"deformities" poems
Based on a painting, "Nuclear Puppies", by Julie Nagel, 2001
You’re a mutant, you know—
got funny dog babies sprouting
out of your head like they were
ears. Those copies of your face
look up at a sky of ashy gray,
perked and tense. Are you listening
to yourself? What choir
of dog-eared deformities
sings to you? Maybe they should have
howled louder before we dropped The Bomb.
Maybe the yellow caterwaul of their
melting butter bodies would have stayed our hand.
I doubt it though.
This is what we do. We burn things.
We tinker, adding and subtracting until
what’s left is blasphemy—until what’s left is
you. A yellow almost-dog, a sagging
body with melted flesh where there should
be fur. Sad monster; beg your alms
from the atomic Frankensteins who made you.
Your skyward eyes are bright, still happy
anywhere but here. But your abominable
body lies here staring into gray space with
Alpo still sticky on your nose, wet, brown snow.
May 8, 2014
May 8, 2014 at 12:11 AM UTC
My deformities decorate me
As if I were Persephone
Married to all that could incinerate me
I dance with daemons, but they do not consume me
Instead we rub up against each other, like
The good kind of scratch
Like the skins of fruits
And I delight
In the weight
Of cool scales that press my dress to my skin
And rest monster heads in the curve beneath my skin.
Great claws finding the fork tines of my fox spine, and I sing
O, Daemon Mine
O, Daemon Mine.
And they let go, and they sometimes even
Cry.
Mar 25, 2014
Mar 25, 2014 at 5:36 PM UTC
Upper East Side
The Hamptons
Aspen, Colorado
The plastic people
Follow each other
Moving in herds
Like cattle to the
Slaughter
Drifting
Floating
Shifting focus
From one charity event
To another
Whatever’s trendy
Whatever’s fashionable
Whatever’s happ’ning
Whatever’s the need
Tainted new artists
Society’s rejects
The film-maker who fits in with
The flavor of the month
The disease or the cause
That captures the moment
Stigmas overlooked
Deformities relieved
By one hyper exertion
By one pseudo good deed
Changing bedrooms
Changing partners
New alliances
Noblesse oblige
Mrs. Astor’s
Four hundred
Reinvented forever
Reinvented with fervor
On the edge
Of hypocrisy
Keeping up with the Jones’s
Maintaining the houses
Paris, Rome, Cote du Jura
Malibu, Palm Beach
Couture fashion
Madison, Rodeo
Worth avenues united
Avenues of the liege
Location, location, location
The right address unspoken
Dinner in the right places
Sporting events to be seen
Three martini luncheons
Halcion evenings
Business is business
Where money’s retrieved
Look to plastic people
For fashionable guidance
No matter the moment
No matter the need
Remember to catch them
While jetting to Santa Barbara
Saint Maarten, San Troupe
San Marco, warp speed
They live in their milieu
Can’t function outside it
Can’t follow a shadow
That others believe
It’s easy to find them
They leave behind footprints
But barely a mem’ry
Or singular creed
Other than finding
The latest in fashion
The latest persona
Or new plastic breed
Aug 8, 2018
Aug 8, 2018 at 8:19 AM UTC
every night before i sleep,
without fail, romance fills my mind
how hopeless, how naive,
however you wish to call me
but i think it's time
to finally pick the red glass shards
off the dark wooden shelf
that is so full of dust, i hardly recognize it
i cradle the glass in my hands
withstanding the sharp red
melting her into sweet honey
and knowing the broken glass, is nothing but temporary
i am not left without impurities
with sharp edges and deformities
but i am whole again
and i will not let anyone drop it again
because i will wait for an eternity
to find someone who puts the glass
up against the sunlight
and admires its beauty
i will find a love like mine
someone who indulges in flowers
and dream like christmas dates
and holding my small hands
there is no doubt about it
i am a realistic romantic
and i like you deserve to be loved,
endlessly so
Oct 6, 2023
Oct 6, 2023 at 5:40 PM UTC
So I was taking lil Tyler to school
and I got to meet one of his friends!
