"poultice" poems
Kindness glides about my house.
Dame Kindness, she is so nice!
The blue and red jewels of her rings smoke
In the windows, the mirrors
Are filling with smiles.
What is so real as the cry of a child?
A rabbit's cry may be wilder
But it has no soul.
Sugar can cure everything, so Kindness says.
Sugar is a necessary fluid,
Its crystals a little poultice.
O kindness, kindness
Sweetly picking up pieces!
My Japanese silks, desperate butterflies,
May be pinned any minute, anesthetized.
And here you come, with a cup of tea
Wreathed in steam.
The blood jet is poetry,
There is no stopping it.
You hand me two children, two roses.
31.3k
First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber ******* or a rubber crotch,
Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand
To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed
To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit----
Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.
Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that ?
Naked as paper to start
But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk , talk.
It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.
2.9k
Old women sit around in smokey rooms
Pulling on Stinking cigars. Lights turned low
The red ends glow like big bloodshot eyes.
They wink in and out.
Murmuring chants and singing in low oblique tones.
Your soul is in question your will directed.
Have a cure with your man's cheating ways
Obeah.
You been having a bad streak of luck. One thing then the next.
Obeah on you. Go see lady cross town. Bring money.Obeah
You strongly believe someone Put Hudu on You. You been sick
for some time now and the pills just wont do.Obeah
Somebody put bad eye on you too. Obeah
If you believe then all things are possible Not true? Obeah Chicken blood
and the root to suit your condition. Now sit still and listen to her( premonition)
Obeah.
Let the spirit have his way.Draw the cancer from your bones
But you have to give yourself to the spirits of the dead. Obeah
The Zombie walks around at night snatching souls from the sleeper.Leaving the empty husk as witness.
Sleep light my friend and keep. Keep your poultice near.Do not abandon fear.Obeah.
Sep 26, 2012
Sep 26, 2012 at 3:32 AM UTC
Listen soldier to the tale of tendor nightingale
Tis a charm that soon will ease your wounds so cruel,
Singing medicine for your pain in a sympathetic strain
with a jug, jug, jug of lemonade or gruel.
Singing bandages and lint; salve and stearate without stint
Singing plenty both of liniment and lotion.
And your mixtures pushes about
And the pills for you served out
With alacrity and promptitute of motion
Singing light and gentle hands, and a nurse who understands
How to manage every sort of application.
From a poultice to leach, whom you haven't got to teach,
The way to make a poppy fomentation.
Singing pillow for you smoothed; smart and anguish smoothed,
By the rediness of feminine invention.
Singing fever thirst allayed, and the bed you've tumbled made
With a cheerful and considerate attention.
Singing succour to the brave and a rescue from the grave,
Hear the nightingale that's come to the crimea.
Tis a nightingale as strong in her heart as in her song,
To carry out so gallant an idea.
Nov 23, 2010
Nov 23, 2010 at 12:06 AM UTC
11/24/2017
Everybody says i dodged a bullet
But the bullet landed
As for the trigger, was it him or me that pulled it?
I thought he helped my heart expand its hard to think i even could with
Both feet braced on solid ground
Our situationship wasnt planned
I know its hard to understand
From the outside its easy to brand me
Can we analyze every time i noticed how masterfully he handled me?
I understand that time is the only poultice
But for a moment Id like to be candid please
The bullet landed and it travelled
It ripped a path through my flesh
Day by day i ate less and less
Let this be as many lessons
As you can manage to pull from this
The side pieces and the rest is all fluff and ********
He put strings on my heart and pulled it
And i danced and said “how high”
And my soul became dull it became harder and harder to wake up every day
Is it ok to say the only redeeming quality is that he never struck me?
