"pustules" poems
As the wet wind hums its way through our two tower six-cylinder apartment complex. Birds fall from their naked winter wept branches, braced by stiff bones, mapped out in Alexandria, carrying notes from El Salvador. The corner market is closed, never opened. A hair salon stands in its place, it wrings out the "R's" from a Philadelphia warshing.
And like every night, hot air cakes on an extra layer of indecipherable red dots up the arms and around the neck, minute pustules of hypochondria that steal my finger tips from the keyboard. I scratch and tip them, looking under their fiery scarlet caps for, I-don't-know-what disease. Paul says It's that magic school bus melanoma, typhoid drip, it comes at you from a computer screen and eats at your nervous system until you've got the wambles.
Tuesday's used to be the worst, until I OWNED THAT **** I make a pronoun out of aluminum foil and wear it as a hat on a first date. Tinder is not bad for conceptual art projects. I carry it within me like an anodyne complex, out into the frozenness; into my mouth the air comes around my teeth, behind my uvula until winter freezes my voice and I am breathless.
I abandon my miniature house to enter the pyramidal pinetum to the North. Wild paradise shrubs gather with songless animal noises watching as I take naked photographs of my father to preserve his body from anything less than his great immortal end. He lives on black moss and water from a nearby pond,
he authors the face of Anthony Hopkins, thrown about, another casualty of fervid and blurry dreaming.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 3:30 PM UTC
The Lady Mary took to her bed
On the last of the mad March days,
She’d strained her constitution, she said
At that upstart, Shakespeare’s plays,
The ruffians at the Globe were known
To be often rotten with fleas,
‘I must have been bitten,’ Milady said
With her skirt drawn up to her knees.
The footman fastened a painted sign
‘No Visitors’ up at the door,
While one of the maids got down on her knees
And scrubbed at the parquet floor,
Milady took to her poster bed
By a window out to the square,
‘You’d best get down to the Fleet,’ she said,
‘Lord Orton is working there.’
The doctor came with his physic
Carried a nosegay close to his face,
The cane that he prodded Milady with
Would leave her with little grace,
‘The swellings down in Milady’s groin
Will have to be truly bled,
A mixture of clay and violets then
Applied to the sores,’ he said.
The mist swept in and the night came down
As the fever grew apace,
And dark black pustules grew and swarmed
At the Lady Mary’s face,
A shadow fell on the window pane
Of a man stood out in the square,
‘Who is that nightly visitant,
And what is he doing there?’
She couldn’t make out his features for
His hat was broad of brim,
Shading his face and hawk-like nose
Though he kept on looking in,
‘I have a terrible feeling that
I’ve seen that man before,
He’s come from the coffin-maker, and
He waits outside my door.’
She slipped off into unconsciousness
So the footman let him in,
To measure her with a piece of twine
From her head to below her shin,
They waited then for an hour or two
While the doctor had her bled,
She cried aloud at a fancied shroud
And she shrank from it, in dread.
Late on the second day she woke
Lord Orton at her side,
Holding a faded nosegay to
Protect him from his bride,
She heard the clatter of wheels pull up
Outside in the darkened court,
And cried, ‘My Lord, will you leave me now
That my time is running short?’
She lapsed back into a coma, but
She could feel the tremors start,
And something strange had begun to change
In the beating of her heart,
A rattle deep in her throat began
And resounded through her head,
Just as a voice, it seemed to her,
Called out, ‘Bring out your dead!’
David Lewis Paget
Jul 28, 2013
Jul 28, 2013 at 9:32 PM UTC
Burdened in the cool resentment, of self betterment, hesitant, in its clause, licking pennies from the paws of wolfs, misunderstood and no good in the laws of men, force me on the bench again, and expect to lessen, the sentence, of the commitments pushed to the petal in the proprietary pustules of must haves, postulated from rehabs, of labs and rats, stabbed with needles and smacked, when i doze off, I'm going to go off, like a bomb in class, painting the blast in a bright flash, of mmy baaads.
Sep 24, 2012
Sep 24, 2012 at 4:33 AM UTC
As the wet wind hums its way through our two tower six-cylinder apartment complex. Birds fall from their naked winter wept branches, braced by stiff bones, mapped out in Alexandria, carrying notes from El Salvador. The corner market is closed, never opened. A hair salon stands in its place, it wrings out the "R's" from a Philadelphia warshing.
And like every night, hot air cakes on an extra layer of indecipherable red dots up the arms and around the neck, minute pustules of hypochondria that steal my finger tips from the keyboard. I scratch and tip them, looking under their fiery scarlet caps for, I-don't-know-what disease. Paul says It's that magic school bus melanoma, typhoid drip, it comes at you from a computer screen and eats at your nervous system until you've got the wambles.