Tyler was so excited to introduce me to him,
but that poor little babe!
He was in a wheelchair!
Bless my son's heart for looking past this kid's...
um....
Well you know it takes a special kid to have a crippled friend!
Wait
I mean
Not special! My son is not special
No, wait, I mean he ain't SPECIAL special
You know?
Anyways, so I met his friend and I'm not quite sure what to do here
I say
HELLO I AM TYLER'S MAMA
and this little kid looks me dead in the eyes and told me
"Hello ma'am, there's no need to yell"
I was in awe
He didn't sound handicapped at all!
I mean I didn't know if he would be able to understand me
But he did!
Who would have thought a wheelchaired kid
could speak and think just like any other kid who wasn't gimpy!
I am just so so proud of my son
for looking past this poor victim of
um...
deformities...
Cuz you know it's probably good for the disabled
to have a regular normal friend like my son!
Hopefully my son can make that kid happy
you know since people like that usually have such sad lives.
Golly I am just so proud of my son for taking pity on that kid!
I am such a good mother!
Jan 17, 2020
Jan 17, 2020 at 11:15 AM UTC
A calamity of views abused
When the alcohol is strong
The choices go wrong
Everyones offend through Misinterpreted temptation
Using my over analyzing brain to calm the degraded
Crying over a mundane sane
Looking for persuasion
Through persecution
Picking out your weaknesses
Bleakness, is a majestic trait
Not intentionally
Burdening their agony
My name is animosity
I depict a character that sympathizes
Your alibies
Using my vulnerability
Contaminated humility
Finding
The hiding
No problem suggesting
My dark secrets of the night
Applying my skits that fit right
Paranoid to be viewed in a mortifying light
I would be lying denying my animalistic ride
I have scrutinized
Remorsing
I see earth born
Godly you stand
In the morning
Behold deformities
You fit the norm
I bow to your Godly proportion
In vein this I pray
Amen
May 13, 2016
May 13, 2016 at 8:41 PM UTC
With querulous turpitude, I stood
Disdainful denied reassurance;
Selfless. My crying heart
The echo of the wind rebuking
All that is remaining of
what I used to be.
Grotesque deformities my reflection
The pain of pure love etched
In dreams of aeons passed.
Hideous beauty a frightening peace
A sweetness I founded corrupt;
Hell my heaven
My paradise.
Honesty a musical once
writhing in my breast
A seraph convoking legions,
Now wings out-stretched
I break my own treacherous heart
A fiend of Heaven a demon of Hell
The first fallen
Unto likeness absolved
The pennated breadth of twilight
Breeding familiarities contempt-
I have wearied myself, O God,
And I am consumed,
Resolute of inequity.
He that is down need not fear plucking,
Experience is the teacher of fools
And a gentle lie turneth away inquiry:
If the mountain will not go to Mahomet,
Mahomet must go to the mountain;
The nakedly wan mantic
Velleity to tear Christ's body
Malapert, before the ruddy shoal;
Society covers a multitude of sins
Within the penitent sanctity of
Heaven's holocaust, in which
No man can serve two masters-
Oh that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest
Eternal and absolute,
An angelic image of my shadowed self!.
ELEETE J MUIR
Jan 13, 2012
Jan 13, 2012 at 8:35 AM UTC
He saw a beautiful world.
He saw the world’s grace.
Saw the world’s seemingly infinite majesties,
the magnificent magnanimity of it all.
He saw the smile of people, the perfect pigment of plants
He experienced a beautiful world.
Yet he was unsatisfied with what he saw.
Unsatisfied with the beautiful world he had.
He looked past the beauties, the elegance, and the gems
And focused on the ephemeral troubles that polluted his lens.
He couldn't handle the new deformities of the world he once saw
He couldn't handle himself at all.
