"maladies" poems
Lady, your room is lousy with flowers.
When you kick me out, that's what I'll remember,
Me, sitting here bored as a loepard
In your jungle of wine-bottle lamps,
Velvet pillows the color of blood pudding
And the white china flying fish from Italy.
I forget you, hearing the cut flowers
Sipping their liquids from assorted pots,
Pitchers and Coronation goblets
Like Monday drunkards. The milky berries
Bow down, a local constellation,
Toward their admirers in the tabletop:
Mobs of eyeballs looking up.
Are those petals of leaves you've paried with them ---
Those green-striped ovals of silver tissue?
The red geraniums I know.
Friends, friends. They stink of armpits
And the invovled maladies of autumn,
Musky as a lovebed the morning after.
My nostrils prickle with nostalgia.
Henna hags:cloth of your cloth.
They tow old water thick as fog.
The roses in the Toby jug
Gave up the ghost last night. High time.
Their yellow corsets were ready to split.
You snored, and I heard the petals unlatch,
Tapping and ticking like nervous fingers.
You should have junked them before they died.
Daybreak discovered the bureau lid
Littered with Chinese hands. Now I'm stared at
By chrysanthemums the size
Of Holofernes' head, dipped in the same
Magenta as this fubsy sofa.
In the mirror their doubles back them up.
Listen: your tenant mice
Are rattling the ******* packets. Fine flour
Muffles their bird feet: they whistle for joy.
And you doze on, nose to the wall.
This mizzle fits me like a sad jacket.
How did we make it up to your attic?
You handed me gin in a glass bud vase.
We slept like stones. Lady, what am I doing
With a lung full of dust and a tongue of wood,
Knee-deep in the cold swamped by flowers?
14.7k
what is music to heart
an enchanting embrace that gives birth to feelings
or an incredulous cure to all the maladies of life
or a comforting smile that breaks the chains of pessimism
or walking, talking, living poetry
Apr 2, 2015
Apr 2, 2015 at 1:02 PM UTC
A powerful euphoric sensation rushes to my brain when I inhale the crack ******* leaving me appalled for twenty one seconds to contemplate a super rush of dopamine into my central nervous system that hits me immediately an intense pleasant sensation is felt with a overly joyful feeling. The rush lasts about 2-5 minutes then slowly begins to come down I start to feel a slight paranoia then an uncomfortable feeling sets in midway to the euphoric high and after 10 minute mark I start to crave to repeat the powerful high. Like a thunderbolt energizing my whole body and rushing thoughts come crashing down at the 15 minute mark I begin to feel unsatisfied with myself wanting to repeat the vicious cycle all over again. Once I hit 20 minutes I feel like a cheap ***** who's been used and abused by the drug itself and this feeling of restlessness and dysphoria sets in leaving me once again alone and feeling slightly discontent. **** where can I get more hard again and there I once again start talking to myself creating fictitious illments and materializing maladies. That is chasing the Great White Dragon in a state of misery and despair. I was hooked but now am healed thru the 12 steps and the Grace of Almighty God. I am now 40 days clean and sober...I am sincere and certain not to pick up this again for if I do I'll will ruin my life or better yet put me in a casket. By the Grace of Adonai I praise thee for saving this wretched addict. Now and forevermore in debt with the Lord. Amen!
May 20, 2017
May 20, 2017 at 1:26 AM UTC
Existential crisis
Fundamental flaws
Insurmountable dilemma
Confabulations galore
Indistinguishable chaos
Contraindications
Untenable maladies
Nature’s riled
Abject behavior
Peripheral existence
Satire of reality
Jan 4, 2015
Jan 4, 2015 at 10:15 AM UTC
In her hands
We're magnesium
White--
As-she-tries-to
Touch pale
Pastels,
--We lie-
For ant-eater
Fires and croaking
-Frogs; I say nothing.
But she breathes in
Clicks-
Bedsheet maladies--
Her crab apple
-Transparency.
Feb 21, 2015
Feb 21, 2015 at 11:03 PM UTC
To be perfectly clear …
I’m a nut case.
Not only a nut case, but a hard-luck case
Wrapped up nice and neat
With Saran wrap of mental maladies
And bubble wrapped with faulty perceptions
And you know what?
It’s ******* comfortable in this box.
Relaxed is a side effect of anxiety,
Like having an ****** you get tense
Then that sweet release that leaves you
Melting into the mattress, that’s what my “disorder” does to me.
