in Death, but first must come Death in Life,
Indeed, a bouquet of barbs grace the
Dark, dank, *****
Halls of Morningstar,
Servants go to and fro preparing the sordid feast
Of unsung heroes.
Babes in arms are they, who shall
Ever sleep till the break of the final day.
Fields of Flanders infertile,
But for the harvest to ripen
The fertilizer of life is
Scattered, battered, tattered,
Sown,
Human manure, nutrient of vitality,
It seeps into earthly soil.
In the year of our Lord,
One thousand, nine hundred and sixteen
Did the farmers collect their greatest bounty,
Not all farmers reaped massive yields,
Farmers Kultur, Sickle and Hammer
Fed their maniacal hunger with rotting corpses,
While famers Lion, Bulldog and Bald Eagle
Wept their hunger with mechanical eyes,
Farmer Scythe, steward of Morningstar,
Laughed dry, dead tears of hungry joy
And sang the golden harvest song
As his blade swam through the harvest thirstily,
For indeed, the harvest was an endless
Smoky sea of blood green
And thousands were sailing.
Twilight gleaming through the sky,
The raging war god vomit’s dry thunderous wrath
And wreaks barbaric, savage, ferocious, ****** carnage below,
As sleeping
Babes in arms fly through the red twilight.
Vultures dressed in human feathers
Gather and crowd around their congealing cold feast,
With hatred sewn on their
Lifeless, lidless
Blind eyes,
They shriek their throaty, ******
Thankless prayers to idle gods.
A multitude of thousands upon thousands
Of souls sour to the heights of Mount Olympus,
Unshed tears,
My child, I saw you in that dusky evening half-light,
Flying, soaring and rising higher with your
Brothers-in-arms.
As I looked up at the darkening sky
My heart wept warm tears of ebbing love,
While my eyes forever dimmed the light,
And my baby,
My body became the Earth,
The phoenix has nested.
Nov 11, 2011
Nov 11, 2011 at 6:04 AM UTC
Freedom is premium priced,
At the casino of the world nations throw the dice,
The tables are rigged by the fat rats and mice,
Girls in curvaceous miniskirts on poles entice,
***** laced drinks and cancer sticks merrily fleece,
Fizzy burgers are served filled with crucified cheese,
Layers of salt and blood and veins congealing with grease
Are the fillings inside the consumed meat,
Come to the sale of the century and let your life be diseased,
Take whatever you want and still you will never be pleased,
Remember, one day all will be held to account, so all evil immediately cease,
Do not make the mistake to ********** the legend of glorious Hercules
Or pollute and sell the message of almighty God so cheaply.
©Rangzeb Hussain
Apr 16, 2010
Apr 16, 2010 at 3:40 AM UTC
Draped in fresh-knitted pearls
we traipsed
into saccharine peach orchard
The summer heat loped about our dew-kissed ******
****** - appropriated from dawn spent on neatly shorn plantation grass
Ambling into the knotted palatial arbor
we sat each in our own tree crux
behinds nestled upon ashen bark
Juice dripping in our grip
down our cast nets of flesh
sprawled about the branches
inset with gravity-defying liquescent orbs
dusted in translucent mink
painted with smears of
citrine, coral, amber, and ichorous
clinging to brass stem
The rondures secede to mandible
taut between palms pull and polished ivories
- torn-
Fluent in dulcet discourse
We cloak ourselves in provocative juice tatting
Until such time that our congealing garments
were found mapping the bark's topography
A saccharine map to the breath of soil
Bloodstone ants found our map
and had begun traversing - portent
to seize our treasure
We surrendered our jewelled cages
and took flight
to the sun-drunken lake to bathe
and swim
until heavy lids kissed moistly
heavily supped on the draught
sleep - beckoned transience
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:48 PM UTC
The devil's speech say they:
Rolling, clattering, frolicking, hungry.
Billows of charred skeletons embrace the air
Black soot pumped straight from the pyres of Hades
Congealing to clouds of evil intent wherever it roam.
That charred old shell so terse,
Black as sadness and dead as a hearse,
Darling to death as he brings on the rain:
The dry rolling thunder of the funeral train.
