"indignity" poems
I had a dream I smoked some ***** with a Rasta Man
while we jammed in the name of the lord to some tunes
the children of Africa roaming free like wild beast
once the cradle of civilization turned into tombs
by the ungrateful, heathen souls that ran amok
in the name of annihilation and war.
But we are fearful pious men, as we inhaled the herb
the grass is the shepherd that nourish us like Giraffes
the sky is the ceiling that we reach with our blessed hands
the rivers gives us skins like Crocs to be able to survive
harsh whether, the blood-stained desert left behind by men
witnessed by the pale eyes of the torture souls of this land.
And so we inhaled and puffed like chimneys in a North Pole night
we talked about the smiles of our seeds stretching far and wide
how beautiful is a voice when it’s brought to life by a loved one
how the scent of a pure woman can bring the dead back to life
deadlocked, we are dreadlocked like grapevines until Jah lets us
the mental slavery that keeps us chained to the ships of our ancestors.
We never once conversed about the frail indignity of the mortals
the uselessness of hate, the ways material possessions can’t help you
we reached Nirvana without taking our feet off the common ground
we shared a spirit, bonded between long hits made of peace and love
in the freedom of those free thinkers tinkering with words without rest
in the children of Jah, daydreaming at night in a warm bed made of bread.
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 12:40 PM UTC
What moral magistrate
Monster of mediocrity
Makes a model citizen of me
Even if I don’t want to be
All upright and uptight
Humorless jackboot
Goose stepping toadstool
The fascist conservative fool
Who pedals misinformation
Counting on fear and stupidity
To turn strangers into tools
Yep that one eyed sheep
In the blind herd
Who wants to tell me
What I should or shouldn’t do
Why bother
With that proctor
Of indignity
Who counsels
The talented
To remain dormant
In their humility
Doctor of docility
Prescribing conformity
Storming the cities
Bleeding us of our individuality
To make more metal cogs
For the culture machine
May 23, 2015
May 23, 2015 at 6:21 PM UTC
A patriotic fervor producing fealty
A noble cause compelling loyalty
Paired with a callous indignity
Brash enlistee plunges toward destiny
Honor's badge worn with impunity
Duty's moniker embossed with magnanimity
Insatiable bloodlust quelshing all insecurity
Unbridled ego clamoring a garrulous enmity
Toward the villains who shattered blithe serenity
First skirmish, pageantry displaced by gravity
Mettle varnished with aura of invincibility
First battle, fallen comrades question mortality
Successive battles, severed limbs, caustic wounds challenge credulity
Fragile mind being conditioned to atrocity
War's heavy mantle now shorn of indemnity
Threatening mind's sanity, hearth's perpetuity
Once faceless foes now scream their humanity
Once noble leaders brim with insincerity
Supportive countrymen now fickle, distant entity
Cheering press now rank with duplicity
Only solace, hardened comrades equanimity
Jul 25, 2012
Jul 25, 2012 at 6:03 PM UTC
Begging, considered
an utter humility
The ultimate indignity
Giving, regarded
An act of charity
Of utmost nobility
One hand raised
The other lowered
Sheltering a kernel
Of truth on the whole
Humility, and charity
Virtues two of the soul
the seeker and the giver
are nothing but an evidence
Of divine existence!
Jul 24, 2014
Jul 24, 2014 at 1:12 AM UTC
The Breakfast Fairies (a humorous treatise)
Summoned for to break the fast
of sleep-and-dreams that can no longer last,
As the clock to noon draws nigh,
I happily paddle off to the cabinet
Where the cereals that I CHOSE,
Since I am now a grownup,
faithfully await, calm and in repose.
The refrigerator, in nearby proximity,
sources a Stony-field yogurt,,
A yogurt that I CHOSE,
light and sweet with processed fruit,
due to the miracle of Aspartame.
Distracted, back to the kitchen for
Some multi-grain slices to hail and toast,
Which I prefer dry (no butter)
and ready for anointing with oils of
Strawberry jelly.
To the table return ready to sound
The horn of plenty,
When I see the ****
Breakfast Fairies have struck yet again!
Cousins first to those that reside in nearby dishwasher*
The nefarious fairies guard my health
tho nobody asked them too!
