"consumptive" poems
A boy in jeans,
A boy in trousers,
A boy in braces,
A boy in blouses,
A girl who smells like summer sweat,
A girl whose makeup hasn’t set,
A boy who swears,
A boy who doesn’t,
A girl’s shoulder,
A second cousin,
A girl who smells of **** and beer,
A tattooed boy with a silver sneer,
A skinny girl who’s got T.B,
A boy who daintily sips his tea,
A girl’s left leg – bare or stockinged,
A boy so cold his knees are knocking,
A nasty ****
A suede-head killer,
Kate Moss,
Sienna Miller,
Vivienne Westwood’s crazy teeth,
Bow-legged loons on Hampstead Heath,
Blue eyes, brown eyes, grey eyes, green,
Cold eyes, big eyes, sad eyes, mean,
Darling sweethearts in flirty skirts,
City-Boy ******** in well-pressed shirts,
Elbows, throat, wrists, knees,
A consumptive girl’s chainsmoking wheeze,
Blonde girls with their hair in plaits,
Skinny boys, short boys, muscular, fat –
Girls with pink lipstick like strawberry frosting,
I’m telling you man,
It’s ******* exhausting.
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 8:16 PM UTC
a beaten man bleeds, but lives boldly
trees, leaves and ****** skin diseases : before we bleed, we scream
i’ve screamed; we bleed; i’ve done it all and we’re here together
in sickness, i have seen the wall of sound that frightens me
in health, i’ve heard the yelps of a beautiful young dog with coins for eyes and golden silk for a coat
in insanity, i’ve found myself, twisted, i know, but i am lying there; content
in life, i am everything all of the time
in death, i’ve seen the truth
in venice, my gondola has spilled over into a stream of consciousness which i have not known of
in paris, i’ve slept at the bottom of the seine
in corfu, i’ve basked in warmth and love
in moscow, i’ve seen a man’s heart and a woman’s soul be married
in the church, i have loved, bled and screamed
my hunger has not been satiated; bolder now, i’ve been louder
in a quiet field; i’ll lie with you; i’ll bleed you dry; i’ll replenish you; i’ll love you; i’ll write our life stories on the surrounding woods
i’m beginning again; i’m burning fuel to start the end of my consumptive nature
i digress, i digress, i aggresively digress
Nov 5, 2012
Nov 5, 2012 at 5:56 PM UTC
Sleeves of scars
and a garter of silver lines and burns
oh the hurt I've endured
Seated by the fire as a child
Lord knows I've had thoughts like this for a while
I'd dwell on the discretion I took
brooding over every hook that snagged my flesh
made a mess
of the little girl I never was
and they who shook me
pet me from the inside out
must have forgotten to what degree
their consumptive hands made me bleed
God how I wish they could see
every stain left with or without cause
was provoked by their nostalgic applause
but I don't even blame them
It was a conscious disease
perniciously eating
still chewing at me.
Dec 29, 2014
Dec 29, 2014 at 1:46 PM UTC
Where are
The ecstatic saxophones that
Slung forth swank slurs of
Beauty,
The *** *** ***
Bass lines,
The snaps and snares and the
Sweet rhythm of the Night?
Music had character
And minds followed, in following
Soared.
There were no glittery vampires,
No prepubescent
Brother boy bands.
Soulful crooners never
Warbled over Alejandro,
Or the boots with the fur, with the fur.
We wrote letters and shared thoughts and ideas
And convictions.
There was no need for the techno
Middleman
To wrap our
Real thoughts in LOLs
To make opening
Up to another
More efficient.
Mass media
Gluttony drowns
America till I strain and struggle
Only to barely stay afloat
In this sea of apathy.
But you won't buy and sell my soul.
I'm not going to
Be your
Consumptive,
Quiet,
Couldn't-care-less,
I won't get in the way,
And I won't raise my voice,
Good American,
2.5 children,
Christian,
Conserva-libera-publi-crat,
Self-centered, Illiterate, Ignorant
Sheep
Only to follow the power.