Finger to the trigger and trigger to the gun
at once he knew he would regret.
Gun to the bullet and bullet to the brain.
at once he knew this was kismet.
He hid himself under the sullen pall
Entangled himself in the chaparral
For him there was no escape.
For he was doomed for fate.
If only he had opened his eyes
And realized.
He was satisfied.
Feb 7, 2013
Feb 7, 2013 at 2:51 AM UTC
The first time I visited the freak show
I nearly burst into tears
It wasn’t because of the cruelty of it all
It wasn’t because of their cruel deformities
It wasn’t even guilt, not even a bit
It wasn’t about the greed from the stupid ***
Who ran the freak show
I burst into tears because I immediately understood
That the roles were reversed
And that we were the freaks
We, the cowards, who hide our deformities
And denounce our guilt as useless morality
And clutch onto greed and a hunger for entertainment
While every day we ourselves star in the freak’s parade
And the freaks themselves they are not moved
By my dreaded revelations
For them the truth was always pure and simple
Bonded by their deformities
They understand kinship and compassion
As they clutch on to each other
And the parade of freaks moves past them once more
Nov 3, 2015
Nov 3, 2015 at 1:01 PM UTC
Skin as fair as ivory
Eyes as arresting as the art of crime
Nose, a high ground where her pride lay
Lips as fragile as her wavering will
She flashed the most agonized smile in the mirror
Beauty so ethereal, beauty breathtaking as a scene
A brew of knife stains, self-loathing and twisted charm
Her face a cherubim's wail
Plagued with deformities she herself named
Miserably patched with skin-shallow creams and cuts
Spilling her diffusing worth with the bitterness of her shame
She looked at the mirror again
(Perhaps the only thing keen on heeding her tell-tale facade)
Where she rendezvoused with a floating ghost in her likeness
Although not quite
For it was a stranger,
Profoundly stranger than the biting truth
she managed to live with
And a face that launched a thousand lies
Apr 29, 2015
Apr 29, 2015 at 3:26 AM UTC
The complete disarrangement of all my senses, myself my I
Is threatened with the bitter sound of uncertain rumour
That possesses an urgency of unwillingness
An incomprehension of thought
The improvised mediocrity of relished indignity
Asinine questions, absurd and ludicrous probing
Accusations and primitive propensities
The deformities of exaggerated obscenities
That blame and brand myself my I as mad
They have stolen liars tongues
Apr 16, 2012
Apr 16, 2012 at 4:20 PM UTC
skipping back and forth
the stages of grieving
but my body is bottomless —
endless where it hurts the worst.
it continues to grow
like a skin abnormality
over which i trip, head first i tumble down
these words in repetition
their despair, in repetition
in ever so artless ways.
too many indefinite things
gone too visceral
gone too deep these skin layers —
there is an (over)production of them,
to make room for
more. more. more. grief
popping here and there:
an obstacle course.
a grafted stem. a blunder.
what deformities might i uncover
as i dredge myself clean,
as i mow over me?
but my body is bottomless,
in perpetual, grave disquiet —
endless where it feels the worst.
Nov 11, 2021
Nov 11, 2021 at 10:04 PM UTC
How many quantum events defined the result?
Sub-atomic, Ionic bonds breaking,
Forsaking the double-molecular atom.
It’s hard to dispose of waste
In such a clandestine fashion:
‘A half-life of 3 years.’
Standing in the dust of a meltdown-playground
I think I can hear the laughter and the crying of our children,
We’ll never see them in our waking lives
Only their silhouetted deformities
Leering monstrous in the night.