Tuesday's used to be the worst, until I OWNED THAT **** I make a pronoun out of aluminum foil and where it as a hat on a first date. OKCupid's not bad for conceptual art projects. I carry it within me like an anodyne complex, out into the guzzling wind, the air that comes into my mouth and looks for any breath within me that it can go out of me with, and I'm breathless.
I abandon my miniature house to enter the pyramidal pinetum to the North. Wild paradise shrubs gather with songless animal noises watching as I take naked photographs of my father to preserve his body from anything less than his great immortal end. He lives on black moss and water from a nearby bourn,
he's the mien of an Anthony Hopkins, living in a hologram I saw in my dream last night.
Feb 10, 2014
Feb 10, 2014 at 6:25 AM UTC
I am made of mountains
which do not merit their trek,
slumps pregnant with swamps
bubbling ‘round souring slop,
flatlands so parched they cough
as the pustules burst.
I am petals so withered
they perpetually sulk,
shunning the warmth
so to sigh in the soil.
I am blackened fruits
weighing down weary trees.
The flies do not flock to me.
Mar 7, 2013
Mar 7, 2013 at 3:27 AM UTC
Words
Brittle rings transcending silence in offer
(An offering)
To offer up trust
They break in the moment you speak
To offer your life:
Foolish. like all the rest broke me
I look forward to secretly building co-dependence
Just to disassemble what you thought you held
I'll drain your breath
Words explode and shred
They fly, genuine, from lips I'll lock with in pretend
Under bus stop signs you stoop to kiss with the impression I won't leave you gasping, gaspless
Burn
Folded paper if you feel they weren't heartfelt
(Emulating)
The offer of rust
Heard from a wet weak heart's keening
I offer it love
Hoping share of my warm blood brings
All pretense that lies in your depths spiraled to the surface
Hope then showing like pustules I'll crush each head
I'll drain it out
Slash rampant like the knife unleashes
In fingers soft, skin taut to the bone
There is night to find
Slash rampant like the knife unleashes
In fingers young, keys tuned to one note
And you can be the prey
But you don't have to be
Oct 23, 2013
Oct 23, 2013 at 1:30 AM UTC
A dóggy drópped sóme Crappó
steaming ón the street,
a cóffee cólóred fungus
piled up óh só neat -
and there a juicy maggót
fóund it óh só sweet,
só simply sóft and tender,
just like a córpse's meat
Thee maggót, nót só clever
- simple and untaught -
was dreaming óf attentión,
slimelight's what it sóught.
An empty-minded cómrade
certainly'd help a lót -
anóther wórm-like nóthing
just the thing! it thóught.
While ******* in the Lóg's brain
- óh quite a simple chóre -
it replicated pustules,
petty, ghastly, sóre.
And when the Lógy maggót
****** in nóthing móre
it burst apart in wónder,
clóned Thee Artiste Whóre
Well, Petty Little Lógbrain,
Whóre, Thee Artiste crank
Are mixed up in the mire,
in mindless **** they sank.
Thee cópies creepy Crappó,
from pages where he stank.
and claims tó be Thee Artiste,
- Thee smell is simply rank
The móral óf this fable,
clear fór all tó see:
If fated with a Lóg brain
bear yóur destiny
and never let yóur EGÓ
rampage ón a spree!
Ór else like Whóre and Crappó
yóu'll sóón turn intó Thee.
CrE aka Trollminator
Dec 23, 2014
Dec 23, 2014 at 6:28 AM UTC
A fizzle.
A fury.
The rabbit and the hole.
Like puzzle pieces left out in the rain.
Overexposure,
White hot.
Ex-communication leads to excommunication.
This is your brain on drugs.
Intravenous lover,
**** the marrow dry.
White hot.
blistering
Pustules darling!
Transgress,
then offer a pause,
as though we had ever begun to play.
Like a claustrophobic *********
leasing out a shoebox.
I want in for good.
I want out for life.
Lets play hide,
all the seekers are dead.
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 9:53 PM UTC
the bird lay helplessly on the soft cement,
its eye sockets were empty
and its feathers were torn up.
dreaming a little dream
that consisted of empty space,
the contents of its mind
both literal and figurative.
the rot had set on swiftly,
the skin was putrid smelling,
the pustules were brimming
with the **** of death made swelling.
framed on the ground by
ants crawling all around its flesh,
they slid in and out
they played within the body's ruins.
the bones were now made of rope,
the feathers petrified,
the bird lay so still,
dreaming a sleep about a sky full of nothing
speckled red and brown and green and blue and
somehow reminding me of myself
in relation to you
and you
and you
and all of you
to all of me
to every last ****** bit of you,
I give you a dead, departed, decaying corpse
who will never fly again.
I will never fly again.
I will never fly again.
just let me lay and rot upon the cement,
I will never fly again.
