"hunchbacked" poems
Blinded by the sunlight that shines so brightly,
it proceeds to massage my spectacles,
rinsing the grime away from my eyes,
there lived mankind, buildings, plants, and animals,
but where was I, unaware of the planet I saunter,
I look in amazement, unborn to what to forecast,
but then I distinguished the dark side, somber and bleak,
impoverished skeletons walking hunchbacked, desperately
scrambling for silver, as so to purchase a bottle of liquor and a burger to indulge his vacancy that absents him,
as I trek my way further into this metropolis,
I hear a sudden commotion arising from the right direction,
it begins to steer me that way, luring me in deeply there was a mass of onlookers chanting on, of what seemed to be two individuals pummeling one another into a bloodbath, but then it escalated, the crowd began to all partake in the beating and it caused a mayhem, that was uncontrolled, I bolted the scene, protecting my mask from getting dismantled, as suddenly I hear a very deafening noise, it was a four wheeler wagon, that speedily amtrac it's way towards the locus in which we was in, everyone scattered the scene, as the people who dressed in uniform annihilated the scene, putting an outright stop to the madness that occurred, forestalling future procreation from the participants, my heart shriveled and I gasped for air, I ran aimlessly into a town that was lively and sunny, as I saw mankind playing sports, clubbing, riding nice convertibles, homes were futuristic, plants were vegetated, smiles and giggles were infectious, everyone was cheerful and amused enjoying this utopian I discovered, it was care-free, as folks walked in suit and ties, formal dresses, luggages entering and exiting, dialect as clear as caribbean sea, friendly animals chaperoned by their owner, "where am I?", "what was this strange but yet interesting soil I embark on?", ..... I don't know, but it closes me in like a maze and I'm forced to live as they.
Aug 25, 2018
Aug 25, 2018 at 4:12 PM UTC
who is she?
i’m not saying that in a cute, quirky, self-confident way either, like
genuinely, who is she?
i don’t remember when i morphed from a
bony, pimply, bowlegged teen into a
soft, dimpled, hunchbacked “adult”.
there are still remnants of her--
my forehead still bears the marks of farms of blackheads
and my collarbones are still visible when i allow them to be--
but her
this “woman”
looking back at me is still as foreign as blood pudding.
i still feel the same, relatively, as i did when i was 5 years younger.
i still tend to wear clothes that are comfortable over flattering.
i still feel my stomach tied into itself at the thought of making a doctor’s appointment on my own.
i still feel like me.
but her?
i don’t recognize her.
Jul 1, 2020
Jul 1, 2020 at 4:54 PM UTC
I to the open road,
You to the hunchbacked street -
Which of us two
Shall the earlier rue
That day we chanced to meet?
I with a heart that's sound,
You with sick fancies of pain -
Which of us two
Would the earlier rue
If we chanced to meet again?
I jingle homely lore,
While you rhyme is with kiss -
Which of us two
Will the earlier rue
The love of the Hoylake Miss?
Not I the first to go,
Nor I the first to deceive -
Which of us two
Shall the the earliest rue
Our garden of make-believe?
You were a Chinese god,
I an offering fair,
As we entered the
Garden of Allah,
To sing our holy prayer.
Entered with hearts bowed low,
Yet I heard a voice that cried:
For he is the god of the
Sacrifice,
You are the crucified.
It was all make-believe,
A foolish game of play,
Our garden of Allah
A drawing-room,
Our Chinese god of clay.
Strings of bruises for pearls,
Tears for forget-me-nots,
And a deadly pain
Of the sickening shame
Watching the fading spots.
As quickly they faded,
The heart of me faded as well,
Until nothing is left
Of my garden,
But a soul sunk to hell.
Hail!
Poet prend ton lute -Je disparaire,
No more together we'll enter the
Enchanted garden of make-believe,
Nor my sad soul listen while thine deceive.
No more you'll be the God of Sacrifice,
Nor I the crucified.
Ah, Garden of Allah -how bitter sweet
Thy fruit. Why breakest thou the heart?
Why spoilest thou the soul with notes
From thy golden lute?
Lo! our garden a common room
Our Chinese god burnt clay, and
The singing of verses a funeral hymn
That awakes with awakening day.
'Twas all such a meaningless play,
Poet prend ton lute -Je disparaitre.
Hail!
Poet, take my hand -we'll walk
Still a little way.
I'll not desert thee at the close of day,
I, too, must pray.
A beggar asking alms of passers-by,
Does not refuse a drink to one who's dry
That once by him did lie.
Poet, come close -before I leave for aye
Take thou my hand, we'll walk still
A little way.
