"dysentery" poems
Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,
Having never set eyes on the land he was called to partition
Between two peoples fanatically at odds,
With their different diets and incompatible gods.
"Time," they had briefed him in London, "is short. It's too late
For mutual reconciliation or rational debate:
The only solution now lies in separation.
The Viceroy thinks, as you will see from his letter,
That the less you are seen in his company the better,
So we've arranged to provide you with other accommodation.
We can give you four judges, two Moslem and two Hindu,
To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you."
Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day
Patrolling the gardens to keep the assassins away,
He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate
Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date
And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect
Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,
And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,
But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,
A continent for better or worse divided.
The next day he sailed for England, where he could quickly forget
The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not,
Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot.
31.6k
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;[email protected])
It is the 30th day of the months in Kenya
State and corporate capitalist have now paid their workers
Wages or salaries or stipends or emoluments all being remunerations
While the rural bourgeoisie and urban bourgeoisie have also paid ex-gratia
To relatives come over-aged workers who have declined retiring
For the fear of looming starvation if at all they go home, where they were born,
Nonetheless; proceed they receive will do nothing whatsoever
As it will be stifled by the monster of desperate consumerism;
So fat and gullible in this tiger of land in the region called Kenya;
The terror peddling rent, courtesy of ruthlessness of the landlord
Bills of electric power in their full monopolistic gear
Bills of water devoid of quality, indifferent dysentery monger
Wages for maid who keep on usurping the food of my child; milk
Bills for gas, all of it redolent of comprador bourgeoisie in fashion,
Hotel and bar bill - a surreptious one, as the bar girl only knows
Airtime and renewal, TV channels and other screen capitalistic ploys
Family trip to local resort in a feat of foolish consumerist venture,
Money to the old mother at home and, sometimes depraved but patient father
ARV’s money to my *** aids stricken sister at the village, my aunt also
Tuition fees for my son at the kindergarten, who goes to schools but learns nothing
fees balance which my wife has to pay at the tailor to ransom out her dress,
M-Pesa and M-Swari loan repayment, this only for Kenyan 30th dayers
They know the agony of dealing with Kenyan mega-capitalist safaricom ltd.
This consumerism and **** consumerism,
It is the menacing bane of the Kenyan poor
It is the avaricious tube which siphons back
The hard earned money from pockets of the poor
Back to despotic account of the pitiless world pigshotry.
Feb 28, 2014
Feb 28, 2014 at 9:35 AM UTC
The great Mughal emperor of 16th century,
He died of multiple ***** failure,
Comprising of the heart as well as others.
They say that he loose motioned his way to death,
Then the ancient emperor had got a heart seizure.
Dysentery had made the dying emperor weaker.
Aug 29, 2016
Aug 29, 2016 at 5:23 AM UTC
Old scratch walks up and down in this world.
Not some misunderstood romantic tragic figure,
but the father of lies.
Old scratch stands behind the curtain
and raids the caravans loaded down with good intentions
He is the wicked warlord in the horn of Africa.
He is the self serving dictator with ridiculous hair
murdering his family in paranoid fits
while his people eat bark in hungry desperation.
He is dengue ebola, ecoli, the plague..
He is rage and landmines in the soccer fields
He is dysentery and influenza and krokodil.
Old scratch walks to in fro in this land
with infectious breath and violent laughter
He is the womb of grief and lost hope.
twenty thousand crying skeletons
with bloated bellies blinded by thirsty flies
each and every day old scratch ushers them
to the only relief they will ever find.
while another twenty thousand wait in line.
We give it a face, a voice, and a name.
I'm so glad we have old scratch to blame,
otherwise whose fault would all this madness be?
Jan 18, 2016
Jan 18, 2016 at 4:24 PM UTC
I only have one photo of Grandad
from his years of service in the Great War,
and in it he’s wearing a leopard-skin leotard.
My paternal grandfather, Grandad,
was brought up in Brockley, South-East London
In his teens he was conscripted
and became a gunner sergeant in the Royal Field Artillery.
I still have his stirrups and his French/English phrase book
which includes useful words, like dysentery,
(think of the movie, ‘War Horse’, and you’re almost there).
He fought in the mud in France and put a lot of horses out of their misery.
Apparently, he enjoyed the stage – a song and a dance,
and almost went professional after a string
of successful nights at the local Roxy,
all of which makes me want to have known him better,
but he died in my teens.
He laughed a lot, loved his vegetable garden
and had a collection of handy-sized, hard-back books
giving details of how various circuits and wiring worked.