But i wanted to escape the pain of being stuck he told me never, ever again to cut
He didnt see that he was the reason i needed release
The Mona Lisa was out of luck
Finally the bullet festered
The pain became so great
And the benefits so much less
The bullet ripped a path
I cut it out and sealed it back
Now the bullet is nothing but waste
And i can find a new way to relate
New tissue to create
It takes talent to close, to suture they say
“Approximate, dont strangulate”
And now the bullet is disposed
So they say i dodged a bullet
But the bullet landed
It ripped a path through my flesh
Til i became so much less
And the wound began to fester
So i cut out the bullet and cleaned up the rest
Now i have a scar to show the truth
The bullet landed
And i still choose
Not to be bulletproof
Apr 15, 2018
Apr 15, 2018 at 8:21 PM UTC
In Parsley, a Levantine munificence accreted together in Tabbouleh,
herbage that covers fractured bedrock in a poultice of healing.
Secreted within, lie igneous outpourings of bloodied tomatoes,
those solid affections that had welled through an ocean floor
as Neptune quelled Gaia's contractions, her waters seeking to burst
beneath the wrinkled surface of a salty sea. She, an underbelly of sky,
pregnant in the overwhelm of magma, sweating out her heart in fire,
muted like a moon of Neptune, in his retrograde soliloquies, yet mirroring
hers in icy resurfacings of skin. The God of the Sea, boils an amnion
to hazy mists, how deep will his trident plunge to dislodge those Trojan ships
of deceptions ? Yet, Triton blows a conch for Gaia, not for man's duelling
and his warring tribes. He soothes her feverish gnashing of thighs
labouring continents. Some fires burn in water, like desultory heartbeats
moving the pace of rocks through the ocean floor, spiriting away
to stranger places still, marking maps of memories in the beauty of
a stillborn magma. The limestone they say is no blood relation to such
alien fructification, those oceanic intruders, bleeding still, spilling
secrets in reds and purples. The acid tears spilled in lemons merely
neutralised in syllables, sedimented to a community of limestone,
that possess no archaic remnants reminiscing through dead bones,
an age of glory. Now beauty lies in herbage over once raucous magma
and traces of a salty sea, freshness of life trailing her veins, in fragrance of Parsley
Jun 24, 2021
Jun 24, 2021 at 7:15 AM UTC
There was much in her madness to draw us in.
Poetry was payback, electroshock for readers,
collusion between self and the culture oppressing women.
Rebelling against the limitations of a woman's sphere,
seeking refuge in career, a feminist before it was chic,
writing poems as a poultice against death
lurking in the shadows of a conflicted mind.
Sylvia, what was the dialogue you had with Death?
He deceived you in the mirror,
made you tremble at the foot of the stairs,
hissed from the potatoes in the kitchen,
till you sought solace in the oven's jets.
You were an artist out of time.
It's safe to come in from the depression now.
Feb 10, 2013
Feb 10, 2013 at 12:56 AM UTC
We British tend to take no notice,we just put a poultice on the sores.
In this town some back street evangelist, half religion ****** was banging on the jesus beat.
I meet his eyes which blink quite black,frontal back to total war and what's this for?
The beggar man can't understand why God with his almighty hand cant hand to him some slim hope of a reconcile,to reconcile the frown
with the riches of a smile or two but that's what beggars always do,expect what's more than what is there and want to share what they have not, is this the order of the day?
I've not a lot of hope that a poultice of green soap and sugar,however hot will do the trick,
this society is sick and medication is the order of the day.and we the slick play xylophones in the hope of finding keys to homes.
We're British and we tend to do,
what others would not ,
and would not see through
unless they're ready to and what do you the British do? but
pretend that it's not there.
Feb 1, 2014
Feb 1, 2014 at 4:58 PM UTC
poetic poultice.
Take this salve;
this balm and unction,
apply around valve
n up yer junction,
refrigerate;
and best kept cool,
to thicken up
loose water stool,
please don't fret
n do not fear,
'tis but poetic,
diarrhea..