One garment covered both to keep us warm,
What harmed the one, was't not the other's harm?
Close clasped, one single form.
Was it not meant of aye?
Poet, take thou my hand -we'll still
Walk a little way.
2.5k
Vast, empty, midnight hour,
hunchbacked lampposts glaring over parasitic black earth
choking its host.
A parking lot,
an ecosystem’s blemish—
hot tar seeping into the pores of the earth
like a stubborn blackhead in a lip line.
When no cars burrow into the blackened hide
like lice
the great absence of life
is an atrocity.
I imagine myself skateboarding across the tier
as the small town cops
watch languidly with vague interest—
A skateboarder’s paradise
where wheels and accomplice minds roll across celestial barriers
blasting infinite pulses
into the microcosm.
What greasy punks have their mother’s van parked here,
huddling by the heat vents
and jerking off into a Pringle’s can?
Empty parking lot
looks like a cemetery
filled to the brim
where headstones meld
over a mass grave—
delineated by white lines,
the apparitions of vehicles and their hosts
haunt the frozen space.
Another horrible excuse
to waste land,
a wasteland in and of itself
where Tom Eliot saunters aimlessly
and buries the dead.
The saddest sight to behold,
this vacuous parking lot
littered with stray shopping carts,
phantasmal plastic bags,
gum splotches,
***** stains,
candy wrappers,
cigarette butts,
used condoms,
lonely cops
and patient drug dealers,
ambulant skaters,
tired punks,
bored teenagers,
somnambulists,
stumbling drunks,
hunchbacked ***** lights
prying for life beneath its sallow gaze—
The air encapsulated within the perdition
stifling,
the pavement below stifling,
a constriction only visible
when emptied of its contents.
A cop wakes from their choking nightmare gasping
to find themselves trapped,
****** in this parking lot
where the walkie-talkie buzzes
with the weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The warehouse store
looming above the waiting room
lifeless, silent, dark countenance—
Big Brother sees all in the gaping maw.
Cascading before me,
stretching towards the highway passing by,
waiting for the panorama to finish scrolling,
the treadmill to cease its cycle—
all the while lamenting life’s absence
and reveling in the potentiality it possesses.
Dec 28, 2016
Dec 28, 2016 at 10:18 PM UTC
Thanks thespis for another muse anew,
Filliping my soul with the spirit of a song,
To chant for the young world in these pepperish letters,
before my callous eyes on the skull of historical future
on my pykitonic torso of I another African pykin,
as I finish my coffin for the cadaver of poetry
that the law of poetry is a distorting neurosis,
neurotic abnormality its baseboard of time
giving classical balance for wondrous poetry.
Compensatory motivation a charm of its seed,
Taking dear eyes from the skull of Demodocos
Leaving songfull mouth his legacy for humanity,
Warped physique not short of history,
Teaching the world to drink in full pyrene spring
As hunchbacked dwarfism of Alexander Pope
was not in any sense dwarfism of his poetry,
nor club foot of Byron in ******* to Maugham
Byronic heroism to Europe of yester times,
That sired Proust, the Jewish neurotic
And Keats the most dwarfish and Wolfe the tallest
Of man and woman to the cultural matrix
Of Europe, the mother of art, poetry and synaethesia,
From which was born Pushkin that took poetry
Out of his nymphomaniac heart, to the solace of czars,
And Shakespeare the dear thief, luckily converted
Childhood kleptomania into royal theatre of King Lear,
The parallel of four brothers from the house of Karamazov,
Their father; impecunious penny penchant muzhik
In the name of Fydor epileptic Dostoyevsky.
A lull of the time to escape from world of rent and tax,
Gripped nerves of the duo to a new realm of art
wherein sensuous glory from ***** and Indian hemp
propelled the souls of Coleridge and De Quincey
to grandiose highness of poetry in the dreams of *****
bordering on the teutonic greatness of ritualistic breed,
poetry that transcended from rotten apples in the writing desk
of Fredriech von schiller the begotten son of Germany,
writing under the arms of Balzac dressed in monkey clobus,
that along with Milton in the lost paradise, gave him swaddles
only when the poetic vein of Milton flowed happily from nothing,
but from the ritualized autumnal equinox to the spiritual vernal,
as Coleridge was in full recondite of marquetry,mosaic and miracles,
the miraculous white male sheep, the white ram of Wole Soyinka,
that he gave as a gift to Achebe at the last anniversary, evil decoy
that become a car which deathly crushed Chinua Achebe
down to demise in the catacombs for the law of poetry
as abnormal human neurosis an equation of perfect art.