And while you sit and you stare and you judge and you blame
I … smile and wipe the sweat and tears from my face.
So, to be perfectly clear.
I’m nothing but a beautifully taped box
Of stress, anger, resentment and depression
With a slight mixture of joy and pride mixed in
Waiting to be shipped off
To anyone, anywhere, away from that gaze
Of unrestrained disdain.
And so, again, to be ever so clear.
I’m what you’d call emotionally unavailable,
Damaged goods, as I’m sure you can see
The dents my last handlers left behind for me
To bash out to regain a sense of normalcy,
Then you had to come along and reveal them all again.
Thanks for that. And sorry, but the person you are trying
So desperately to reach is Unavailable.
To be perfectly clear.
Jan 15, 2012
Jan 15, 2012 at 12:11 PM UTC
I don't need drugs. My brain is drugs.
Maybe it's a side effect of a mother that dropped acid for the first trimester of pregnancy and then some.
Maybe it's a side effect of the abusive step father that told me I would never amount to anything and that I am ********
My brain processes things at about a hundred miles per hour. In conversations I am always three steps ahead of what ever was said last. I make connections in things that are unconnected.
They tell me this is adult ADHD. They tell me I should be proscribed a pill to help my brain focus.
But focus isn't what I want. Nor is the drowsiness that comes with Lorazepam, the fog that goes with Prozac. I have been separately proscribed these things without ever filling the bottles.
But I fear that if I fix all my chemical imbalances, my medical maladies, that I will disappear into a fog.
Who am I without my OCD, without my brain over processing, over loving, over caring. Without the pain in my chest from another panic, my bouncing off the walls and singing to myself.
Maybe I am unwell.
But who am I without my unwellness?
Jul 17, 2015
Jul 17, 2015 at 2:37 AM UTC
Our Father
Woe! to these demonic determined downtrodden deceivers,
Woe! Oh Thine merciless mendicants of misery and maleficent mendacity
Woe! Oh common corrupt conniving cunning calumnious crusaders of crucifixion...
scurrilous screeds scribbling sorrows
The Lord will sharpen thou pencils...
Thou pocket protectors whilst melt into thine *******
Thou spectacles opaque and permanently smudged...with other assorted
myriad miseries
Thou mittens will be smitten with interminable degeneracy...
Oh languid leaders of licentious lubricious larceny..
Oh craving calculating copious concupiscent calumnious falsifiers...
Oh maudlin mocking manipulators, multitudinous marauding machinations
**Thy God is an angry God
a vengeful God
a jealous God**
Oh **** pots and gall! Oh sordid ****** insalubrious denizens of depraved degeneracy
Take heed thou names mightn't appear in the almighty book of life when judgement deigns an
opprobrious order of objurgation
terrible tragic tempestous tribulations of treachery
Oh Woe! Alas!
They are fallacious febrile fabricators, fallen , fragmented flawed fugacious furtive falsifiers!!
scalawags and rapscallions..rascals of ribaldry..forlorn fallen away backslidden recalcitrants…
Oh misguided miserable miscreants, maladies and agitation be thy lot!
This rant has been brought to you by:
The Most High and Holy Priest of the Ignoble Church of Alliteration & Utter Skepticisim
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 5:54 PM UTC
My poetry is not for you.
My heart is.
My words belong to the wind.
Emotions cause this volcano to explode.
A release of rhythm, of prose
Of joys and of pains
Of memories of today.
You are a muse.
That's amusing.
A tempest of a temptress,
Your touch sings maladies on my soul.
A dirge of crystal tears
Reflecting lost hope
Lost love.
This poem is not for you.
Yours is a smile that lightens
This burdensome heathen.
Whilst your scorn leaves new scars
Over old,
Like a worn patchwork cloak,
That no wizard ever wore
But this one dons with the certainty
Of the pious
And the loved.
Apr 10, 2014
Apr 10, 2014 at 1:48 PM UTC
A barren field, now I sit wasted.
Had my time, but it's passed.
The children have grown.
Boom, bang blast.
Breaking out as flowers bloom.
Forget me nots, they are not.
As in my barren field I sit.
Unforgiven.
Proliferating as an incendiary device.
A starter of fires deep in my heart.
Filled up my mother of wombs.
Once they burned out of control.
Curse my heart and my soul.
For me, myself, I die insolvent.
Wailing in maladies of loves lost attachments.