In the coughing desert
Not a thing dares roam
Neither wind nor creature
And neither stick nor stone.
But then the silence disturbed by a horrible shriek -
The railway screams in horror and the train itself speaks, saying
"Tell me, thou innocent,
Why feel you special and best?
For when all is done I take you
And return you to my nest;
Your world is bright and happy
Full of high spirits and song,
Though soon you too shall step aboard
And join my faceless throng."
Hot saliva on the heaving engines:
Weeping, groaning, ghostly, parched.
Rusted joints spewed onwards grinding resisting
Movement spat out like a violently beaded string of curses
Sloppily uttered as incantations of a malformed mouth!
From that charred old shell so terse,
Black as sadness and dead as a hearse,
Darling to death as he brings on the rain:
The dry rolling thunder of the funeral train.
That dark train cries out and all around
A mourning whimper rises like slumbering fog-
Bleak and yellow it obscures the land
Seeping out insidious in strange locales all:
The old lonely fisherman
Sleeping on his wharf,
The frustrated hawker's
Windblown barefaced booth,
Silent streets crying for attention,
Dark places hidden at the corner of every eye.
That solemn train cries out and all around
Her mourning whimper rises like harrowing fog
Calling all to upright attention and fear.
Looming like a spectre but a breath-span from your window
Slowly closing cold dread claws-
Naked numbness dumb as ice-
Cold dread claws upon thy waist.
And you,
You poor old thing,
Shivering in your pitiful shack of bones,
You never had any chance!
You were only human.
You were only human, you poor old thing.
Barreling on with brimstone slang:
Clang clang! Dang dang! Beelz Bub!
Sputtering an ocean of curses from turgid goat-flesh
Born of sadness to cause even more, yawning great maw
Jowls clanking with fresh hot oil drool steaming stark and lewd, and yet
That charred old shell so terse,
Blacker than sadness and slain like a hearse,
Is all that gives meaning to our every gain:
The dry rolling thunder of the funeral train.
Oct 4, 2011
Oct 4, 2011 at 12:10 AM UTC
Mercy, Almighty King;
Though arteries be congealing,
America's going a'mealing.
Jun 15, 2012
Jun 15, 2012 at 1:08 PM UTC
Holocaust Poem: "On The Slaughter"
by Chaim Nachman Bialik
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Merciful heavens, have pity on me!
If there is a God approachable by men
as yet I have not found him—
Pray for me!
For my heart is dead,
prayers languish upon my tongue;
my right hand has lost its strength
and my hope has wilted, undone.
How long? Oh, when will this nightmare end?
How long? Hangman, traitor,
here’s my neck—
rise up now, rise and slaughter!
Behead me like a dog—your arm controls the axe
and the whole world is a scaffold to me
although we—the chosen few—
were once recipients of the Pacts.
Executioner, my blood’s a paltry prize—
strike my skull and the blood of innocents will rain
drenching your pristine uniform again and again,
staining your raiment forever.
If there is Justice—quick, let her appear!
But after I’ve been blotted out, should she reveal her face,
let her false scales be overturned forever
and the heavens reek with the stench of her disgrace.
You too arrogant men, with your brutal injustice,
suckled on blood, unweaned of violence:
cursed be the warrior who cries "Vengeance!" on a maiden;
such cruelty was never contemplated, even by Satan.
Let innocents’ blood drench the abyss!
Let innocents’ blood seep down into the congealing darkness,
eat it away and undermine
earth's rotting foundations.
Al Hashechita ("On the Slaughter") was written by Chaim Nachman Bialik in response to the ****** Kishniev pogrom of 1903, which was instigated by agents of the Czar who wanted to divert social unrest and political anger from the Czar to the Jewish minority. The Hebrew word schechita (also transliterated shechita, shechitah, shekhitah, shehita) denotes the ritual kosher slaughtering of animals for food. The juxtapositioning of kosher slaughter with the slaughter of Jews makes the poem all the more powerful and ghastly. Such anti-Semitic incidents prompted a massive wave of Eastern European emigration that brought millions of Jews to the West. Unfortunately, there have been many similar slaughters in human history and the poem remains chillingly relevant to the more recent ones in Israel/Palestine, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, poem, Bialik, translation, slaughter, massacre, God, prayer, executioner, hangman, blood, innocents, justice, false, scales, injustice
Mar 12, 2020
Mar 12, 2020 at 4:00 AM UTC
My only comfort as my tears fall with the water
Is the fact that I'm scrubbing away his hands,
His touch,
His lips,
His skin.