Look for shelter in an old church
Walking, radiating through the halls
Picking at the crumbling plaster,
Trying to master myself for a second:
“Severe and prolonged exposure,
Nausea, sickness, dizziness,
Fatigue…”
May 1, 2013
May 1, 2013 at 4:45 PM UTC
Always being watched even as you're taking a shower
Afraid to turn your lights off at night
because you don't want to know what lurks in the dark
Having encounters with ghosts
who manipulate you into thinking they are alive human beings
Always being attacked by dark forces
because of mistakes your ancestors made in the past
Someone is always bleeding
Someone is always being haunted
Being locked up in an institution
to be experimented on like a guinea pig
Mysteries, curses, deformities
Using spells to keep your loved ones safe
Staying aware of crazy clowns
who get pleasure out of stabbing people for no reason at all
Men with no eyes coming out of mattresses
Suicides
Self mutilation
Mental disorders
***
Romance
****
Psychological thriller
Fantasies
Realities
You start to question your mentality state
when you fall in love with a serial killer
and wish for an innocent victim to die
Facts
Imagination
Your beliefs will be tested
Your religion will be tested
Your loyalty will be tested
Your view of yourself and others who are different from you
will change
Your dreams will be bothered by the fact that pain brings you pleasure
and vice versa
Nightmares
Gore
Survival
Anger
Sadness
Death
Just when you think you have seen it all
it surprises you
Every year the story gets better
Every year is more intense
More creepy
More ****** up
Every year you are mind ****** as you sit on the edge of your seat
I know
I sound really insane however
I will not say I am sorry
It is just another year
in American Horror Story
Dec 1, 2015
Dec 1, 2015 at 9:32 AM UTC
( Lights up on a stately garden
centre stage stands a male figure
the right side of his face badly scarred and burnt )
By mine one deformities I'm I here undone
casting mine withered shadow or' a dying sun
as I long to feel the touch of soft lovers breath
from one such as she at this sweet eve'nings death
for I would die if upon mine own lips her kiss should play
granting me peace at this the bitter end of day
to know her embrace wouldst break my hollow heart
as I too with dusk must now depart
but come again the evenings sweet repose
and I again will come to thee my sweet autumnal Rose
( a female figure walks out onto her balcony as he slips away silently )
Oh gentle moon why doth thou mock my aching breast
where is the heart that beats beneath so honest chest
that sings in silent secret tone
a love that's mine and mine alone
come falling stars once more deny my wishes made
and hide from me as I must hide my pain beneath this false facade
( a shadow moves beneath her balcony to follow the first retreating figure )
Know not the truth of this unspoken and yet unrequited love
is not in features scarred or in stars above
but in the foolishness of pride
that hides ones heart and ones heart must hide
for two such souls within the throes of such abandonment
should find each others arms by mortal deeds and not by wishes spent
so onward night and guise me from all prying eyes
that I may bring forth their love before the sun doth once more rise
bid thee aid me in this my hour of need
and grant success to this my honest and most heart felt deed
-----x-----
Jun 9, 2013
Jun 9, 2013 at 9:24 PM UTC
In the space between walls
stagnant dust swells with manor house tales
of births and deaths, a ****** or two,
marriages, affairs and locked away shames.
We squint and we peer at moth eaten carpets
that hang from the wall, too delicate now
for tread underfoot, for stamping and squishing
and pounding out rows, unravelling structure,
whispers carry to the end of the hall
"have we made the right choice?"
"Please lower your voice,
I would find it too hard, but I can't know your pain"
The heart is merely a muscle afterall.
It was a hospital once, commandeered for the rest
of shell shocked tommies, basket case brigade
gone mad from the sight of vaporized mates,
claret sprays like champagne in traumatised hands
and they're there in the dust,
deformities rot in the space between walls
"and is this the right date?"
"yes" (I'm hoping we're late)
but an embryo is only a blob afterall.
A natural progression from soldiers to nutters
a bedlam, barbaric defective discharge
"if they wont agree then persuade them".
"Just do what is best".
Take the pill force the fluids
splayed over a bed,
and then throw out what's left,
the muck and the grief,
after scraping and clearing
the space between walls.