I recall his bear of an armchair
and how it was in easy reach
of a slim stack of shallow drawers
from which he would take slender tools or small curios
and sit and explain their significance to my bemused child self.
I have the brown photo somewhere -
it’s not one I’d like to frame as it raises too many questions for me.
Like – is that bloke next to grandad meant to be Robinson Crusoe?
Like – what prompted grandad to ‘black up’ from head to toe – is he Man Friday?
And now, I stare at the photo handed to me by my friend of his grandfather, complete with rifle and medals,
and again I silently ask my grandad – why?
Jun 19, 2022
Jun 19, 2022 at 3:11 PM UTC
In my mind, as infinite as the heavens,
I am but a starry eyed stranger
Wandering through her shimmering realms
Beneath an ebony sky, laced with crimson,
Beclouded with spiraling sprays of stardust
A child, a warrior, a saint full of sin,
I pass through the vapour of my shadowselves
Layers falling away like rotten tree bark
Exposing the rings within, like fingerprints,
Looping coils of time, bending but unbroken
Somewhere in the distance a dragonfly dances on the surface of the water,
Unknowingly admired by a sharp toothed Chinook
As another lost soul pulls back on a well worn syringe,
Seated on a broken toilet, slowly leaking across the scarred, yellow linoleum.
While a mother in Africa nurses a starving baby from her malnourished breast,
A stomach ravaged by dysentery,
Lips cracked and bleeding beneath the relentless heat of the sun,
And a pimple faced pop star sips champagne from a crystal goblet,
Wearing eight hundred dollar sunglasses and basking on a beach in Barbados,
Where they will spend more on hotels and liquor for a week than most families will earn in wages all year.
I close my eyes to imagine a world where only dragonflies sip champagne,
and people ACTUALLY care about one another.
But the former seems more likely than the latter...
So I return to my inner sanctuary of dreams...
And once again, I am infinite.
May 27, 2015
May 27, 2015 at 10:00 AM UTC
Mud goes so stiff as it dries on the clothes
And it gets in the rifles and ammo
And men live in the mud for day after day
And they die there as the death tolls just grow.
The lads call it Wipers, but we know it’s called Ypres
And we don’t know the language but know mud
And the massive field guns that are firing this way
Causing lots of men to stay here for good.
In two months I’ve not heard the sound of a bird
With the fighting and dying you don’t listen
But I saw a dead blackbird lying out in the mud
And memories of home made my eyes glisten.
I’d rather be back at my home on the farm
Tending cattle and working the land
But I’m lying here shooting at men I don’t know
In a hard ****** war that I don’t understand.
We’ll soon be coming to the end of this year
We were told that it wouldn’t last too long
I don’t know how much longer the men can last out
The spirits willing but their bodies aren’t strong.
We’ve been pounded for hours, we’ve been pounded for days
It seems like so long and it’s so cold
There are men who've got frostbite and gangrene and sores
But it’s the dysentery that makes some men fold.
When will it end and who will make peace
They’re decisions that aren't made at the front
But by men back at home who think they know best
Not by poor dying men bearing the brunt.
©JRW2014
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 4:01 PM UTC
There is no fantastical world in which civility between us can exist. Civility, of course, being perceived in the sense that we can coexist pleasantly, without a romance topped with jaded raspberries and peppermint liqueur.
After a generous amount of sneezing and crawling and crying in the moonlight with half embered cigarettes hanging from our dripping mouths, I saw this. A grievous vision of Hank Stamper clawing at my back end, a still-life embedded someplace dark and dank, a cradle so forgotten and filthy that only a mother woven from dirt-covered cloth could love it. We built some ridiculous, disgusting house and made love in it. Day in, day out.
In the end our urinary tract infections infected our kidneys and became fatal when paired with the dysentery. I will always remember your name paired with dysentery, my love.
I promised myself endlessly that I was laying in such a softer settlement without you. Your reckless lifestyle was grimier than mine and our paths collided and collapsed with validity, I was sure of that. I am sure of that. However, it seems my insistence that I recover from you, brings with it some kind of ****** up honor to be dealt your way. Should I write a song about you? No, I'd soon hear it in your trapeze act. Should I make a film about you? No, the lead would be sinfully attractive and further engorge your rather large head. Should I write a book about you? Should I? Have I? Can I? I doubt you would see the honor here. In fact, if you were to look for anything other than consistent misuses of punctuation in my writing, I feel sure you would find solace and comfort and silence would soon follow.