Nov 8, 2011
Nov 8, 2011 at 1:41 AM UTC
~
from the anthology of the unwritten,
from the tombs of the stillborn,
where carcasses of idled titles and orphaned stanzas
do not compete for proof of life,
and
nameless birth certificates unissued,
yellowing and wasting midst
crumbling aleph bet spawn
here
comes a poem of concession
comes a poem of summation
of a life lived, knotted poorly, not well,
worse cursed as vanilla inadequate
the satisfaction in the writing,
the gleeful breaking of the sac,
the gushing relief giving way to
the childbirth of a new moon-poem,
arrested, wrested
a single plague affliction,
the cancer of weakness,
means Pharaoh wins
the cancer of weakness
no cure, no pharmaceutical poultice,
spreads insidious; one day - pain in the remote,
your big toe, then
next you can only street stagger
begging forgiveness and the kindness of strangers
hoping for the accidental cure of touch,
the miscellany lottery ticket probability of low chance
the visible mark you leave,
a weak indentation upon a pillow,
it is the dented head, cut deep by the shadow,
shake it out and you're a disappeared one,
nothing to show,
did someone once sleep here?
you were once upon a time
binary
a 1
now a 0 -
flip flop bottom top,
listening to Frank's "That's Life"^
my litany too long;
woeful work this business of flailing,
posting a tired-out self help love poem
ain't no cure for the falling-out-of-love
black and blue, self-inflicted bruising blues,
the wrists ache
the bones don't freak
but squeal, somebody's squeezing me
the alarm clock, a death knell,
everyone saying don't worry
you got a proven record,
the boss's eyes twinkling
"but what have you done for me lately?"
funny
Death says
Hey, aren't you the boss?
Who shall over rule thy Dominion?
What have thy done to yourself lately?
Answer: never end a poem with a question mark @
3:06am
May 10, 2017
May 10, 2017 at 3:16 AM UTC
balance is beholden to little,
just as the stars do not compel.
i roused with asphyxiation,
down suffocation, fever.
reverie so irreverent,
(removal proves impossible).
subcutaneous deposits of venom
perspiration is the poultice.
(but the brain was never meant
to drown in the skull)
Feb 14, 2014
Feb 14, 2014 at 1:24 PM UTC
Why?
Why would you ever think that you could ever mean that much to me?
You stare at the ink-spattered glove moving across my face.
No, it isn't the smudged mascara of a thousand tears cried there.
Not the dried stain of a
Rainy. Dreary. Day.
So sorry to most pleasurably disappoint
And what have you there? Gleaming in your keeper's eye?
You dress it up and dangle it about my head like a cicada flittering on a string during hot Argentine, incense filled nights.
I burnt my finger once lighting the incense for nightly prayer.
That summer I blamed my isolation on what the burn had left: a large, sticky, unsightly welt.
The only trace of blind, naive, ignorantly whole-hearted belief.
My slightly, yet debilitating, wounded hand prevented my holding or shaking of any new body, or old body's hand.
But perhaps I only speak out of the need for a scapegoat?
Still, I hid the finger in tightly fastened bindings, as if to shut out just one more imperfection.
As if my inborn afflictions simply were not enough.
I could not stand one more earth inherited crack, nick, or stitch.
My empty, wounded, prideful hand wrapped around a cold, night sweat ridden glass.
The odor of vinegar, my makeshift poultice, rose to greet me.
To seat me. To allow the painful memories to slowly pick at and eat me.
Zealously. They make a feast of me.
Night after sarcastically lonely night.
But
Why?
Why would you ever think that you had ever meant that much to me?
Feb 12, 2013
Feb 12, 2013 at 5:16 PM UTC
Time is the biggest
Word of All.
It lamely, gamely
Tries to act like
Olympus Mons,
That Great Mars Mountain,
Thunder-towering three times
Mightier and Grander than
Our Nepalise Everest.
(Or so the
Philosophers hope)
Time seems so looming,
So enlongated, stretching
Summer-like, back when
Summer was more than six
Measly weeks long;
Time is measured, and sweet,
Like sugar,
Being with the one we love
When time seems to slow,
To languish, like the non-
Breezy lassitude winds
That the sails of ships
Hate most of all.
But when the one we
Love, like, tolerate;
Are indifferent toward,
And absence does not make
The bitter water leaking
Out of our eyes,
Brows furrowed in visible
Pain, Time
Becomes a different
Breed of beast;
Time is salt, bitter, hard,
Crystalline, sharp-edged,
Not a poultice, nor a
Salve, but fresh seawater
Reigning down upon the
Open wounds of our broken,
Shattered hearts.