**** no,
I'm mad as hell;
I want to leave the next generation
A world where
You can confess your
Love and be a man or
Love another man and have
Basic human rights, and it all
Starts in your
Mind
And your
Expression thereof.
It's the saccharine pop
Culture that has
Made free-thought unfashionable, a crime.
Art is
Revolution.
Hang
Up,
Log
Out,
Unplug and just look
At what you've let the
World become in
Letting yourself be
Little more than
A faceless source
Of merciless dollars.
Wrest free our
Culture from the
Calamitous and indifferent
Claws of rampant capitalism.
Express yourself or submit,
Stand up for a free America.
I will not be sold.
Oct 26, 2010
Oct 26, 2010 at 2:23 PM UTC
A rhythmic whipping of winds on the pine trees,
Mescaline mind, staring through tawny windows and thinking of America
That easy breezy, ****** wind again, blowing blow from laps of men
Tripping on paving slabs, adobe piles and rubble pouring through city streets
Thorny throned king calls out his wife's name
No response, no reprise, water fills the eyes of the owl as he watches
A lizard through the grass with no legs, and the oxford comma blues
A rider on horseback, gallop through the gully, hair screaming, maddening flights
Frightening nights in the Texas desert as consumptive creatures crawl on broken sand
Feel the eyes of the devil, searing the seer
and the car that once roamed gaily now fails daily
Left in bereavement on the side of a road
Crying into calloused hands, wailing for the whale's lost daughter
Sea-dive, see me dive, watch me drive, across country, to a home I will know
When I see it.
Sep 26, 2013
Sep 26, 2013 at 8:56 AM UTC
^~~~~^~~~^
poets are in love
with things of pathos fair
the lure that draws the moth
to the flame's despair
the insect caught in amber
the mateless bird that sings
the colors of the sun that's died
the fairie with no wings
the gnarled, lifeless tree
grass o'r grave's slight swell
the stream that's choked with bracken
the sound of empty shells
the sweetness of the voice
that sings the doom'd femme
the consumptive Mimi
in Puchini's La Boheme
butterflies on velvet
stricken, gently spread
affixed with a pin
tho lovely, they are dead
the vampire is so sensual
tho their victims end is dreer
the eye that is the brightest blue
always sheds the tear
SoulSurvivor
(C) 2014
Mar 7, 2015
Mar 7, 2015 at 8:35 AM UTC
*No we can't have it all
But we can have nothing
Nothing in common
But the weight of the world
Watching in awe as beside me you fall
And the embers, they smolder
For an hour or a day
As the breath Ignites once again
Consuming the smile
Before it is ever born
So, to the flaming death of joy we toast
Taking in the screams
On the descent of all who falter
I watch you fall in silence
Sharing a pain that consumes everything
You are focused on nothing
I am focused on you, oblivious to all
My loneliness beaten back by your own
If only momentarily we glance past each other
The air too heavy to revive all that is dying
One cannot follow what is right beside
Bathing in the aftermath of despair
Weight of the world, of lost souls,
Of the intangible yearning to feel
There is only loneliness for fear of sharing
Afraid of loosening the grip on the comfort of stagnant pain
or facing the nothingness of the unknown
We look but do not see anything save our own pain
No, one cannot follow what is right beside
I'll hold your pain if you'll hold mine*
Jun 10, 2015
Jun 10, 2015 at 1:12 PM UTC
You have a poem;
Spring brings you poem.
I think Anthony must be your court's poet;
a serf turned grateful for his god-gave muse.
Genuflect he's to this Fürstin,
trip he does, too, over himself
getting you water
both up and down the stairs;
when presenting his poetry,
rebuts extended portension,
yes, pausing liking um-ing, tsk;
and all so when reaching for his dagger
to cut our darkness away,
does seem dance with shadows
like fire was a pomethean bane.
Still he gets it from his sheath,
brings it to her bloodless yet
dulled from the escaped swings
of misaimed blows into shrubs.
Wants me to call him Reichsritter.
I’d indulge him but he’d still
have to synthesize faith from
some avian metabolism,
(it’s known that poets’ health’s all
flat feet, weak livers, shallow lungs,
and consumptive coughs);
or, better yet, find knighthood
in the books read for your sake;
nay, I too must keep honest to you.