Jun 6, 2014
Jun 6, 2014 at 8:26 AM UTC
I glare at it
During last period,
Jumping too high
But not high enough
To reach the swinging rope.
I'm in history,
And some glazed-over teacher
Is pointing at the
Chalkboard which has
Tiny scratches that look like words
Scribbled all over.
But I don't look at my notes,
Because my neck is craning
Too far back
To look at the rope
That is
My two and a half hours of freedom.
A single note is released into the halls
And the students chace it
And I leap into the air
Because the rope
Is reachable
And I grab it.
I begin to climb.
I sit by you on the
Dirt-dusted tile floor
Outside the gym
And we work on algebra
Or english if it's a good day.
And don't get me wrong,
I hate the familiar stench of homework
As much as
The next
Hunchbacked highschooler.
The rope stings my hands
While I climb.
You numb the burn.
But I have practice
And the rope is easy to climb
And I reach the top
In two and a half hours
And you get into
The yellow sardine can
That goes to your neighborhood.
And all of my muscles ache when you go.
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 11:35 PM UTC
I loved you, yes.
Once
You soothed me cool cool water on a burn
You rocked me gently napping in your arms
resting in a sunlit motel room.
I grew to love your company
The simple existence of a warm body in the same room
To desire your lazily listening ear
I learned to lust for shapes that did not my body fill
To moan for groan for
Forced tessellations roughly holding down my hips
in demeaningly false passion.
I loved you once
But was quickly weighted left hand bending
toward the dirt under the ceiling of your bed chamber
“My love do not leave me you
cannot leave me you will
never leave me you will learn
to love me hunchbacked lonely.
My love my sweet my dear.
My pet. “
I drowned in the heat of your sweat
Filling my lungs bursting with salt
Filling my organs with your clammy salt
Curing my love bitter shriveling dried my heart
preserved for future consumption no longer
pumping warm blood bleeding aching no longer
throbbing stinging longing soaked in blood
no longer beating .buhduhn.buhduhn.buhduhn.
living bleeding my heart no longer pouring
sweet blood from her mouth into thirsty veins.
A cured lump of jerky fell from my breast
onto the floor and I looked on indifferent as the dog
took it in his mouth.
I loved you once
I sobbed childish little girl confused in your absence
Upon your return arms vines twisting clinging
to your steady torso
Flowering my gently parting lips eager to pour forth
my nectar into your life to sweeten
your life
I only wanted to be sweet for you.
You unearthed me chopping roots clinging
desperately to cool moist earth
You unearthed me peeling tendrils from your walls
wrapping me in a ball and tenderly bringing
me inside through the side door
You unearthed me dropping me in a too small ***
Pruning pruning roughly trimming flowers falling
to the floor I only wanted to be sweet for you
now daily thirsting in your window nectar
no longer flows now daily drying my leaves
soft plush foliage bursting green browns
falls crisp to the table I only wanted to
be sweet for you now daily dying browning
petals fall from my cheeks to the table and
I wilt as the cat takes them in her mouth.
You loved me once.
Apr 14, 2013
Apr 14, 2013 at 11:42 AM UTC
A two faced, backstabbing, hunchbacked, hammertoed,
Bedpissing, 77 year old, my child she stole,
Perjury committing, pedofile loving, meat eatting, lazy,
Old, packrat hoarding, slobby, liar.
I wouldn't care if she was on fire.
Troublemaker of scorn.
Rotting rags is always what she's worn.
A pointy edge in my side like a thorn.
Lies under oath she sworn.
From my arms my baby she torn.
Nutty as an acorn.
A devil with horns.
Her death I would'nt mourn.
Jan 15, 2015
Jan 15, 2015 at 11:58 AM UTC
I climb into bed
Waiting for a non-existent sleep
To take me into the dreamworld of my childhood
Where I had
Blindness
And
Quiet in my head
I sleep
Or try to
But my thoughts are loud
And breaks in their conversations
Are few and far between
And never quite long enough
For me
To fall asleep
I wrap the blankets around me
Like tentacles
Forcing the air out of my lungs
Forcing me into
Unconsciousness
I dream
Or something like it
For a minute or two, it seems, upon waking
And the quietness that had enveloped my mind
Awakes
From the trance
I wake
To a thousand thoughts
And headache
All the thoughts that could not be heard as I dreamt
Shout out
To be heard and acknowledged
And then
Then you dance for my hunchbacked heart
And my thoughts stop to watch
They stop to listen
To the sound of your breath
To the sound of your footsteps
And there is quiet in my head, and blindness
Like the dreamworld of my childhood, long since forgotten
Oct 3, 2010
Oct 3, 2010 at 10:29 PM UTC
you know,
you can imitate walking like a crow,
hunchbacked with a probing
index of a hand's pentagon
akin to the yellow pages being
itemised - walking like a crow
in the middle of night -
primarily because we started dicing a song
into rhythm deviating from rhyme:
it got boring after a while...