Dec 15, 2010
Dec 15, 2010 at 1:46 AM UTC
Blanket troupe called finally finalizing finances
beseeched of asian seas and deformities
begone of witch's seeds
creeds,
and further formalities.
Controlled and sold away,
disney ears and candied shmears of salmon serendipity and forlorn serenity
collapse, perhaps?
can't strap the wrap of boot soles and cannoned poles
of butts and handles throwing sandaled barbarians in their foolish faith
For Empire!
the dire need of those to take and feed and be the god-men to tickle and bleed friends and foe alike,
to nettle the fangs of the good hounds blindly following;
scent dividing love and steeds to carry armies and lone conquerers to their final destinations, permutations of how so many flowers whittle at the broken touch of thunderous life;
of hidden strifes that attack these patient sentinels
their yelps yet signals of defeat so unburly pardoned
Nov 18, 2013
Nov 18, 2013 at 3:10 PM UTC
Trace your thoughts slowly
Across the moon’s lit Primrose,
And ponder not on how she belongs to the
Twilight.
Linger not on the notions of Beauty’s
Contrast…
Of utter radiance amongst the Eventide—
Lest you crave her
Shadows.
The unworthy swoon on false intoxications of allure,
Betraying pheromones that lead only to
Ruin.
Breathe not in her presence and still your thoughts, which race ill-intended towards
Premature release of longings—
Unrequited.
Dark Goddess of the Abyss
Siren of Shadows
Seeker of none, yet yearned by
All.
Accursed Aphrodite
Preternatural Persephone
Devourer of Darkfall,
Merciless Maven of moon-drunk men
Who quake with trepidation
Under the pressure of your
Wrath.
Know that your fleeting fury fuels
Fiery passions.
Fulfills my need to know you
If only briefly.
Shall I caress legendary layered labyrinths
Of thou’s lucid lithe mind?
Soothe seared sacred chambers
Of thine frostbitten
Heart?
Beautiful forlorn creature you are
To only be seen for Carnality’s
Delight.
Know that I perceive you.
Past Ethereal Elegance
Beyond the bonds of
Crescent Shackles.
Embodiment of Evanescent Evenings
Impermanence intertwined in
Insufferable aching…
Understand that your
Acrimony is
Admired.
This altruism
All-encompassing.
Allow me to detect deformities
Deep within
Defenses Deterred—
Hollow conclaves concealing
Corrugated corrupted
Compliance.
Humor my heartfelt hubris…
Humble yourself before this
Haunted man.
Entreat, Embrace, Entrust
This harrowed human husk
With an ounce of your Obsidian
Opulence.
I proclaim to pronounce you as my
Pessimistic Paramour.
To never underestimate
Our most unholy
Union.
To know that you belong to the
Night Sky
And must be unbound…
Understand my ululating plea,
To adore your admonishing
Yet never resign to its
False
Adherence.
Jun 4, 2022
Jun 4, 2022 at 3:43 AM UTC
You tell me about the bruise you got today
How even though you carefully avoided him
His pleading words started nipping at your toes
Like a new puppy
At first it sounds like a good idea but once you take that little bundle of joy home it will turn into the Tasmanian devil and destroys everything in its path
But you wouldn't know
On the outside you love dogs
But deep down inside you're afraid
You've told me
The tears swimming in your eyes
Threatening at any second to defy you
You are not perfect
We are all made of deformities
Of awkward angles
Puzzle pieces
So that one day we can find our match
Love is a battlefield
Full of scars and bruises
The blue turning into a deep purple before it can get better
It's so hard to not step on the land mines of emotion
The ***** traps of hatred
But you have a shield
A bullet proof vest that will block you from those fears
But it can only withstand so much
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 1:36 PM UTC
.
Oh! Fragile martyr man--
your word play is so electric.
Therapy pulses magnetic
power
to your malignant
deformities.
Death becomes
your golden ticket
to enchantment.