Why may this be, I hear thee say.
I disregarded them, I wanted to play.
The heart of the matter.
Who mattered was me!
(C) Livvi
Apr 12, 2014
Apr 12, 2014 at 7:45 AM UTC
Dawn is locked in pastel reverie. A witness to the slow, fleeting genocide of stars as they are burned out one by one. The morning expands suddenly over the course of dawns gauntlet. The traffic and life of all men begins to trickle in time as the heavens die. The waltz of civilisation and Progress has entered its overture. Let us pray the dancers knows the steps. The jazz of night-time has left, only the instruments remain, frozen in morning dew.
Dawn licks up her pastels in a binge that leaves the day a clean blue plate. The scents of jasmine and wet asphalt greet this day; it is the stench of midnight mystery dying in the sun.
Poets have words for this condition; we have written about maladies for centuries.
Nov 10, 2011
Nov 10, 2011 at 10:51 PM UTC
With a voice oak rich in timbre
Deep like the rumble of the seas
And tired by the weight of the years
He told me of his life
How he came from the hot lands
Inky in places with mahogany trees
Where the sky at night
Became so dark
The whole was illuminated by
The moon and stars
He told me of a simple life
Where hard work
And nature's bounty
Were all that was needed
To get by
Recipes handed down
Were used as remedies
To cure aches, pains
And life's maladies
Where family was all
And neighbours would call for aid
knowing kindness could be repaid
As and when
He spoke as if time itself was on his side
And when his eyes closed at last
It was time itself
I wanted to defy
Jun 8, 2016
Jun 8, 2016 at 2:04 PM UTC
I never really felt as if
my mother had it all together.
Her torch was
a brittle twig she couldn’t keep lit,
never enough stick to burn bright,
but just enough tip
for random flare-ups
violently fueled by
nobody knew what.
Her lack of light meant
she could not be trusted,
and her strained attempts at
love and affection felt like
a dream where
everyone’s speaking Japanese.
Her marriage to my father was
the modern day equivalent
of an interracial same *** marriage,
Catholics and Protestants
weren't supposed to mix,
and a toothless trumpet player
with an alcoholic bent
shouldn’t have lasted the honeymoon
with a spoiled, sheltered oldest child.
But father made it seem as if
they had it all together,
at least in public.
At home it was different,
he passed through our lives
like the winter wind,
everybody scrambling for cover
when he showed up.
He slept at odd hours
and worked and drank
and drank and worked,
blowing quickly from one
to the other,
never standing still long enough
to notice the demons at his heals,
the demons that took forever to catch him,
but not mother.
They caught her when I was quite young.
I could see them in her eyes
from a very early age and
father could see them too,
but he did nothing
to protect her.
They’ve been together
over 60 years now, overrun by what
I would call a thick purple nothingness –
an eerie, detached existence within
the smothering cadence of monotony,
yet somehow, unbelievably,
they still have hope.
Hope for God knows what
all they have is their
unspoken hatred of each
wrapped up in a make believe
so strong and lived so long
that their demons are now
a huge white elephant
lounging about the house
loosening their bed screws,
pounding on the bed springs,
moving through the vents
and interfering with
the reception of Catholic radio.
You might call it insanity,
I say everything that
once mattered to them is lost,
yet again,
they still have hope.
Meanwhile
we overachieving children
suffer our own maladies,
a misfit bunch of
dysfunctional lovers running so fast
we’ll be 80 before the demons catch us.
But who am I kidding?
From father to mother to me,
their demons have been my closest friends
as long as I can remember,
ever since the first day
I saw them in her eyes.
Jan 7, 2017
Jan 7, 2017 at 1:47 PM UTC
A sickness, the fear
And trembling on my lips
A bearing now oh, so baffling
All these maladies seem to be wearing
Still I hear,
To abate my scaring
Wind chimes chiming
And children laughing.
Jan 27, 2014
Jan 27, 2014 at 12:18 PM UTC
Candy breath tastes like death
When it's all you've got anymore
To hide from cold iron faces.
Pitied love seems like stealing
When you're out of maladies
But you're still ******* on the traces.
So you find something smaller than you
To remove the context
Of what your feeders expect
You've stopped becoming *****
So you've got no potential to prove.
It's times like these that you find
That your life is on the line
But you don't seem to care.
A worm on the concrete has a bigger chance to survive
And you know by now that rain can't help
It just rolls off your shoulders.