My Crispix, with its malty sweetness,
And the ***** aftertaste of sprayed-on "enriched vitamins,"
has been smothered neath layers of
Granola, with cranberries and nuts,
Contaminated with a hint of cinnamon.
My processed yogurt,
vanished, without a trace,
replaced by their bacterial cousins from Thrace,
which is in Greece,
who, tho white, taste like plain yogurt sourpusses,
Even when littered with blueberries,
Nothing can replace the taste of my
Artificial Sweetener!
Dry toast has been sheeted and shined neath
A tribute of fattening butter,
rationalized by a commonality,
"Everything is better with butter..."
The last indignity is that my coffee,
Not the light brown I cherish
When kissed by whole milk,
Now muddled and muddied by skim milk, so named,
Cause they skim off all the taste.
Because they are fairies,
With fluttering wings,
Hasty retreat they beat,
But I know where they hide.
The next time it be for the morning meal,
I will eat it in bed,
far from their kitchen hiding places,
And celebrate my heroics with original
Frosted Flakes and milk,
And extra sugar just for spite!
The bedroom fairies, living under the pillow,
Emerge to beg in iambic pentameter,
Won't get nary a bite,
Until they they return the poems they stole
From my midnight dreams.
Jun 1, 2013
Jun 1, 2013 at 12:08 PM UTC
She minds her little sister
Babysitting in the woods
Flowers bunched up in her hand, primroses perhaps
Devoutly kneeling, she offers them to the child
As hair flows down her back
A long blonde waterfall
The child with open arms
Learns how to receive
And how to give
In a corner a written plea
Take me now for twenty quid
Reduced from twenty five
Unloved, unvalued even for the frame
Now rescued from indignity
And lifted from the skip
Sep 18, 2012
Sep 18, 2012 at 4:29 PM UTC
The Land of Opportunity
Should not be
The Land of Indignity.
Work for you,
Not for anybody else.
They'll point their fingers
And call you the "Bad Guy"
For being the only "guy"
With a spine.
A job is a job is a job,
But your life,
Your self-respect,
Your happiness-
They're worth more
Than the world.
So make it yours.
May 8, 2019
May 8, 2019 at 1:28 AM UTC
Every right denied; every dream deferred
Every injustice and indignity endured
Is one more paper cut
They are cumulative
And deadly as any gun or knife
Nov 19, 2016
Nov 19, 2016 at 3:07 PM UTC
The
***tilt of my seesaw
is decidedly downward facing dog:
and there’s no rush to judgment,
for the powers that be,
be delighted by slow-walking,
making the waiting
max-tortuous,
but am of an age when everything,
even the long buried sins and unkept promises, poke and **** nonstop,
and the formulae once relied upon
to ease incipient self-deception,
to temporize and salve the consternations
of unkempt aggravated remorse failures,
as aged misdemeanors be matured felonies,
I blurt and declare guilt to all, alas,
and yet,
always an
and yet
in the ultimate crushing of
tardiness, knotted by an indignity of silence,
no one is desirous
of taking my***
confession
5:10pm
Thu Jan 28
2023
Jan 30, 2023
Jan 30, 2023 at 3:41 PM UTC
Ah, but you know naught
Of the traipse of indignity
Ever so staggered in advance
By the chafe of love and lust
Oh to wander amidst
These crowds of judging eyes
Known by the happenings of a night
After a sip (or two) of wine
Jun 15, 2014
Jun 15, 2014 at 9:54 AM UTC
So Im alive,
But I died a little inside.
Because I am dead
And now alive and reborn
Into a thousand words never written,
I will become no one again.
Did you metaphorically cry?
Sad as thinking how well
You truly knew me?
" But we were poets!"
And so you live and die by the
Stroke of the passionate lie
That are the words that well
Up inside like a brutal indignity,
Outraged at my shamelessness
Did I ever truly puncture your heart?
I am Ded inside,
And I dont know you,
But I just love your poetry!
So we sever the ties from reality
And divorce the facts
In a hopeful serenade to the deaf,
See how I magnify the ignorance
With brazeness?
Such splendid grandoisity!