The freedom revolution
evolves
from a badly broken,
bleeding humanity.
Certain
faces simply
whisper power
which question the spilled--
blood of thousands
on a daily
basis-
Another cliche war is
refilling the inkwells
of the blank page,
starving artist.
Delicate tragic fairy tales remembered--
Layers of rust
encrust the tick and the tock
all throughout the grinding
gears of the clock.
Paintings of the Thinker
sit thinking in the
keenest calculable clarity.
The dreamers of darkness
bathe in the cold,
blinding sparks
of falling starlight.
.
Jan 30, 2010
Jan 30, 2010 at 9:51 PM UTC
Our hands shaped like cages.
Cages shaped in the deformities of our hands.
Stoic fingers as rusty girdles,
Grainy textures as the bare calluses of our hands.
Trap.
Grasshoppers.
Trap.
The Sun.
Trap.
Our lovers hearts.
Within it’s moral confines.
Casually unlearn the truth that
confinement leaves it absent of light,
rid of it’s senescent glow,
dead to grow.
Our hands shaped like cages.
Cages shaped in the deformities of our hands.
May 4, 2017
May 4, 2017 at 1:47 AM UTC
Through death we learn how precious life is.
We are given the gift of your first and last home.
With the first cut, your struggles, your joys and your scars are all revealed.
And we see you.
We see the physical pieces, tissues and organs that you inhabited.
The lungs that expanded with your first breath and collapsed with your last.
The heart that beat for the first time in synchrony with your mother's.
The womb in which you created life.
But when we see you,
We also find foreigners who took your space for themselves.
The cancers which suffocated and starved you.
Sutures, scars, and remnants of past surgeries intended to extend your life.
Abnormalities and deformities that not only defined your perfect imperfection, your humanness,
But also evicted you from your physical being.
So lucky are we to learn from you.
So indebted are we to you
For your generosity and humility.
Like all great teachers, you have made great sacrifices in the name of education.
And for that we are truly grateful.
While your ears cannot hear our "thank-you"
We know you are listening and watching over us
As we pursue the knowledge and empathy we need
To become great doctors.
Apr 30, 2018
Apr 30, 2018 at 4:12 PM UTC
You know
I was thinking how much
I'd like to just leave it all behind
and let loose like a mad
rebel with plenty of caws
flitting through sunlight that creeps
through the trees
because anymore
I can't get behind another day of
constantly dragging on more
supposed last toxin riddles
while your hands become these frail metastatic
cooling tower fingers
I can already see them already shaking off
clinched jaw fuel droplets
onto cancerous rancid mass graves
and I don't want to imagine what's beyond that
Besides
lately I've been preoccupied
with the feel of timeworn ciphers etched
in my charcoal wings as I
descend on power lines joining
scorched throat jesters cackling murderously
at this scorched earth
See I want to get away from our plutonic friends
all they want is to binge on residual radiation
raising their safety glasses to their excesses
knowing their acceptable risk deformities await
with contaminated breath
Sure we've got a reputation of being devious
but I'd rather proudly flaunt tattered onyx feathers
than sit around with
decaying radioactive half lives surrounding
inactive decaying half lives abounding
We crows scavenge our meals indiscriminately
but we don't dare eat our young as you do
Jan 31, 2014
Jan 31, 2014 at 10:35 AM UTC
The first time we sat together,
just you and I,
I rolled up my sleeves to show you
the secrets I kept hidden there.
My nerves were going crazy,
and I felt sick to my stomach.
You looked and you scanned
the rows of scars across my arms.
I never spoke of them directly,
but I told you I was lost once,
lost to myself and everyone around.
I told you there were things I did
just to survive myself.
You never spoke,
and I grabbed your hand,
bringing it over the ridged flesh.
Even with all of these deformities,
in your eyes I'm still beautiful.
Nov 15, 2012
Nov 15, 2012 at 9:21 PM UTC