So does he, you know? thinks
sincerely that there’s the stuff of art
passed to him when he entertains you;
doesn’t think himself the lordship you insist,
thinks he’s groped and somehow scalded
himself upon the empyrean fire,
and bows recedes away feeling just
a bit impious.
*That’s it though! :
You’re a young seraphim took earthly shape,
faring the angelic order’s routine errand
to forget absolute, embrace listless hate,
then forget it again.*
Well, isn’t this where Anthony missteps?
cries wolf, burns midnight oil,
clutches his stomach in pain.
The ‘seraphim’ draft is just a wish
for your eternal life, please believe.
Every comet and season makes him
just as mouthful and excited.
A heart of love and head of art, tsk.
We can’t judge the heart
and the head
together can we?
Regardless,
a court poet essentially a jester,
pinned his poem
to my chest.
So, meine Fürstin,
you have a poem,
Spring has brought you a poem.
Mar 21, 2012
Mar 21, 2012 at 5:44 AM UTC
These silent
walls
palpitates
like echoed Doppler
heart beats
& cacophony cries
I've longed for
& yet to hear.
Entangling
sticky loosened like sinews
with a crimson rope
trailing, tied to me
a hanging noose
from genitalia to abdomen.
metaphorical blindfolded
eyes never open
mouths sealed shut,
slippery-jelly wetness
cascading from limbs
unmoving,
warm arms hold me & try hard
to calm my wails.
I feel discombobulated
in this peril of darkness
with this injustice
the savage way life's ****** away my chance
of fulfillment, the radiant glow my whole being once held
O'how my soul's been stolen away,
each push
** each breath**
each heart
breaking pain.
It's a invisible beating,
which keeps me flailing
& screaming
as consumptive
waves mistreat
my hoarding womb
wrecking havoc
in the
most brutal
way.
Unyielding
pain deep within me
White coated sleeve
red bright metallic stains.
Masked faces
& eyes who can't
match my tearful stare
sound of
regret & sympathetic
mournful apologizes-
left me defeated
cheated
out of the most
important things,
which matters
only to me.
I'm never going to be
the same
not after this
Miscarriage
Jan 18, 2014
Jan 18, 2014 at 11:41 PM UTC
Do you see me?
I’ve been devouring poetry,
by the line,
by the page,
by the book.
No poem has been overlooked.
I’ve been feasting
on free verse,
blank verse,
perverse
cascades
of stanzas and rhymes,
a banquet of words
on which to dine.
I’ve been swallowing ad nauseam,
scarfing down similes,
masticating metaphors,
gormandizing poems aplenty.
Rhyming couplets,
I’ve contained them.
Sonnets and epics,
ingested.
Lyrical odes,
digested.
A thousand lines
to make you swoon.
I’ve tasted them all—
the potent and
the picayune.
Villanelles, check.
Sestinas too.
I even hiccupped
my own haiku:
Icicles melt on glazed gutters.
Water drips, prolific, bits of sunlit seeds
promising lilacs below the eaves.
Do you see me?
I hate to ask, but I’m afraid
something poetic has happened.
my head is a tureen
brimming with stars
my arms are utensils
in a darkened drawer
my chest, a room of last resort
my feet are stressed, in short
Such prosody is blinding.
Can you tell me why
my eyes are bleak?
Or why I no longer
blink?
I sense the sear of fluent tears
composing on my cheek:
endless drops, black beads,
consumptive stains of ink.
Oct 17, 2016
Oct 17, 2016 at 10:22 AM UTC
The grass is dripping with chiffon, that old garment that somehow becomes new with every evening's donning.
What a shock! To feel that wet fabric between my toes, noticing the squish and the scrape of the grass and the gradual acceptance as my body warms to match the chill underfoot.
I wonder about the suburban night,
how despite our best efforts we can't permanently pave over that expanse of dandelions (you would wield your power over each as you popped off their heads) that used to live in the field next door.