Each intake of breath
Like glass poking
Our insides, each
Exhalation
Yet another reminder
That time spent away
From love isn’t
Time at all.
Time is what someone
Had to call something
As yet so infinitely
Indefinable, yet-
Define things, categorize things,
We Humans do, because of
Our strange natures compel us.
Time is absolute, and
Absolutely nothing,
And absolutely
EVERYTHING.
And, to the still-beating heart
That can bear not one more
Oxygenated globule of red
Red blood, time
Becomes the clock which
Could not bear to fully
Show its face to us
Whilst we lived, and,
Upon the dying of our bodies,
The drum in our chest
Beating its beat no longer,
The twin-air-sacs
Now vacuumed:
Time announces itself as only
Becoming real when we
Aren’t.
Time is better defined
Irony.
The most genuinely
Phony collection of
Individual and barely-connected
Symbiotic symbols
Ever conceived by a
Single collective mind.
It’s all we have
And then all we don’t.
Oct 8, 2013
Oct 8, 2013 at 1:00 PM UTC
and then again, I am the same tree on the same hill
look you have seen it
here,
your eyes close
shutting feathers down of egrets
lounging in morning fog
tall nudging of estuaries
of reeds, foxglove-purple glens
here,
your eyes are closed
the white is peeking in from the edges
soft memory
plump and poultice
the egrets blush a ruffled wing
unsetting setting dust
the yellow fog claved the fold
martyred the morning
before it began
Jan 22, 2016
Jan 22, 2016 at 4:08 AM UTC
air pours alive in stringencies,
fall of tor and expanse.
mazy-eyed,
casts a syncopated hook
amongst tulips beheaded
by the toppling of a leaf
bracing for departures,
something else holds back,
furrow—
the thatched morning's serious mien,
the arrow, whirling in trajectories
one with the dive into red cauldron
of infinite scar of water,
Śiva, sighted footfall of the condor's
verdigris, this simple rustle
of your scourge-gowns
insists cadence of flutings;
i am one with beginnings.
swarming poultice of the inflamed grass,
obscene lines of shore in twilight
unfazed virulence spreads
like an epidemic of kisses against the
pulsing loam, cries like breakwater
lorn the fault of men, death at one's
trembling hand — sound the tribulation
of slender bells to a gather of pallors.
it is a stopping in-placeness
like crests of ******* a beautiful woman,
shiftless weight of light on glazed collarbone, Śiva, the enigmatical paradox
beleaguers a concatenation of
unloose chandeliers of appurtenances,
the unblinking aperture, widening in sky.
Nov 30, 2015
Nov 30, 2015 at 12:22 AM UTC
The night is your bed, the moon a blanket for your thoughts and the stars your pillow. You are immobile, paralysed by feelings and memories that only grow stronger as the light dims. There are so many things left to say that remains unsaid, and songs to sing that go unsung.
Worlds awake without slumber now, the physical realm paling in comparison to the galaxies that you can reach in your mind. There are planets and solar systems of hurt that you can reach with a simple call for the past - and you, the lost traveler floating in the vacant space.
A gaping hole where your heart once was echos the empty in your soul, but tears are the makeshift poultice that keep you going. A similar blank smile graces your face; but the cracks in your frame seep only love and a sadness that speaks volumes of how deep the hurt runs in your blood, bleeding black and wilting crimson.
Memories, memories.
*For I remember everything, even as you forget -
- even as you have forgotten.*
(A.H.Z)
Oct 26, 2013
Oct 26, 2013 at 3:48 PM UTC
In the two up, two down with a tin tub to
bathe in, a cellar to put coal in,
a kitchen and pantry
can't you
be happy?
If his Lordship willed it we'd all live in pigshit,
that's Nobility for you
but
I work in the grounds of the great hall as a groom
for
sixpence a week and a small garrett room
and don't feel hard done by,
still a prison though.
I'll die in service but will need to give
a week's notice
such a shame you can't put a
poultice
on death.