Washcloth against skin,
Red erupts from my pores,
But I don't care because
I need to get his scent off of me.
Just a whiff, and I gag,
My tears congealing in my throat.
Why me?
What did I do?
His hands were so soft,
But so strong, and
I could not escape.
Washcloth against skin,
I don't even know where to begin,
For he stripped me down to the very bone
And lay my soul and body naked.
His fault? Yes.
My fault? They'll think so.
Red flows down my legs because of
Washcloth against skin.
I drown myself in cherry blossom body wash,
The off brand kind.
My last thought before I stop the water is
"But I'm not even pretty."
May 28, 2019
May 28, 2019 at 9:28 AM UTC
Untethered. Somehow,
once I become untethered
to the prison of this life,
I can see to focus more intently
on what is most important
if I pay attention to this inside,
what I am, instead of focusing on
the tether or what it’s tied to.
What would happen if
every single last one of us,
all the billions of souls,
human ones, alive,
all untethered
at the same time?
And what if we let our
untethered hearts
lead us to the destiny
we didn’t see
from all the chaffing from
the too tight tethering?
The vision I see is
something like a healthy,
humming, honey-bee hive
on our larger human scale.
Isn’t every working part
so individually, blissfully alive?
I suppose, if the goo is honey,
it's so much better than if it’s ****
or congealing blood.
That is, if we have to have goo, which
here on earth, yeah, I’m certain
it’s a universal law,
we really do need goo.
I questioned the Devi
and she only giggled.
I had to admit, she’s right.
Then, I accepted a goblet of
her sweet honey wine;
and it didn’t hurt all that much at all
growing the rest of my little wings.
Buzz, buzz, buzzing about
our wonderful beehive,
blissfully drunk on Mother’s
Divine Honey Wine.
Feb 4, 2022
Feb 4, 2022 at 8:24 PM UTC
how long to live through the next thought
to have a brief encounter with time
an impossible time of intolerable anguish
where embarking upon a sentence
is a violent wrench from perceived notions
of reality, one that causes nerves
to flay upon my body with weal's of words
where vatic poetry is wrought in trembling rages
spilling, dripping upon the traumatised
parchment that is my pages
in de-congealing interrelated drops of image
that crack the pavements
in a visual vibrancy of taut creative tension
where these words keep their own company
and speak in interrogative tongues
causing a fragmentation of earthquake fissures
to radiate across my mind in a cataclysm
of universal poison that quiets and dissolves stability
and asks, no demands of me, what can you see?
Nov 12, 2013
Nov 12, 2013 at 8:05 PM UTC
TRAPPED IN A TEASPOON
the -ing -ing of the bell
trapping him in
the continuous present
an eternal gerund
as if the moment could not be
escaped from
even the sky clouding
the trees( so to speak )
tree-ing
and he
he he he-ing
a prisoner of grammar
his face looking aback at him
from a highly ornate teaspoon
and he himself that distrotion
reality refusing
to boldly go
splitting the infinitive
the -ing -ing of the bell
a present that refused
to pass and become
the what had been
the now fearful of putting a toe
into a future it did not know
the very future that
awaited him
but could never happen
the moment
congealing
about him
trapped forever
in this forever
the spilled wine
staining both
his shirt
and time
the -ing -ing of the bell
the -ing -ing of the bell
the -ing -ing -ing of the bell
Aug 29, 2017
Aug 29, 2017 at 12:27 AM UTC
One of Edna's "randyhornbag" collection of erotica.