And a poem is just a word,
There is no poem without action.
I am me,
No metaphor needed,
Just who the hell do you think
You are?
Nov 28, 2015
Nov 28, 2015 at 1:17 PM UTC
Granite Dominoes
The soft earth yields, I watched from above
Little by little it opens, inviting
Rectangular spaces of mudded thoughts,
sifted by ***** piled of fear
Granite dominoes stand in lined support,
dates moistened by dew…counting
Carved in regrets once felt,
loves never shared
Voices from the trees cackle,
laughter it seems brings the sun
Good riddance on fawning meadows breathes
and the sky turns to red
Applause echoes valley’d intersections
where traffic lights sing as
cars stop for a quick breather, waiting on the green
and I see it all
Life goes on even if in minus,
faux tears fill tissues, a scented kind
all the while checking their watches
hoping for a quick release
Oak and imitation gold are lowered, polished indignity
Carnations are tossed, dying as they fly
No one remains…remains
except the quickly forgotten…
Feb 24, 2014
Feb 24, 2014 at 7:09 AM UTC
Every era that has ever been
Has engaged in the auto-dissection
Of their yellowing underbellys.
Yes, every generation has predicted
that the end is nigh,
That god is on their side;
But the devil has a crowbar
And is busting out of the basement.
Each decade is a mimicry of the last.
Different fashions, same trends
And always, with a fool on the hill.
A lonely steel harmonica can pierce the airwaves
Across space and time,
Through the grooves and crackles
To enthral an audience,
And to beguile that every generation
Into believing in their autonomy,
Their solitude,
With a fate independent of all those centuries past.
Through every disembodied spew of Dylan lyrics,
Or the corporeal and common alienation
Sympathised in every Wilde reference,
Comes the same fury at the chaos of a world
That is no more than indifferent at the plight of the people it houses.
Indeed,
Every generation has sought to either
Cure the ills of the Earth;
Or else set lighter fluid to the lot.
This stretches back to the first blood-spattered edition of the Bible,
And further, much further.
To all of the captains,
The heroes,
The anti-heroes,
The road gritter,
The malevolent dictator,
The schoolteacher,
The emancipated woman
And the borderline feminist.
To every young child who is reluctant to take the spotlight,
Or look you in the eye,
Ask questions, or speak out.
For every one of those who at some point were labelled
‘maladjusted’.
And so the Pharaohs and Caesars are all but gone now,
Replaced by the big-wigs,
The fat-cats,
The purple hearted,
The playboys -
The men in suits.
But they are all the same.
The same behind the decadence of
A solid gold sarcophagus
Or an Armani pair of shades.
They all built their empire on shifting sands.
And so we will all kick and scream
To our own tone and our own time
At the indignity of the world.
At our bespoke knowledge
To deal with all inconvenience
But that which privates the preclusion
Of any and all major slaughters of justice.
As for that young child,
With the lack of eye contact -
And all that he will become:
He will sit. And he will type.
He will type until his words fall beyond that
Of the spiralling noises inside his mind
And blossom into something pure and ugly and beautiful.
He will sit and he will write
To forget.
Dec 16, 2012
Dec 16, 2012 at 8:21 PM UTC
Reading poems is the way of discovering
that people write for fun, they write of
the very things that you think preposterous.
They write of love, and you write of hate.
Poetry is in many ways charade of indiscipline,
even gross indignity. Gives you joy rides and goose
bumps. Why do people write- poetry?
I deliberate and out of it curse people, write a poem
send it for publication. The laptop creaks. The editor whines
when flooded by my irksome mails.
In the streets of the city, and there are plenty, I see a rag picker.
I see the *****
I see the blinded with begging bowl, but singing. Chanting.
I see barely seven or eight a child pleading for coins and mercy.
I stalk away. Walk away. My hauteur a new demeanour.
Why do people write- poetry?
Oct 9, 2015
Oct 9, 2015 at 5:29 AM UTC
**** isn't okay & no government or any authority figure should ever be the one to decide if someone was sexually assaulted, or not. In addition, a human's rights, safety, & mental health, should not be taken away or reduced simply because another human or a group of humans have decided so. Kesha Rose Sebert, better known as Ke$ha, is a celebrity who called attention to a situation where she was drugged & ***** & isn't finding justice even after speaking up about it.