May 3, 2014
May 3, 2014 at 4:08 AM UTC
The many voices of the evening
gramophone the sky voice the cell phone
the tablet the notebook, that monotone
observer of mutations purveyor of maladies
the persistence of memories, pale pink light sink
burning in the fires lighting up the skies
an old pang, smitten clang, the pain balm
mug-life, pen-knife, kettle-strife, all the sheaves
them echo-songs that haunt the drill-wells
that are cut wounded and wear fetching
chants, to an yearning oblation
bay leaf, curry leaf, yes, them colander coriander
there's a rhyme of charlies, looping from
our holy wars to now our holy hours with
the ombudsman, the omniman, the only God
who used to thunder for the ****
old Zeus, the Lord of Betelgeuse, him who we
called dead, exhumation, exculpation, exaltation
an ancient loneliness that calls from the nether
depths, now science, now freedom, now pagan.
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 3:20 PM UTC
Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep,
A maid of Dian’s this advantage found,
And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep
In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;
Which borrowed from this holy fire of Love
A dateless lively heat still to endure,
And grew a seeting bath, which yet men prove
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.
But at my mistress’ eye Love’s brand new-fired,
The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;
I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,
And thither hied a sad distempered guest,
But found no cure. The bath for my help lies
Where Cupid got new fire—my mistress’ eyes.
1.8k
fifty trillion of them,
give or take an exponential few,
programmed to replicate, then die, ad infinitum
spawning perfect copies to ensure
molecular harmony
their perfection could not keep
their host from huffing on tar sticks,
gobbling bacon by the kilo, or worshiping the sun's crisping rays
until one of their eternal days, a perverse mutation occurred
one at first, then two, then four, then more
forgetting that all were once destined to die,
in a crimson clockwork fashion
apoptosis
the new invader would hear nothing
of this strange word, for it was the emperor of maladies,
its geometric procession a spinning spectacle to behold,
purloining space from the mortality hobbled trillions
evicted by cancer's kangaroo court
it will have its reign,
this galloping ghost maker, until
the host gives up the fight, and
that which fed its gluttony
will starve it as blithely
as the body gave it
******* birth
Feb 7, 2015
Feb 7, 2015 at 11:19 AM UTC
atherien [1]
Que tu étais vive et jolie
sous les flambées très ondulées
de ta chevelure rousse,
comme un incendie en brousse.
Ardente et vive tu étais,
à soigner les corps et les maux,
de tes malades, un peu tes enfants,
dont je crois que tu n’avais pas.
Dans ton cabinet de la « rue des soupirs »,
tu ravissais des vies promises
à la Mort hideuse et cruelle
qui se vengea de cette offense.
Et pourtant ta science et ta passion
resteront inoubliées de tes malades
et ta photo de la belle naïade continue à nous charmer
dans la salle d’attente comme un diamant très pur.
Oh, jeune docteur Soleilhavoup
Comment se fait il que tu la vie t’ait été ôtée si tôt
par l’infâme camarde, hélas, de la vie toujours victorieuse ?
vielle blafarde qui hait les médecins comme autant d’obstacles à la malfaisance de sa faux.
Paul Arrighi – Toulouse – le 15-11-2008
[1] Ce poème fut commencé le 24 -01-2009, sous le choc et la douleur du décès d’une jeune doctoresse si secourables. Jamais alors je n’imaginais que, ce si jeune femme ait pu partir la première. Son décès fulgurant vient l’injustice et le chaos qui régissent le règne des maladies et l’insolent scandale des jeunes vies écourtées.
Dec 13, 2014
Dec 13, 2014 at 12:42 PM UTC
Sophia came; furled with a light that bared all colors
burning all passions desires and heart maladies
taking away the Human miracle;
the one calls it perpetual ignorance
a God's mistake; the one that sees his face
in the mirror and finds the only friend
The avarice of destiny never created the abyss
that shall swallow all dreams and hopes; and
the avarice of wisdom otherwise created Vertigo
in the soil full
of all kinds of manifestations on
the electromagnetic stripe
to be visible as slides of the past moments and
never got a lesson
the spring was in charm
I was in it for a blast of the moment and
this...never made a difference
Apr 18, 2012
Apr 18, 2012 at 7:27 AM UTC
my heart, my heart, my heart --
how do you speak with no vocal chords?
how do you ache with so few nerve endings?
how do you move suns and moons with such small mass?
the enchanted axe removed each limb,
one by one, bringing nick chopper down to size,
and gave him a body full of tin.
however, in attempting to heal his wounds,
the tinsmith failed to replace his heart,
and the tin woodsman was no longer
able to love the one to whom he had given his heart.
and he continued to live this way for years.