Mar 2, 2014
Mar 2, 2014 at 7:23 PM UTC
1
we ran outside
gathering the hailstones
before they could return
to rain
2
spring thunder storms
refreshed the
runoff ponds
the spring peepers
chorus chirps
3
soon, to be Indra, Lord of Heaven,
the God of War as well as Storms and Rainfall,
starter of war
a war which shall engulf
the planet and
perish all
4
in solid,
ice
which shall melt
and drown the littoral lands
lands peopled in the
billions
and so shall follow
disease plague typhus dysentery
death
in its many shapes and sizes
5
in drops
flows from your eye
6
according to religion
holy water
May 11, 2012
May 11, 2012 at 10:27 AM UTC
while the young kids
burn their lips on
unfiltered cigarettes
and the poets
are distracted,
i'm kneeling in an alley
flushed with desire
clutching your number on a napkin.
while the children
and the saints
are crying in dysentery
behind guerrilla masks and guns
i'm imagining the flesh of your stomach
folded over the length of my thigh
and the roar of a volcano
in your heart.
May 10, 2013
May 10, 2013 at 9:32 PM UTC
Another day and what to make of it? Tu Du list.
Things start to happen, don't worry. Don't stew.
Water down darkness. Ask the sun for a light.
Loot Frederick's of Hollywood. Cultivate pompous grass.
Rewrite *Moby **** as free verse. Irritate life with art.
Plant Rhino rhizome and grow ***** Turn over an old leaf.
Take a road trip to a state of anxiety. Try chewing gun.
Play the Jew's harp in a mosque. Pray for drains.
Steal a cop from a donut. See if LSD still works.
Listen to Rockabilly noir. Experiment with dysentery.
Set out buckets to catch sky. Talk with, not to, turnips.
Insist on having the last word. Get it. Die.
Or just admit another wasted day,
lonely as your heart, not as grey.
Mar 12, 2016
Mar 12, 2016 at 6:12 PM UTC
Weather whethers whither wow?
Picture Oregon Trail, version 2, the runaways.
A little banjo with your standstill open plain,
always waving wheatgrasses,
beckoning with wide fingertrails.
I tried to ford the river,
but my ******* oxen died.
Each breath worse than the last,
feeling filth in my bones,
dysentery behind every accidental shotgun wound.
What do you do when you know two right answers,
when everything feels correct?
Multiple choice,
multiple guess,
multiple uglies.
You touch my stereo,
volume and fingernails tune.
Aug 14, 2012
Aug 14, 2012 at 12:23 AM UTC
I taste your lips like the cotton candy
of a Newark sky, laced
with smog and dysentery. You lift
me up, roll me over and draw
me toward you. The gravitational pull--
'on my hair and tell me you love me'--
of your shoulders
and the intoxication of your
voice. Craning my neck
to hear--'you love me'--the grip
of your hands
on my throat.
The city is loud. Just
loud enough to gasp
through the static
of your car radio, pressing--'up against
me'--all the buttons.
Just change
the station. Where we rock
and undulate smoggy windows and
candied skies.
This last goodbye
tastes different from
my first time, clutching--
'my back and etching out lullabies'--
the shift stick. Put it in
neutral. We can just coast
from here and take it
easy--'she's so'--easy. Easy
falling into and letting fall and keeping--
'next to me forever'--from falling
over and over the bricks
of your building, shaking
the foundation, the exact
same way. You loved me
like a super dome and expanded
the words of your cityscape: a nice
addition, in need
of renovation. The cycle of
recycled buildings and veiled skies.
The monotonous gossip
of a Newark morning drawn out
past the night.
Dec 8, 2016
Dec 8, 2016 at 2:51 PM UTC
You walked home
from school
with Sutcliffe
(O’Brien was off
with dysentery
which Eddie thought
was a load of ****
along the New Kent Road
by the shop from which
you bought
a stamp album
and the silver looking
6 shooter gun
and holster
with the belt
with pretend bullets
all around
in little holders
and Eddie said
his big sister
was beginning to spend
too much time
in the washroom
getting herself
all geared up
for her boyfriend
and that his dad
banged on the door
wanting to get in
for his shave
( she’d used all
the hot water
her mother had boiled
in the copper
for the family bath
that night
and his sister
had bellowed back
I’ve got to look my best
I can’t go out
smelling
like a dead rat
and Eddie laughed
(his buck teeth showing)
and Dad told her
she’d feel his hand
across her backside
if she got
too mouthy with him
so she shut her noise
and came out
all dolled up you
her hair all piled high
her lipstick bright red
her tight skirt
and Dad said
if you think you’re going out
dressed like that
you can think again
but she did
and that was it
and Mum said to him
she's only young once
but he just shaved
and moaned
and I could hear him
muttering to himself
and so Eddie went on
(O’Brien would have
baited him about his sister
would have riled him bad
but he was away
and Eddie was glad)
and so you got
to the corner
of Deacon Way
where Sutcliffe lived
and so you walked
across the road
to Meadow Row
and he waved
and you watched
his blonde cropped hair
and black uniform
disappear from sight
and walked towards home
hands in pockets
satchel on your back
scuffed shoes
kicking stones
onto the bombsite
home to tea
of bread and jam
then out with Ingrid
on the balcony
looking down
over the ledge
at the people passing
or kids playing
making a din
until her father
called her
with his rough voice
and she went back in.