Envied by a world of mates, they separate and procreate without a second thought as to where their seed lands as long as the soil or sand can root down far enough to support its wispy yellow tufts.
The days are shorter now, and the nights in Cleveland once again hold that bitter edge that makes this town our own personal triumph, our defeat over the elements as they wax and wane in their consumptive impulse. You can actually feel the winter on the wind, for the love, after a year of cold and cold and rain and cold.
But the grass, that gauzy tangle that grabs you before you topple into the cliff of whatever whatever, complaints about the weather. It's that chilly, beautiful, selfless dew that you wrap yourself in, that wraps itself in you, that helps you slow your aching self, and for now you can leave the future on the shelf.
- Don't wish you life away, that's what my mom used to say -
How, at that age, can you possibly gauge
that your mom is a holy person, a shaman, a sage,
That she knows that aging turns into to dying
And that growing up is worth less than a whole field of dandelions?
Aug 20, 2014
Aug 20, 2014 at 3:57 AM UTC
The greatest eye, seeing as I see: infinity infinitely,
Passing and being amidst mere seconds, touching glassily
Fringes of the smallest universe of me,
The happier side of the sublime, distant fingers of distant peaks
Combing the edge of time.
I’ve stared at the stars too long, we saw them dance out of space
More dimensions than a singularity, for it opens up
As hearts do in each other placed.
From fixéd gaze and placidity, I stride in awe to you
We could feel one with acatelepsy
Have what some consider few, and few consider all
Intertwined by the darkness between the dying stars’
Existence, in that both skins a whole that glistens.
Of that place, I in constant drawn, that vacuity, that candoris
A promise that, regardless what season, my face feels apricity
And careless are the places as numinous are the lariots
Whether through Hell or usurping Pheobus’ chariot
Some hope may birth within the open dark
The treasured lunar retinue, a web of inspiration, generations to come;
That’s what keeps me hopeful here, a shy star in the void
Across it all, across life-lines I shall have,
Before you ever meet me, long since dissipated—
Come out to see me and play, or are you simply? Belated?
In that web, the growing ever-on, generative swan-songs,
And the one I wish on may befall a stellar death, my sky
Alighted by one less, a part of me to the cold and shiftless earth
That though the stars may fall, these hearts may flash chimerical
Etched limpid in the palimpsest of memory, they are, they will
Hearts of the little universe, consumptive and resilient
And kept ever on, there beyond Jupiter and his moons thereof
In which chaos finds itself bathed and bound by Love.
Nov 6, 2014
Nov 6, 2014 at 4:50 PM UTC
She loved an earth that held her firm, relentlessly present, a strong & constant landscape whose only inclination was to bear her
She loved a wind from across the world that touched her skin in some unspoken, selfless way that made her know she had any body at all
She loved a wildfire in its blazing and consumptive chaos, sagely conscious that she was burning from within its hungry & narcotic flames
And they loved her in their ways, steadily, sadly; distinct but alike in unequivocally knowing she was opaque, arcane, unfathomable:
In need of a measureless ocean that awed her from each vantage point, that could do nothing but swallow her whole with an all-powerful calm
Dec 19, 2013
Dec 19, 2013 at 2:32 AM UTC
I'm trying so hard to breathe
But the burning in my chest
The flames in my soul
Make it impossible
I lack the oxygen I need
I'm trying so hard to stand tall
But I'm starting to fall
Because the weight on my shoulders
Is heavier than boulders
I simply can't have it all
*No we can't have it all
But we can have nothing
Nothing in common
But the weight of the world
Watching in awe as beside me you fall
And the embers, they smolder
For an hour or a day
As the breath Ignites once again
Consuming the smile
Before it is ever born*
I'm trying so hard to just be here
But I'm beginning to doubt
To lose my faith in happiness
To bask in all my loneliness
I need help to figure it out
I'm trying so hard to believe
In the unknown, in what I can't see
But life is really bringing me down
I'm just gonna paint on this frown
I'll never find someone to love me
*So, to the flaming death of joy we toast
Taking in the screams
On the decent of all who falter
I watch you fall in silence
Sharing a pain that consumes everything
You are focused on nothing
I am focused on you, oblivious to all
My loneliness beaten back by your own
If only momentarily we glance past each other
The air too heavy to revive all that is dying*
I'm trying, I'M TRYING, I'M TRYING
All I can feel around me is the dying
I see the painful look in your eyes
I know it's simply your disguise
I want you to know, I really am trying
I'm trying to breathe, to stand, to be here, to believe
But all this death is surrounding me
Dragging me down, into my darkened soul
A place I know, you'll never follow
I need help with my feigned destiny
*One cannot follow what is right beside
Bathing in the aftermath of despair
Weight of the world, of lost souls,
Of the intangible yearning to feel
There is only loneliness for fear of sharing
Afraid of loosening the grip on the comfort of stagnant pain
or facing the nothingness of the unknown
We look but do not see anything save our own pain
No, one cannot follow what is right beside
I'll hold your pain if you'll hold mine*
Nov 8, 2014
Nov 8, 2014 at 9:47 PM UTC
They had faces and bodies when I was young,
and they were rare -
Maybe once a year, a joke would be ruined
by a walking sneer,
my unselfconscious laughter curdled
by their pitiless scorn.