Though she was denied release of her contract with Sony Music, meaning she now must continue to work with the man who drugged & ***** her, she has the support & help of millions. This is because she's a celebrity & attention was called to it. But what about those who aren't known? What about those too afraid to speak up because it's a hopeless attempt for justice. What about those who did speak up but the case died in a court room or even before it ever made it to a court room, simply because the abuser has higher authority, more power, or is in some way guaranteed to be found excused by the law?
What about them?
Thank **** she spoke up. But what about everyone else? Justice needs to be served to Ke$ha & also to the many other victims in this world.
We shall not fall under those above us from fear or from the indignity of others.
Feb 19, 2016
Feb 19, 2016 at 7:18 PM UTC
The fog crept in on giant monster claws,
Surely no itty-bitty feline foots, I pray:
“Feets don’t fail me now,”
A line that will live in infamy,
Way back in a vaudeville when,
A minstrel Chitlin Circuit then,
Was an actor known as the
"Laziest man in the world,"
A character designed to stick to a
Collective white consciousness,
Stick like Tar-Baby, that negative
Image of African-American men--
I speak of The Brothers--
Who for over a century, have been
Struggling to live down a pernicious,
Most persistently demeaning,
Hollywood trope.
Tribute is due to the black actor born:
Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry.
Oh, Mr. Perry, & yes, you were the
First black actor to receive
Screen credit in a film.
Well, I guess that puts you right up there,
With Jackie Robinson & Sidney Poitier,
Carver or Tubman, or any of those
Countless northern abolitionists--
With no personal stake in slavery,
Or emancipation, but fervent nonetheless--
Color-barrier breakers &
Household saints a-coming &
A-marching in, in that number . . .
You paid a big price, Mr. Perry:
The indignity & débauche,
By abject surrender to the Boss Man,
Tribute, recognition is due for
Feats of humility & self-abasement,
Entailing total superhuman surrender,
Capitulation to the dismal, prevailing
State of American race relations at the time.
Stepin Fetchit: a name & a persona,
Not just painfully racist, but
Downright subversive.
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 1:45 AM UTC
The wood was beneath, warped
With age, as the worms crept
Falling into the gapping chasm
Of petrified air. Ingested upon
Shattered bone, was the ragged
Wanting beneath.
The stone was polished, kept
As if newly left. Never was
Their needing for never were
Clothes tattered, they dined
Upon pigeon heart and entails
Of pedigree cat.
The Woman, of both below and
Above, vested wording to the
Ever breaking of parched skin and
Bone.
Those of wood and worm, clawing
Ascending through dirt, what was
Left of flesh pealed upon roots and
Stone, now only ragged cloth and
***** bone.
Why must we of the earth suffer,
The indignity of dirt while those
Above treated differently, we are
the same are we not, death is
Universal rot.
Then those of marble spoke up,
You are not like us for we are of
Death but we are of flesh,
Parched but whole, we are of
The clean, while you are of
Earth festering and rot.
"Silence"
"Still your airless voices"
"Each has a valid point"
"But my children of decay let me explain"
My children of earth you exhume
Yourselves each day, this shows
Strength for the journey you take,
Hardening you resolve.
You are neither filth or below,
Your strength is what others
Should look up to, you are pure
Of the mortal coils of flesh you
Are flawless in death.
My children of stone, what can
Be said, you cling to life, but
That time has pasted, you
Linger upon flesh that is but
a moment from dust.
Time in earth has made your
Brothers and Sisters strong,
While yours are weakened
The weaknesses of above, my
Commands are simple their
Must never be two, death is
Singular we decay as one.
What was pasted, those of marble
Stripped of parched decadence,
They were now pure as those below.
Feast as others on that which crawls
Nourished by mother earth.
The woman of bone, wood and stone,
Was a fair keeper and the only
Marble that graced was that which
Named those who slept below,
They were pure of mortal coils
They where the dead of bone.
Apr 19, 2015
Apr 19, 2015 at 8:31 AM UTC
Ella Fitz’s rendition of Dream a Little Dream for the umpteenth time.