Aug 27, 2013
Aug 27, 2013 at 3:43 PM UTC
Straddling the line of popularity
Teetering on the edge of trends and personality
As soon as I'm about to fall into them I revert back to introverted me.
This dissent from narcissistic sorcery may slip you into mental dysentery
Though reading into the stains is not necessarily a necessity,
It's a little difficult to ignore the symmetry.
Hock-up spit onto this canvas, rip up another piece for my portfolio.
Lock-up your kids inside the frames of your family's mementos.
I'm lashing out like diet coke infused with mentos.
I'm not your son, not your husband, nor your best friend.
I'm that guy you **** for fun sometimes on the weekend.
I used to hate people in school who said they "failed" when they got a "C",
Now I hate the people who say they're broke when they still have money.
I'll grab your skate-up , lame-duck, askin "Have you ever ate nuts?"
We need some action. Got the lights, the camera, but don't take cuts.
Shoot a provisional peripheral glance at my pay-stub.
Always take pride in where you came from even if it ain't much.
The glass is still half empty if you're only half full of ****
Some days I'm a dog. Any day I'm a typical cat.
So on the days it's raining cats and dogs, I get really wet.
No...wait...not like that...
I mean I'm thrown really out of whack.
Spilling every drop of sporadic synaptic spit onto this paperback.
Nov 3, 2015
Nov 3, 2015 at 10:43 AM UTC
Disappointment dogged their every step
on the trip back from the Pole.
Amundsen had bested Scott,
as the World would soon be told.
Evans was the first to die,
to perish in the frost.
Oates, the poor old soldier,
was next to pay the cost.
Crippled by an old war wound,
Home base too far to go,
He walked out in a blizzard
and was buried by the snow.
Eleven miles to fuel and food
The three men left were stranded
A fierce winter storm held them at bay
Empty bellied, empty handed.
Bowers first, then Wilson died,
felled by dysentery .
Scott, their brave Commander,
then wrote his final entry:
“A pity, I can write no more,
too weak to venture out.
Nearly snow blind from the Frost,
by Winter put to rout”
Eight months later, a rescue party
came upon their sad remains
Robert Falcon Scott had died.
The world would learn their names.
They raised a cairn of ice around
the place where brave men died.
A crudely fashioned wooden cross
they placed above on high.
Jan 4, 2012
Jan 4, 2012 at 10:34 PM UTC
I never cared for the old days much
Reminiscence is for the lazy romantics
Spitting phrases like
Life was so much better then
But history remembers
Hungry eyes
Starvation
Consumption
Poverty that would shake a romantic’s soul
Dysentery
War
Poxes
More war
Madness
More War
Greed
More War
More War
More War
Maybe times haven’t changed that much
May 9, 2015
May 9, 2015 at 11:58 PM UTC
“That’s what America is about,” Carson said. “A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less."
Ben Carson is a might confusing
because he is without a doubt
a brilliant brain surgeon
& yet,
& yet ...
according to him
he communes telepathically
with wild bears,
can calm armed-robbers,
stabbed his best friend,
& now sees slavery as
some sort of Welcome
To the Land of Liberty
All are Welcome Act.
Ben Carson is an idiot
because well ...
where to start,
well how's about millions
of folks forced to board
ships naked, afraid,
chained in rows,
as SLAVES,
& yes, half of all slave infants
died in the first year,
survivors lived on a basic
nutrition-free gruel,
there was diarrhea, dysentery,
whooping cough, blindness,
skin lesions &
convulsions,
& they were
SLAVES.
but to Dr. Ben Carson
these terrified, beaten,
chained, whipped,
SLAVES ...
were immigrants
just like you
and just like me.