But, young and sure, I'd bounce along,
leave them forgotten,
and look for the good.
Blessed to expect
that people were kind,
I unshackled them,
disembodied the derision,
unhitched them
from reasoning, living beings
Left them free to gather
in geometric clusters
lurking on the edge of sight
like burning after-images
of a cruel sun
Wordless, sightless, lifeless
empty, ******* spaces
glimpsed with a shudder
on the best days -
gathered in consumptive clouds
on the worst.
Unseen by my companions
they eat my ability
to explain or expel them.
They are there
if I acknowledge them
or not
and in time
they make a nothing
out of everything.
Feb 19, 2019
Feb 19, 2019 at 5:46 AM UTC
Stop, please stop that thud, that thud,
I hear your thirst like sand for blood--
O I will bring you water, water,
only beat your breast no longer!
Because I see your prayer becoming
consumptive by its own drumming,
a labyrinth that bears no unthreading.
God, I saw a black bruise spreading
deep within that dreadful cadence--
and his prayer was patience, patience.
“Tell me, please, what I can do
to break you from that death tattoo,”
but all he did was beat and nod
I lost him to an Awful God.
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 4:22 PM UTC
Three tabs of acid and a year of postmodern novels will **** you up in a shorter span of time than doing a degree in poststructuralism, and only an idiot with a death wish would do both. Manic romp to reach nowhere in a political field that never arrives, except in France.
Well Sartre once said nothing, and so did Derrida, and so did Baudrillard. Endless procession of words for the sake of filling a vacuum that didn’t exist until it was filled. Enter Freud; exit Bernays. All meaning atop a Golden Bough.
Sitting in your flatmate’s room the acid kicks in and suddenly no one is themselves, every line that leaves their mouths traceable to a media product, the perfect communion of pluralism arriving as the terror of integral capitalist banality. To speak is to add to the mockery; to say nothing is to let the mockery continue.
Forget it all by watching Youtube videos at 0.25x speed. Displace the terror of your own situation through the consumptive behaviour that had constituted it in the first place. Watch in gleeful delight as the eyes of whatever presenter happens to be on the screen at the moment dart between this or that object of desire, ever unsure of where to settle amongst an infinite number of existential refrains, none of which deliver from the anxiety of the prior.
Holding a caramel slice in the departmental tea room, your lecturer waits for you to respond, but all you manage is a cough.
