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thatwriter May 2017
There's no more to be done, or feared, or hoped;
None now need watch, speak low, and list, and tire;
No irksome crease outsmoothed, no pillow sloped
        Does she require.

Blankly we gaze.  We are free to go or stay;
Our morrow's anxious plans have missed their aim;
Whether we leave to-night or wait till day
        Counts as the same.

The lettered vessels of medicaments
Seem asking wherefore we have set them here;
Each palliative its silly face presents
        As useless gear.

And yet we feel that something savours well;
We note a numb relief withheld before;
Our well-beloved is prisoner in the cell
        Of Time no more.

We see by littles now the deft achievement
Whereby she has escaped the Wrongers all,
In view of which our momentary bereavement
        Outshapes but small.
The wind is whistling,
out of tune I might add,
mistaking it for the kettle
I got out of
bad
or should that be bed?
shaking my head to dislodge the sleep
my eyes start revolving
the sugar turns blue and
it's me in the cup
wondering why I'm
dissolving.


Ridiculous is four steps to the right
I've been there
was there
sharing a night with the lamp
tightening up with the cramp
and have you noticed
anything odd?

if the door when ajar is not a door
where did it go?
how will you know where to exit or
enter?

When the day breaks
who covers up the cracks?

He
who cements commandments
to medicaments
and buries parliaments
in liniments
knows about the life in tenements
how to
fight from the battlements
He who
gives the final sacraments
on Sunday in the first aid tents

who is He anyway that separates the night
and makes the day pay ransom?

A handsome man I'll wager.
They had said that he was dying but
He might as well be home,
He was taking up an empty bed
At the hospital, in Rome,
And no amount of medicaments would
Bring him back to life,
So they threw him in an ambulance
And sent him to his wife.

And she, poor girl, was mystified
She didn’t need the stress,
Of tending to a cadaver while
She wore her party dress.
He saw the world through greying eyes
But he never made a sound,
He’d married her through thick and thin
But on thin, she’d let him down.

His days were grey and mist-like as
He looked around his room,
She’d kept the curtains pulled across
So he lay there in the gloom,
And shadows of her sister would
Stand pensive at his bed,
He’d loved, and he really missed her
But the sister long was dead.

Perhaps he should have married Grace
As the younger of the two,
But that would have left the elder one
Not knowing what to do.
The eldest must be married first
Or so the father said,
So Raymond Royce was given no choice
He’d married Gwen instead.

It seemed as if he woke sometimes
And he went to greet the day,
Out in the broader sunshine where
His pains had gone away.
But Gwen was never there with him
As she’d never been in life,
While Grace had sat and talked with him
As if she were alive.

And when Grace reached and held his hand
He thought that his heart would burst,
The tears he shed from his lonely bed
Said he had loved her first.
He asked why Grace had died on him
And she gave him his reply,
‘My sister Gwen had put poison in
That gift of an apple pie.’

‘She knew I only had eyes for you,
And she thought that you would leave,
She saw the way that you looked at me
And her heart began to grieve.
It wasn’t as if she wanted you
But she knew that if you left,
The world would see it as scandal
And would leave her quite bereft.’

And so he lay there, day by day
While his wife brought boyfriends home,
They lay there in the adjoining room
In that little flat in Rome.
While he could not decide between
Reality and dream,
The grey days were his night, he thought
And the brighter days his cream.

He knew just where he would rather be
In the day-like days with Grace,
But Gwen would settle beside his bed
And would mutter to his face.
He saw her dimly through the mist
And repeat beneath her breath,
‘How long, how long will you resist
When the end for you is death?’

The day came that the sun was bright,
It was time that he was fed,
While Grace looked on as her sister sat
Beside her husband’s bed.
And Grace had whispered between her tears
‘Don’t you even wonder why…’
While her sister, with a face so grim
Sat and fed him apple pie.

David Lewis Paget
I sat by an ailing parent
amid the mingled echoes
of agonising angst
watching the goings-on.

A withered man lay wailing
of a gangrenous leg
demanding doctor's attention
praying for the Lord's mercy.

Next to him
a lean, grim, gaunt man
too tall for the ward-bed---
liver cirrhosis
was his diagnosis.

In the corner far off
sat a mother in vigil
over her son in teens---
his neurosis
the aftermath of a car mishap.

A charred young lady
on a stretcher brought
specialists and sisters rushing
machines and medicaments.
Some seconds of struggle
liberate the lady
from human *******.

The sisters shout
"  Remove  the body "!
Specialists turn to depart.
Everyone in the Ward
goes about lackadaisical
sans a sigh of emotion
sans a streak of affection.
911
Still undecided
need more time to think,
do I try and move past this
or do I stay here and sink?

In these early hours
when my superpowers
are at the lowest ebb
it is then and only then
that I get caught up
in a web of my own making.

I should take supplements
maybe some home brewed
medicaments,
I am lacking in something or
something is lacking in me.

But I am a man
so I put on a brave face
to save face
and realise
that this kind of thinking
is basically another way of sinking,

we're all hanging on to the
edge
waiting for the end of the world.
MichingMallecho Jan 2019
I NEED
MEDICAMENTS
THE ABSENCE
OF THEM
PROMPTS ME
TO A FURLOUGH
TO THE MALAISE
AND ******
OF ANGUISH
IN A SATURNINE TWILIGHT
FURTHERING HAPPENSTANCE

— The End —