Mar 7, 2017
Mar 7, 2017 at 1:30 AM UTC
and what if I don’t care
what if, in spite of your efforts, I am unmoved
what if you failed
what if I am not alone
what if your greatest horrors are realized
what if not only the few, but the many reject you
and your fabricated truth
and you forget
and are forgotten
an empty shell of the best forgotten past
and you no longer behold the world from your ****** golden throne
but from the slums
in the dysentery and refuse that is a product of your empire
and in the putrid mire of your failure
you die
the end
Jun 12, 2011
Jun 12, 2011 at 11:07 AM UTC
Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.
Another day and what to make of it? Tu Du list.
Things start to happen, don't worry. Don't stew.
Water down darkness. Ask the sun for a light.
Loot Frederick's of Hollywood. Cultivate pompous grass.
Rewrite Moby **** as free verse. Irritate life with art.
Plant Rhino rhizome and grow ***** Turn over an old leaf.
Take a road trip to a state of anxiety. Try chewing gun.
Play the Jew's harp in a mosque. Pray for drains.
Steal a cop from a donut. See if LSD still works.
Listen to Rockabilly noir. Experiment with dysentery.
Set out buckets to catch sky. Talk with, not to, turnips.
Insist on having the last word. Get it. Die.
Or just admit another wasted day,
lonely as your heart, but not as gray.
Feb 24, 2017
Feb 24, 2017 at 7:05 AM UTC
At the beginning of 2020, Australia was on fire.
The threat of WWIII was all too real.
Baby dictators playing with "disposable" human lives.
Disposable lives
Disposable masks
Disposable gloves
Disposable plastic bags
. . . and here were are again with disposable lives.
My family and I survived the Oregon trail and not one of us died from dysentery. A small victory!
George Floyd, "I can't breath."
Black Lives Matter.
LGBTQ+ Lives Matter.
Marching in the streets and shouting until I can't speak. Organizing and criticizing institutions that WE built. People WE put into office. And my more political topics that WE are responsible for.
Black Lives Still Matter.
LQBTQ+ Lives Still Matter.
Anti-maskers, "I can't breath."
A shame and a reflection in the United States education system.
Me walking my dogs, "I can't breath. . . without a mask"
Ashes falling from our apocalypses skys.
My skin burns from the air.
I my dog sneezing because they don't have masks.
My mask discolored from this short walk.
Exposed
Double Down
Tested
Isolate
Negative
Relief
Virtual Life
A light at the end of this long tunnel?
Good-bye Oregon!
2021, let's try Utah?
Dec 20, 2020
Dec 20, 2020 at 7:45 PM UTC
Sutcliffe walked
in a kind of shuffling his heels
kind of way
with hands in his pockets
and school tie undone
and hanging loose
you’d walked home
from school with him
as O’Brien was off
with dysentery
I find that pottery teacher
a bit of a ****
he said
the way he held up
your work
in that dismissive way
to show you up
you shrugged your shoulders
I hate rolling out
the messing clay
and I’ve no idea
how to make a pissy ***
than how to make
a pie like my mother’s
he’s a pockmarked
****** anyway
Sutcliffe said
and the fecking car
he drives to school
that red sports job
you came to the road
where Sutcliffe lived
and waited
I’ll surprise him one day
you said
I’ll make him
the fecking ***
he wants
Sutcliffe laughed
and shuffled up
the stairs to his flat
with a wave of his hand
and nod of his
blonde haired head
you walked over
the crossing
and down Meadow Row
by the bombed out houses
Ingrid was sitting
on the kerb
with her face
in her hands
she looked up
at the sound
of your approach
what’s a matter
with you sitting there
all glum?
you said
no one’s indoors
I’m locked out
she said
where’s your parents?
you asked
no idea
I knocked and knocked
but no one answered
she said
have to wait now
until they come back
when will that be?
you asked
God knows
she said
last time it was late
as they went to the races
and mum forgot
to leave me
the front door key
and I had to wait
out in the cold
on the stairs
until they got back
you should have knocked
at our door
Mum’d got you
something to eat
and you would
have been warm
by our fire
you said
didn’t want to disturb anyone
she said
she looked at the road
and closed her eyes
well come home
with me now
Mum won’t mind
and she’ll tell
your parents
where you are
when they get back
you said
he won’t like it
she said
tough *****
you said
she laughed
and got out
of the kerb
and stood
next to you
are you sure
your mum won’t mind?
of course she won’t
ok
she said
and you both walked down
Meadow Row
and crossed over
to the flats
through the Square
you knew your mum
wouldn’t mind
she knew Ingrid’s parents
and knew their ways
and faults
and his drunken voice
and pushed back hat
but as you walked
with Ingrid up the stairs
you never told her that.
Sep 14, 2013
Sep 14, 2013 at 6:04 AM UTC