Oct 17, 2018
Oct 17, 2018 at 5:56 AM UTC
I pour it out
Like a bottle of wine upon the ground
I have spent myself therein
And soaked into the bitter ground
Behind the house
Because no expectation can withstand
The truth within
Which is that you can control the consumptive means
To make or break most anything
But I pour it out
Because I can
Jun 23, 2017
Jun 23, 2017 at 9:23 AM UTC
it rumbles and crackles
roaring with majestic furor
consumptive and commanding
powerful through the most dire of days
constant and driving through those of peace
the fire in my belly demands a feast
Apr 30, 2018
Apr 30, 2018 at 3:45 PM UTC
If in the crescendo of my anger and pain
You are turned to ash and destroyed
The blame rests upon your shoulders
For you were duly warned
Scoffing at my advice to beware
You turned the handle and released the demon
Willing opened the door
If in my strange song of sadness
Ring out the deadly notes of retribution
I seek rightfully a vengeful solution
To the evil deeds perpetrated
Upon a now dangerous soul
If in my despair
I choose to be no more
The fault grow into a knotted fist inside your brain
Consumptive
Inoperable
The tumor wraps around your thoughts
Which shall turn to madness
No eviction is possible
Reflect upon the words I leave you with when I say
The responsibility is yours
You had received ample warning
Still you opened the door
This poem is copyrighted and stored in author base. All material subject to Copyright Infringement laws
Section 512(c)(3) of the U.S. Copyright
Act, 17 U.S.C. S512(c)(3), Tammy M. Darby
Mar 15, 2014
Mar 15, 2014 at 12:15 PM UTC
Not I, shall claim, to know what is now next
After the summer sun subsides and sets
Below the roads which all scatter from here,
It is not I who knows, not I indeed.
Not long ago, a woman sat atop
A bed without her clothes, counting copecks;
A cotton shawl rested upon a chair,
And her kerchief neatly folded by it.
Her blue eyes hum a gentle song that day,
They swell in agony, as another
Man leaves quietly from her room with speed.
Her heart beats pleadingly, as if to ask
Forgiveness from her God, the supposed
Holy Father, who sees all his children
In equal love and, I should add, disdain.
How her chest heaves in despair over what
Had just transpired, she sobs as if to beg
the Almighty Father to look away,
Although her God could have delivered her
From such a life, He opts to watch instead;
How merciful He is, a God of love!
Outside she knows no respite from her deeds,
Her neighbours look upon her with such scorn
And snicker as she passes by in shame.
A sinner she is baptized as, as though
It had been her own choice to live this life.
In haughtiness, they may proclaim, that God
Gave her a chance to choose the life for her
And it was she who chose to be a *****
Yet how could she desire to live like this?
Her father was a drunk and did not work,
Her mother died when she was but a child,
And her new father’s wife is consumptive
With three children to look after herself,
Not one of them can work, not one but she!
And what shall she do as her family
Cries out to God for generosity?
Shall she go to school as her mother dies?
And if this is the path to go, from where
Will she draw funds? What money does she own?
Should she ignore a child in need of food?
If not, what job, what place, would employ her
With wage to feed a family of five?
In fact, what place shall pay her more than what
She needs if she should live a frugal life?
What choices she has been given, look at
The life she has to choose! To live forever
Upon the cost of others on the street,
As beggars dressed in rags and dirt who will
Without a doubt, perish when winter comes,
Or delve in sin, in order to provide
What seemingly that God cares not to give.
What grand a choice dear Sofya now has!
The gravity of her next decision
Shall now make a martyr of a maiden
Or make now a harlot of a hero.
And thus she sobs, as she is robbed of heart,
Of soul, of hope. Yesterday she had woke
To such the same, and more to come,
If only God, and I do beg thee God,
That she will be delivered from such strife.
For now, for her, today, it seems, that the
Next day shall bring not but the same for her.
However I claim not to know what’s next
After the summer sun subsides and sets.
Nov 4, 2018
Nov 4, 2018 at 12:48 PM UTC
Other people are getting love letters
Through my mailbox,
But I'm writing in cursive on ruled notebook paper
In a language of one.
Can this week's new health crisis
Please identify yourself?
Will you frame everything in illness
Until your life is only messy buns,
Cardigans, slippers, and frozen pizzas?
Where are my shoes and earrings,
My mauve lipstick, and milk complexion?
Where is the baby powder I used to use
To reduce the chafing of my thighs?
People in hell want ice water and
I think I get it, *******
Feb 24, 2017
Feb 24, 2017 at 11:59 PM UTC