i am a ******* *****
and that's not a metaphor
it's the total ******* truth
i'm a ********** forsooth
it's what i do for work
i'll **** or **** or ****
off any man or beast
i don't care in the least
young boys old men fat freaks
i get them all most weeks
i'll have any kind of ***
cash only and no cheques
i suppose you think it's funny
to **** fat men for money
to have countless alien *****
often stinking like old socks
shoved up my pretty *****
kept artificially juicy
to make the fools imagine
i'm oozing jissom for them
it's not the best of jobs
******* total strangers' knobs
pretending to like vile men
when if i could i'd flay them
i rarely **** for pleasure
i no longer have the measure
of love and tender feeling
of kisses phlegm congealing
my private sexlife's twisted
i love being thrashed and ******
i crave darkest degradation
masochistic ************
so if you think it's funny
******** men for money
let me be quite blunt
if you think so you're a ****
Jan 5, 2015
Jan 5, 2015 at 10:56 AM UTC
caught in little fishing hooks
pierced ears gone awry
its scales scrubbed viciously from flesh
hacked open
gory madness
soaking into the oak table
not very hygienic
not much of anything
congealing, drying
still wet enough that to touch it would be
to spoil everything
(makes such pretty colors in the wood)
Jul 2, 2015
Jul 2, 2015 at 8:10 PM UTC
A flatulent king sits
Slouching, scratching,
Congealing to his throne of gold.
His army of a billion men
Are clad in ****** bibs
And grins.
Equipped with hate
And hollow eyes
They stand redily assembled.
The king is a miser.
His face is a lie.
His motives are equally clear.
Royal subjects within the walls
Respect only of weakness and fear.
They are taxed and harassed.
For knowledge they're knived.
The wisest of Wiseman
Are forced to take bribes.
Their children are taken and
Hidden away
At the mechanized dawn
That announces each day
To learn to be
Ruthless and cruel.
To take advantage of fools.
Greed and malice are tools to be used
At their s and m brainwashing schools.
So their eyes turn jade
And their words turn black
As they cut up their hands
Stabbing themselves in the back.
They're just being taught
How to buy and be bought.
To serve the king;
A gear in his machine.
The ones who concede,
Buy into the greed
But their weakening teeth snap!
One by one
As they go round the vicious circle.
So they end up
Defunct,
Sunken eyed.
They dangle their
Dot spangled
Hands at their sides.
And although they loose,
Somehow they win.
They end up running
The world we live in.
Jun 8, 2015
Jun 8, 2015 at 4:52 AM UTC
An autopsy would reveal that I
swallowed too many stars,
and every incision would look
like hideously-done cursive.
The busing inside and out
would be treated like ink blots,
and my congealing blood would
scream about how cold the room is.
My liver would float up like a dead fish
covered in alcohol, and bad rants,
and my eyes would roll sideways,
and make the med students think
that they were following them
around the sterile-white of the room,
or they’d direct them where to put
the next piece of the leftovers as
they dissect me like the post-suicidal
frog that I am…
Like a frog? They’d probably bathe me
in formaldehyde…
That’s found in cigarettes, ya know?
I feel like cancer anyway, so
I gave them a shot or two, or three.
They’ll probably find those too in my
lungs; pickled, puffy, and black
with helium soot that made me fly
when everyone around me refused
to hold me up any longer.
Nov 19, 2014
Nov 19, 2014 at 1:02 PM UTC
Red and blues flashing, the electrons in a game of TRON dashing.
Forgive me not for i haven't sinned, it is your lack of congealing that keeps you trapped within.
An omnipresent empire built of circuitry and solder.
Please leave me be for I am not waste, refuse, master or martyr.
May 31, 2013
May 31, 2013 at 5:52 PM UTC
a ghost split open my abdomen
with a pocket knife, not the sharp kind, but the
blade on the multi-tool, corkscrewdriver type
and left me sitting there, open bodied so I can’t
I can’t move, touched my insides until they grew cold and still,
my blood’s congealing like ketchup on a park bench, my fingers growing stiff
my mind pounding pounding pounding but my body is now filled with cotton,
cotton seeds growing through my pores, out of my eye sockets, and they’re not
even flowers, but I suppose it's good I’m growing at least
Aug 6, 2012
Aug 6, 2012 at 12:48 AM UTC
In fidelity sleeping
a tremulous void
that circumvents
the face of lies.