Louie comes in tune with that righteous horn.
I drink more as I sing along, off key.
There could be an entire SECTION of books written about us.
How we fell into that great whirlwind.
How we learned to hate the world when we didn’t have each other.
How we re-kindled, for that brief, brief time.
How I thought maybe we could love again.
We had hours that turned to days that turned to months.
We were the perfect piece of short fiction
An art form so gloriously undervalued,
(by both the audience and the creators)
Until we found ourselves in the Middle
(the worst feeling in the world.
Because like purgatory or super glue:
you're stuck.)
We said goodbye.
And I found I had residual emptiness.
I became residual emptiness.
I loved again, but it wasn’t anything
Like the masterpiece we had.
I knew because
Every day with him felt real.
Every day with you
Was a dream.
Something rooted in intangibility
Something I was astonished to find
happening to me.
It happened again-
We found ourselves in the same place
At the same time.
And after just a few weeks,
You gave me the greatest gift:
The indignity of silence.
And you gave me it
For the most ignoble reason—
You’re afraid.
Honey bun,
We’re all afraid.
It made me think
That maybe the story of you and I
can only have a happy ending
in a place where it’s not so scary.
So me, Louie and Ella all ask you,
That
In your dreams
Whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me.
[Because that's the only place you'll find me now.]
Oct 28, 2012
Oct 28, 2012 at 4:21 PM UTC
How many hearts will die tonight
from the hurt you threw around
don't you care for others pain,
in the darkness which cannot see ...
Our fire consumed for a while
it evaded our hearts and made us smile
now tears well up, because I just don't know
friendship is vacant for me, I cry ...
Dear old man, i heard your stories
more than once, tell me, yes tell me
why you make me cry, your lies are building
you are hate, you wrote yourself to death for a while...
Because nothing ever goes as planned
your cold hard heart that incurs the indignity
of everyone that knows, how you are letting go
your life, and love, for nothing but greed and no smile ...
Debbie Brooks 2014 @copywrite..
Oct 10, 2014
Oct 10, 2014 at 11:35 PM UTC
Oh, I should have been fog and not a person.
Fog or sunlight,
Something untouchable
And unintrusive.
Something easily waved away or shaded from.
It is so tiresome
To be a person,
To crave the way souls do.
I am sorry, love,
That I am so coarse and revealed,
That I cannot fade into the background
So quickly
So seamlessly
As I usually can.
I promise I usually can- I have made a life of it.
This is bad form, on my part,
A slip, a trip-and-fall, a faux pas.
I have been undone
And it seems I'm caught unaware and unprepared,
Scrambling, trying to tug my skin over the parts of my soul
Where it has unraveled and failed me
Its usual disguise.
Where, I wonder, does my mind's gory skin-and-bones sense of touch come from?
Maybe my body
Is where the feelings live and char everything.
Maybe if I could lose the canvas and frame,
The paintings in blood scrawled by all my stumbles into love,
Maybe this gauche, needy thing I call a soul
Would get gone too,
And I could comfortably be something....
Untouchable- Fog, or sunlight.
Something less lonely and less weak.
But I have this pounding pulse
And this fluttering stomach
And this aching heart
And these bones full of hollow light,
And they control me,
And my skin is a fragile lantern that makes a blazing holocaust look like a tealight candle
From outside.
It is flimsy as wet paper, stretched tight
Over the searing claws and fangs of a soul
So
Hungry for this world,
For the things I love
That in fear and resignation my heart
Scores little hashmarks into the cage of my ribs
Counting each tremulous day
One more
That hasn't ripped me to shreds just yet.
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 10:44 AM UTC
I found a statue of Christ amidst detritus
of a burned-out bar on High Street.
The Savior scorched to a cinder:
the state of faith in America.
I crossed myself and stowed
the King of Kings
in folds of my old windbreaker
(buried beneath the hardened exterior
I've projected to protect myself
from the tyranny of evil men)
to spare him the indignity
of further exposure to the elements on
our exodus through these city streets:
a trifling attempt at reciprocity.