===
how i envy the heartless,
how i envy the ones who feel pain, but not
the pain of the heart, the pain of the soul.
there are times i want to rip my own heart out.
the gravity of such a decision
was hardly noticed, the way gravity
is hardly noticed -- a force we do not fight.
so, of course, i said it -- "i love you."
and in that moment the earth moved
beneath my feet. i felt the tilt of its axis;
i felt the weight of the world; i felt it all.
and of course, my frame was far too slight.
i felt a piercing pain, i could not move,
and i feared the worst. there are very few
maladies that cause paralysis and sharp pains
all over the mind and body. but
this was nothing new, this was nothing
i hadn't felt before. to have a heart,
to feel a heart, to know a heart,
is to feel unimaginable pain.
my own words have become my enchanted axe;
my own heart has removed each limb
and replaced them with tin. and yet my heart remains.
is that a better fate than having no heart at all?
Sep 27, 2013
Sep 27, 2013 at 12:20 AM UTC
you may feel the flame has died,
feel the reservoir has dried,
feel an emptiness inside,
crumpled up and tossed aside.
you may wish to live again,
wish to feel the rain begin,
wish to feel something within,
rescued from the ******* bin.
if you know such maladies,
set your tired mind at ease,
sit yourself down next to me,
cast your eyes across the trees.
i can't light that spark for you,
fix you, or bear you anew.
there's not much that i can do,
but i can listen, that much is true.
Aug 30, 2018
Aug 30, 2018 at 7:59 PM UTC
I have let the honey flow through me in golden waves , like a thick ocean
Nobody tells you that sweetness can also be brutal
There is no healing in the sort of kindness you are forced to give
It is pouring salt on a wound and calling it a bandage
I have shown the sugar the pores of my skin and allowed each grain to rain out of me
I looked like the eye of a snow storm for weeks
The blue-black throb of my unappreciated heart has stopped, but I still feel pinches as I wake up
That's when a person knows that time does not heal all maladies nor fix all calamities
We are not meant to be honey, all-natural and forever sweet
Not stevia, unhealthy and artificial
Our hearts shouldn't beat for the entire world
Just our own selves
We must rid ourselves of those who don't see our goodness and those who don't see our badness
Because we are a melting *** of humanness
and a missing ingredient is fatal
Dec 27, 2013
Dec 27, 2013 at 3:50 PM UTC
According to the gospel
As the lord and savior traversed the holy land
Preaching the word and showing the light
Speaking with god and devil alike
Speaking love to mankind
It is said
He would find the sick
The suffering of infirmity
He would lay his hands to their skin
And heal them
He would heal them
According to the gospel
My days are long
And I have bruises that don't show on my flesh
Impracticalities that should cause mental maladies
That would help me find the self destruction I fear
And that I fear awaits me
I'm tired when I wake up
And dead through the day
But I feel alive
Every time I put my words to the page
I feel a sage
Whose wisdom is generational
I feel hope
I may be sick
Maybe
I may be a lost and tortured soul unfit to exist
In this existence
Maybe
I may feel pain
I may
And the only disease I know is the brutality of life
Maybe
Poetry heals me
It is the hands in the desert
On the ***** in the cave
It is the words as rain to feed the seed
It is the sprout of a flower
And the bloom
It is my reason
And my religion
It is my gospel
And when the angels sing
If no one else can hear but I can
I'll know of peace
In a world of disarray
Jul 7, 2016
Jul 7, 2016 at 1:22 AM UTC
Here is the ballad of Web MD,
Self-diagnosing terminal maladies,
My fatal afflictions linger on,
I'm buying more medical texts from Fishpond.
Let's do our own diagnosis,
Teach yourself self-hypnosis,
My fatal afflictions linger on,
I'm buying more medical texts from Fishpond.
Let's sing our ballad of MD,
Sure we've got terminal maladies,
My fatal afflictions linger on,
I'm buying more medical texts from Fishpond.
That was the ballad of Web MD,
What are today's self-diagnosis,
My fatal afflictions linger on,
I'm buying more medical texts from Fishpond.
Jul 31, 2015
Jul 31, 2015 at 10:58 PM UTC