until it's an export, it ain't an import -
so ridicule the seance of hillbillies
in Soouthend for caricature of holidaying;
you can walk like a crow
in the night, hunchbacked, glistening variety of
into the void by black sabbath as accomplice -
crouched the solemn bird agile on foot -
crow walk hunchbacked:
why is the raven like a writing desk?
it's a hunchback on foot or with pen in hand
readied to scribble footprints onto
the slouched backbone of forgotten flight;
hunchback crow walk in the night,
a reverse of a Victorian street lamp lighter -
shadow eater, shadow fathoming form.
Sep 12, 2016
Sep 12, 2016 at 12:19 AM UTC
A touch of death,
Specimen in the back shed,
Joggers on the streets.
Seizures of cursed withering adolescents who ate the sweet pomegranate
of lust and ***********
And never came home.
Sirens at the sybaritic streamlet,
Swashbuckling seventeens and greed of fanciful adventure.
The young rebellious nature
of hopes and aspirations.
The harvester, the hunchbacked prince, the harrowing keeper of time,
Creeps like the night,
Like the stains of black ink that scurry and watch,
Who spy for the other-mother.
The exquisite expectation of an oncoming assassination,
Unsuccessful, beaten, and purged.
Burried in the soft silence of the hushing leaves,
In the swaying trees,
As the fatuous breeze follows aimlessly,
At the ankles of its maker.
The exhaustion of the tangerine technician,
At his mercury writing desk,
Pondering if he begs for the inspiration of the raven, to the very extent it drives him mad,
What is the difference?
Assembly lines, employing those who they despise.
The last humans left scoar the barren dust storm that was once the azure bliss of the promised land.
Do not ask the doctor for answers,
Simply receive his remedy and swallow.
This is how it has always been.
Dec 19, 2020
Dec 19, 2020 at 6:25 AM UTC
How many have stood,
will stand beside you
in Heptonstall,
had a photo taken
next to her spot?
Students, admirers
from any nook or cranny
with drained biros,
Ariel under an arm,
her morning song spoken
again, and again.
You're the next-door neighbours
they haven't come to see.
Only a lonely cup
of coffee-stained
hunchbacked flowers
where you lie
in loving memory,
with Emily,
husband with wife,
home to the right
of the graveyard's star.
Mar 12, 2014
Mar 12, 2014 at 3:31 PM UTC
My bones dissolve
and I become
hunchbacked and limp,
mind freed and soul
soaring among the clouds
as my body remains
rooted
to the ground,
feet bound
in earthly shackles
that I long
to
break.
May 30, 2017
May 30, 2017 at 2:57 PM UTC
Within my room theres very little for a descriptive imagination
just a canvas shelfing unit, a single bed and a bag.
I would go on and on but that is all that I have.
The bed that I sit upon is without a duvet cover.
the pillowcase doesn't match the sheet but alas I have no other.
The walls are bare and lifeless with no colour aire in sight.
The light within the room flickers, like a lampost awaiting the night.
The canvas shelfing unit that above I did foremention,
has a ricketty frame and needs some; careful love and attention.
it has a certain character. like a frail hunchbacked old man
unable to fully stand up straight but trying the best he can.
The bag is sat dormant in the middle of the room, it makes it feel lived in
and homely, I presume.
Yet every night I enter here and feel a sense of despair
but what am I supposed to do
when that is all that I have there.
Mar 23, 2013
Mar 23, 2013 at 2:30 PM UTC
boy in blue
awkward you
sitting there
hunchbacked in your wooden chair
not speaking
just watching
feet shuffling in your gray slippers
speak.
tell me your story.
tell me about your sister
i know her
but i don’t know you
loosen those strings
tell me about
the times you weren’t
a boy in blue
awkward you
speak.
tell me your story.
i’m listening.