I’ll tarry here,
where the room
drips madness
thick like congealing
blood in the rain.
And the walls separate
twisting in deception
for my mind unbound
scathed in trembling coals
My blood
I am the madness
Dripping.
Oct 27, 2012
Oct 27, 2012 at 5:04 PM UTC
THE MIND MAKER UPPER
The lift opened
on the 13th floor.
Which was....unusual
as there was
- no 13th floor.
I stepped out onto
nothing.
Stood there like Wily Coyote
in a Road Runner cartoon.
"This is a bit Narnia-ish..!"
I remember thinking to myself.
But when I cease to be
mystified and stopped
demanding explanations
I discovered to my horror
'Skegness-in-Winter'
congealing all about me.
"So..." smirked 'Skegness-in-Winter'
"I see we meet again!"
as if this was a surreal 'This is your Life'
yet at the same time so real.
I decided to go with the flow
whatever the moment threw up.
"Yeah, Time..." I said gnomically
"...is a funny thing."
We chit-chatted for an hour or so
about how we both thought the other dead.
How things were back then and
despite our out of season existence
there was always
the kisses.
Now that 'Skegness-in-Winter'
had succeeded in seducing me
it all came flooding back
"Ahhh those Skegness kisses!"
"They still..." I had to admit it
warm the cockles of this
Irish heart
och mo chroi!"
A little old lady appeared
from nowhere with a large handbag
poking me with
her broken brolly.
"Up or down...up or down!"
she kept squawking.
"Up or down....make up
your mind!"
But I was still lost
in those out of season
Skegness
kisses.
Apr 29, 2019
Apr 29, 2019 at 7:00 PM UTC
Sometimes I imagine that you could use a flat blade knife and separate parts of my body.
Like an anatomical model, an arm in half, a wrist entirely off.
An outmoded coloured wax model. Perhaps, a very old one. A decorated one with human or horse hair, closed eyelids and uncomfortable lips, and like those ancient roman ones, thinning sheens of paint on top.
The blade would slip through neatly, perhaps catching friction as it passes the block of soap texture, and leaves grimy residue on the knife.
You can see the vessels.
They are not clean.
Like my soul there are very nearly translucent scrapes and patches of liquid. Some days the liquid spills out.
Some days I just want to clean out. I want to purge, but I know I will just melt and the mistakes will be just as visible. You will see the marks that look like mouse's claws or pincers where I have pulled apart the skin trying to work out what went wrong. Doing some kind of surgery. Inside tying double sided sticky tape and chips of plastic, driving them in deep and forgetting about them.
When you say those things I can't be big anymore. If I'm tired you make me cry. Salt crisps up my intestines.
You make me imagine what it would be like to plunge a knife into my stomach.
I bet it would be satisfying like the braking of chocolate. Cracking of value bars.
But I have to remember that you are the organs thrown out at the end of the day, sloshing around in the bucket and I deserve to be preserved and anything that had been cried over or crafted is better than a remote controlled car. Stop telling me that it's not.
It's not as if I'm trying to be a petal or a fragment of netting fallen off a ballerina's skirt.
I've chosen to hover above the blades. I am nothing so frivolous. Feeling at home in a web of metal coated in paisley oven gloves. I am safe here. In fact I'm glad that thick haze separates us. You will never be able to find somewhere so tranquil. It makes me happy that there is no possibility that we can meet in the middle. It just makes it easier to keep the space, without the concern of some congealing platelets tethering to a surface which was never there.
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 8:56 AM UTC
Time hasn't been good to you, has it?
It took you in its rough hands and it threw you up against that wall.
It was slow torture to you, all those questions of how and why,
When no one would even tell you who or when or where.
You didn't even know what life was then-
That first sunburst, first roll of thunder,
Didn't make sense, not any at all. Not to you.
You try to forget but it's not like that this time.