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 11:33 PM UTC
*my pretentious voice doesn't match the noise in my head
verses etched as silken decoys unfurled by titanium recoil
hiding in the recesses of silent protocol's evasive gibberish
clamoring to speak the truth within history's chapters
my stealth commute from childhood to insanity
rewarded by awkward stares of disbelief and disgust
i've waded in the pool of denial's wavelengths
lost in aftermath's undertow of insolent impudency
i've tread water til i drowned an insignificant death
still breathing the vapors of past grievances
grousing under a tidal wave of crush'd soul's imperfections
breached in the indignity of transgression's metaphors
personifications of a role better left blinded by fear
than face the nakedness of turbulent truth *
Nov 23, 2013
Nov 23, 2013 at 3:28 PM UTC
Imagine if it cost your whole days
wages, just to feed on bread;
If external forces made you suffer
The indignity of debt.
Imagine if the war torn middle east
Had a minute's silence for fifty dead;
If Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan
Had a minute off for breath
Imagine if a days work came with
a twenty percent chance of death...
Now picture that scene in the Caribbean
Bathing, lounging, plunging, dancing
The preciousness of life it seems
is purely based on address.
Jul 7, 2015
Jul 7, 2015 at 8:09 AM UTC
We are rain, we are tears;
we're the condensation
on your beer mug.
And we form,
and fall,
and feel forgotten
some times.
From heaven, to earth,
and back again,
we take trillions of tiny journeys—
assemble in sheets,
hover in mists/
trickle, splatter, pelt without mercy/
quietly collect and freeze/
loud as the sea, softer than the whisper
of death—easy to deflect and shatter,
with power to carve canyons.
From shoulders we
vault to elbows,
dance down arms,
scurry between legs,
squish between toes,
hurry down the drain
linger on linoleum
when you pad away
from the shower,
trailing steam down
a sweaty hallway—
to where he lays motionless,
breathing sunny
solstice dust
in a closet-sized room.
“Better”?
“Oh, much. And thanks for the towel, too”.
II.
Everything about you was flat.
I knew your hair was blonde
but also something else—
not dishwater
or *****
or even unclean—
“flat” was the only word that fit.
Flat as your face,
your chest,
the bottoms of your shoes,
and not a whole lot less scarred.
Flat as your eyes—
such eyes as I’d never seen;
not always awake—
hunting/wanting/sharp
like a scavenger’s
yet full of blind spots,
placed there by the drug
to impede self-perception—
and wantonly green.
I knew only your name.
You hung with Jim, haunting Mother’s—
just two junkies bumming change.
I was amazed you managed to survive.
House rule was
never trust a ******
but home alone,
in too much pain to care,
I let you take a shower,
borrow my towel.
We compared spinal surgeries;
vinyl siding on childhood homes;
monsters and movies;
fruits we didn’t like;
a nod to new music/
put on your red shoes and dance the blues
then places we’d go
when our ship came in;
the greasiness of the sun outside;
the final indignity of death—
anything but our lives just then.
From summer cotton to suddenly nothing—
no memory of how or why.
You spurned my offer
of a cigarette after
with a gesture so shy
and self-conscious
I felt myself growing
suspicious—then alarmed, confused,
and finally, amused
at my own lack of observation.
You weren’t hiding anything.
You just didn’t want
me to see you
as begging.
Dec 19, 2011
Dec 19, 2011 at 6:53 PM UTC
~
The soft earth yields, I watched from above
Little by little it opens, inviting
Rectangular spaces of mudded thoughts,
sifted by ***** piled of fear
Granite dominoes stand in lined support,
dates moistened by dew…counting
Carved in regrets once felt,
loves never shared
Voices from the trees cackle,
laughter it seems brings the sun
Good riddance on fawning meadows breathes
and the sky turns to red
Applause echoes valley’d intersections
where traffic lights sing as
cars stop for a quick breather, waiting on the green
and I see it all
Life goes on even if in minus,
faux tears fill tissues, a scented kind
all the while checking their watches
hoping for a quick release
Oak and imitation gold are lowered, polished indignity
Carnations are tossed, dying as they fly
No one remains…remains
except the quickly forgotten…
Aug 1, 2014
Aug 1, 2014 at 7:23 AM UTC