Feb 24, 2013
Feb 24, 2013 at 11:44 AM UTC
you waited too much
about thirty years before you can say jack robinson
cheops kephren mikerynus
otherwise life like a water under the desert
always played tricks on you
pushed you hunchbacked inside caverns
where everything drips and leaves a small hole
everything yells
tears or laughter tear off the flesh
they’re forbidden since the world began
they declare you are subhuman
because so many still cry with their eyes closed
you are just a riddled dummy
the more you scream the more you unwind
there’s no place for you at the charity soup feast
you don’t understand why
everyone is something because you are nothing
you have no bright star left
as a proof
amid the stubs from yesterday’s garbage
you still smell good still wash yourself with soap
children still play with marbles
hitting the wall against which you lean
tentatively
Jul 2, 2014
Jul 2, 2014 at 1:07 AM UTC
Deep within the bowels of the Earth
immensely distant from the sheltering sky
amidst a thick fog enveloped landscape
with here and there a projected
craggy, derelict chasm
precipitously crooked pointing toward
an infinitely wide yawning abyss
dwelt kindred spirits comprising a soul asylum
where grateful dead (albeit marked
via weathered tomb stones) hermetically sealed
once vibrant corporeal mortals
betook their eternal slumber
One among their number
included a misanthrope
who sported long straggly hair
bushy eyebrows shielding cold eyes of steel
straggly bearded clammy chin
in tandem with a hairy body
which when alive (long time ago)
upheld upon unshod feet a severely
hunchbacked ******
Within dense pitch-black terrain
(Mother Nature enlisting
a menagerie of life forms
accustomed to hellish environment)
awash with unrecognizable
alien sights and sounds
mollycoddling bewitching warlocks,
mailer daemons,
imps of the pervert chieftains, fiery
long and fostered Golems
who called underworld
their private demesne
also alluded to Marcy's playground
holding hostage Alice in Chains
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
The Beastie Boys, The Human League, and
Village People a Crowded House
Emitting wisps of ethereal matter
appearing a small medium at large
chat snap ping, flickr ring indeed joyus minions
exalting piety a plenti
Prone ounce sing proud purgatory
promoting protean phantasmagoria
hideous hulu hoop dancing holograms
highly distorted grotesque
silent screaming sinister banshees
slithering across escarpment.
Jan 20, 2018
Jan 20, 2018 at 3:45 PM UTC
Half-mouldy stalks, some hunchbacked.
Graveyard of street lights with blown lamps
or yellows, faded, fizzing into expiry.
That is all for the year. It is over now.
Bramblings navigate the snow-drenched fallen.
Have they known the illuminations?
Scuttling, inquisitive with seeds in mouths,
alive between scrawny, spent matches.
May 27, 2024
May 27, 2024 at 7:42 PM UTC
The weight of the world
rests on her shoulders.
As if she was the one
who created.
She blamed herself
for all the bad
all the good.
But mainly all the bad.
She cries for those she
barely knows and those she does.
She carries the weight like
bricks under her skin
She will carry the weight
Until she’s 102… making
her hunchbacked.
She cries for a god
she doesn’t believe in
She’s the silent girl
In the back of the class.
The one who wears
her worries in her eyes
in her smile.
May 25, 2017
May 25, 2017 at 9:18 PM UTC
I whispered solemn secrets the night before it happened,
a deal with fate that I thought was forever sealed.
Much of the strength I could muster was a little more than
Herculean. But tangled webs of thought were being woven in morning's stead
and I couldn't figure out why
my heart was crippling in my chest. So,
hunchbacked with pain I travelled far and long
venturing out of the castle in my mind, that
I learnt to call my home. And with a cape of courage,
I fled into the woods. But little did I know,
it was alive with all the wolves.
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 1:07 PM UTC
Humanity yearns so desperately
to equal God's great creativity.
In some creations, how we shine:
music, dance, storyweaving, wine.
The thunderstorms of madness
rain upon us, flooding sadness,
sweep us into anguish, grief,
into despair without relief.
We're drawn to high castles,
where old hunchbacked vessals
glare wall-eyed as lightning
flares without brightning.
Laboratories in the high towers,
where the doctor wields power,
creating new life in a dark hour,
in the belfry of the high tower.
Apr 12, 2016
Apr 12, 2016 at 4:31 PM UTC
An ancient tree stands gnarled and withered,
Below it is its age-old roots;
A story great it has delivered
Of newfound power, stomping boots.
If it could speak, this tree would tell
A tale of old, the aeon's race;
In depths of earth, as deep as hell
Sits a long-forgotten grandiose place.
But close behind this tree that speaks
There lurks a psychometric's dream;
A second gnarled and hunchbacked tree
That still remembers human's scheme.
The tales of old are not yet lost,
For here we see this ancient tome
Who, whether it knows it or not,
Remembers what's beneath the loam.
Apr 12, 2016
Apr 12, 2016 at 3:02 PM UTC