You try to talk about something, anything else-
And yet your life just comes spilling out; a torrent,
A cascade, a parade of all your worst daydreams-
****** in front of his face and clogging his ears and nose and mouth,
Congealing in the winter sun. And suddenly you feel that weight fall off your chest,
And stand, leave him there; dying, drowning, choking on your memories.
If anyone needed the drug it was you-
You needed the weightlessness, the carelessness it lent you.
First the Vicodin and then the morphine, always on the hunt
For something stronger, something that could really ****
All that pain and time and **** piling up inside you. And you found it,
Found your release, that sweet drifting sensation it gives you
And no side effects! Or so they swear, all the ones who went before you,
Walked down that road lined with needles
And turned it into one paved with something stronger,
That one drug you'll never get enough of: words
Nov 7, 2011
Nov 7, 2011 at 10:08 PM UTC
No more time for pain.
Tear stains.
Or sobs.
Shrieks at the top of your lungs!
Frustrated fidgeting,
Or furious dialect.
The true depths of sorrow,
unreached yet,
Shall remain unexplored.
The heights of fury and rage,
Shall be another days venture.
(Or hopefully never).
Visions of disliked visages,
Traitorous touches torturing the thoughts,
Lustily leaving lover and friend
Twitching,
Writhing,
Boiling,
Melting,
Rotting,
And congealing into a puddle of humanity
at the knowledge of their philandering.
Numbness sinks through the dermis,
Hiding hints of heartbeats,
Silencing skins sweet sensations.
Breathing,
But barely.
No time for sensation,
Emotion,
Expression,
Interest,
Thought,
Muttering,
Mentioning,
Murmuring,
Meditating.
Reform some semblance of humanity.
No time for languishing,
Luridly,
Lethargically,
Liquefying.
Only enough time for a little poetry.
And then,
Hopefully,
Life.
Apr 28, 2013
Apr 28, 2013 at 3:22 PM UTC
Freedom is premium priced,
At the casino of the world nations throw the dice,
The tables are rigged by the fat rats and mice,
Girls in curvaceous miniskirts on poles entice,
***** laced drinks and cancer sticks merrily fleece,
Fizzy burgers are served filled with crucified cheese,
Layers of salt and blood and veins congealing with grease
Are the fillings inside the consumed meat,
Come to the sale of the century and let your life be diseased,
Take whatever you want and still you will never be pleased,
Remember, one day all will be held to account, so all evil immediately cease,
Do not make the mistake of prostituting the glorious deeds of Hercules
Or polluting and selling the message of almighty God so cheaply.
©Rangzeb Hussain
May 8, 2010
May 8, 2010 at 8:06 PM UTC
A man at my local zoo
Once showed me how snake venom
Effected human blood.
While dripping a drop of the acrid mess with one hand,
He held a small container of life in the other
And with a drop and a swirl of his wrist,
The blood was coagulated
And obviously unable to flow.
In that moment I knew
That love
Was the venom
And I
Was the blood,
Slowly congealing and
Falling at my only purpose:
Staying alive.
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 12:34 PM UTC
Silence like treacle
Dripping on my ear drums
Drumming sweet beats that
Match my slowing breath
Thicker than blood and
More rancid than bile
Sitting on my forehead
And telling me to sleep
Someone say a word in this
Congealing quiet night
Make shapes with your mouth
And speak directly to my soul
Nov 9, 2023
Nov 9, 2023 at 6:53 PM UTC
My sister
is a signal fire
burning
until she finds
someone to
rescue her
*tell me why
the sky turns red
whenever I touch it*
I watch her
burning out
across the sand,
crackling flames
spitting at me,
then crumpling
into ashes
*tell me why
the sand turns to glass
when I bury my feet*
She disintegrates
into pieces, blowing
past me in the wind --
I could pick her up,
replace the freckles
on her face, but
the only way she knows
is pushing me away
*tell me why
my loved ones scorch
when my hand comes near*
My sister
spreads hostility
like wildfire, turning
my own tongue
into a lick of flame
We trade insults
like red-hot peppers,
the bitterness congealing
on our tongues
*tell me why
you loved me once
only to turn me away*
Mar 14, 2012
Mar 14, 2012 at 5:41 PM UTC