Aug 10, 2016
Aug 10, 2016 at 2:14 PM UTC
While motives for the act are so far hid
and wiser souls evade me or say nought,
I struggle to account for what you did -
unkind of deed or negligent of thought.
Perceiving in my scaly coat a *****
you cast your blow with subtlety and art;
ere pity stayed your hand or bade you think,
you etched a bleeding cross upon my heart.
And as that ***** falters to the worse,
sole poultice that would salve the wound escapes.
For you were both my soul-mate and my nurse;
bereft of you my heart grows still, then breaks.
I wish that in our bliss I'd used more care!
In loving you too well I laid me bare.
Oct 31, 2014
Oct 31, 2014 at 7:40 PM UTC
After wide-set earthen towers mask
the highway runoff, campers come off lofty
horses, signal boorishness to breeze. Sat alone
where rolling orange will tease
the peace from perfect dark - the hint of dread
forgoing litness to expose a martial bode -
the low-slung limbs of stern bring
trained to-wrist like faithful,
catching glimpses of what common good
afforded us naff hazes like the present
sickle answer, whale-bone grief and prescient
danger. Fix a poultice,
love’s soft landing seldom not
for treasures come.
Revive the brazen lungs
in boasts of rushes, random-lit,
forestalling sodden semblances of wit
from Sunday’s arsenal -
right-matched to cleaner absences
than your limited souls could ever pare.
She’s felt - a fabric after our own hearts,
a loan from common waltzes,
taciturn in downshifts of this archen land -
of course - of hand, a slight
anomaly for watchers to observe.
Each roadblock touches nerve.
Sep 3, 2018
Sep 3, 2018 at 1:21 AM UTC
WITCH HAZEL
Into the green wood,
where the mortar grows its stones.
Moons for sacrifice.
POULTICE
Chew and ruminate.
For whatever ails the wife,
he will sleep for good.
Jul 3, 2016
Jul 3, 2016 at 4:56 AM UTC
The comets came down raining on a subtle day
Stony rocks, amber locks, stony eyes, and Jokes
Portland never stood as a golden neighborhood
Now it's over where I don't have any business
Back in time, when you got me to the center for
Your clandestine affair, meteorites tore through
The troposphere, made your basement glow,
When the world is never us, you want a poultice
Look underneath, you'll still find me there and
Still X and hot rock
Still X and at loss
Mess no more,
Talarah, she's dead
Still X and want you
better, Sid, want you
better, Sid, want you
better, mess no more
Cindy's dead
Binary test
Found the X
I wish I could
Say anything
helpful to you
Say anything
to help you be
golden, if we were
ever, then be golden
again
I clap for you.
Super fan.
Nov 3, 2017
Nov 3, 2017 at 6:36 PM UTC
First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber ******* or a rubber crotch,
Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand
To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed
To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit——
Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.
Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start
But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.
It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.
Sylvia Plath, "The Applicant" from The Collected Poems. Copyright © 2008 by Sylvia Plath. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Source: The Collected Poems (Faber and Faber, 1989)
Related
Jul 4, 2017
Jul 4, 2017 at 5:18 PM UTC
Two phoenix feathers.
They lounge about a bar:
the man a ravenous flirt;
the woman arranging skirt.
She looks up to barely notice
The man's poultice of charm.
Alarmed she couldn't be
A strang-ed warmth in the knee
Her straw mind lit with glee
for the stallion to consume.
What of the body dear swan?
The man looks away to yawn.
Her desire becomes an agony:
fire building like dragon's breath.
Indeed, she pants for more...
Phoenix feathers burning galore!
Another look and she melts,
such bewitching spans veldts.
He looks away again, he's mixed.
She wonders if she's been tricked.
Indeed, from shadows another slinks.
Let us depart "adult" hi-jinx.
Jun 16, 2016
Jun 16, 2016 at 8:20 PM UTC
Needles to threadbares.
Old Chinese secret-blood-map.
Porcupine poultice.
Nov 27, 2017
Nov 27, 2017 at 3:33 AM UTC