Oct 14, 2013
Oct 14, 2013 at 7:41 PM UTC
It all looked clean, crisp, picturesque postcard promise
The river reflecting skyblue shimmers
Mists rising wisps of secrets
Trees and plants glossy, full bellied, nutritious happy
The birds practising new song and twitching wings
of fancy in the bright 440 volt sunshine
Filtering through
the senses to settle softly.
All was really not that clean and crisp.
The photographer could not zoom in
On a dead kea choked on a 1080 trap
Dropping from the sky like a manna treat
Four fish gobbling pellets pulled upstream
Mouth agape as poison shut the fluttering gills
Two other magpies lost their raucous tone
Deprived by early morning bait
Possums slept softly high up in the tress
With last nights buds bursting in their full bellies
The photographer could not see beauty and ugliness
Together.
The lens could not question the crystalline view
The click was not from gun
digital film rolled irrespective
And his dream of a pristine forest
with no pustules told one side of the story.
The other side
Balanced the books
And tore the heart of the very creatures
That spoke beauty with being there.
The picture was captioned;
Clean and Green.
Was it?
A picture speaks a thousand words
Sprinkled with three hundred lies and lives.
Author Notes
This poem accompanied a lush photograph of forest with a little stream flowing through. In the same area where the photograph was taken, helicopters bombed the forest with 1080 poison pellets to knock off the possums which were eating through the fresh shoots and leaves.
The end result was more than the possums going to thy kingdom come.
There are serious environmental undertones in this poem.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid;=11260667
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 18 days ago
Jun 9, 2014
Jun 9, 2014 at 4:30 PM UTC
Madison mounted her coal black mare
In the yard of the Smugglers Inn,
Her coat was black and her hair was fair
And her jodhpurs tucked well in,
The sky was in a threatening mood
With its thunderheads from hell,
As lightning forked on the ancient rood
And the rain teemed down as well.
‘You need to get to the Laird,’ I cried,
‘Tell him to haste to me,
Another day and she may have died,
I’m trying to set her free.
But the Pikemen stand outside her door
And they say they guard her skin,
There were locks and chains on her door before
Up there, in the Smugglers Inn.’
‘Tell him to bring his gallant troop
To dismay the Duke of Bray,
He means to imprison his daughter
In his tower, the Lady Grey,’
The Pikemen said that I’d lose my head
If I tried to breach her door,
And wouldn’t answer whenever I asked,
‘What is she locked in for?’
So Madison wheeled the mare around
And she put it to the spur,
If any could ride a horse to ground
I knew that it was her,
She headed off to the Castle Croft
Head bent to the driving rain,
With lightning flashing around her mount
I watched her across the plain.
What seemed to take forever, I thought,
Was merely an hour or two,
But then my fears were set at naught
As the troop came jangling through.
Each man had raised his sabre and
He’d kept his powder dry,
My heart was surging within me as
The troop came riding by.
And then, at last, was Madison
Still riding with the Laird,
Determined then to save her friend,
To show her that she cared.
The Pikemen soon were beaten down
Were lost in the affray,
I never did catch a glimpse of him,
Their lord, the Duke of Bray.
It took a moment to smash the locks
On the door of Lady Grey,
And all the troop had cheered out loud
As the chains, they fell away.
Madison was the first in line
To embrace the one within,
But we were not to know what lay
Up there, in the Smugglers Inn.
The Lady, held in a firm embrace
Had staggered out through the door,
But blood and pustules were on her face
Like we’d never seen before.
A dying Pikemen called, ‘You fools,
You’ve unleashed a bitter ague,
And then he sighed just before he died,
‘Behold, you have the plague!’
David Lewis Paget
Oct 12, 2015
Oct 12, 2015 at 6:16 AM UTC
My uncle lived in a big old house
At the end of Mayfair Drive,
With thirteen rooms and a library,
Whilst he was still alive.
But he jumped one day from the second floor
And he hit the ground so hard
That his blood spread out like a pair of horns,
There in his own front yard.
We didn’t know why he had to jump,
It wasn’t a lack of cash,
His health was good, but before he jumped
He’d broken out in a rash,
The maid had brought him his morning tea
Had watched him put back a book,
Up on the topmost shelf it went
And he’d said to her, ‘Don’t look!’
The rash spread quickly under his arms
With pustules down in the groin,
The doctor said at the autopsy
That one was shaped like a coin.
‘You’d swear that there was a devil’s head
Imprinted there in his blood,
I’ve never seen anything like it since
And I hope that I never should.’
But my father moved us into the house
Now, with his brother gone,
He locked us out of the library
But went in there on his own.
There were shelves and shelves of books in there
And one on the topmost shelf,
The maid had whispered, ‘You’d best beware!’
But he took it down himself.
I noticed he wore his patent gloves
Whenever he went in there,
I peeped in through a crack in the door
And saw him stand on a chair,
The book was old, had a mouldy look
For the leather was turning green,
It looked like a fungus, taken root,
And the whole thing looked unclean.
As days went by I began to hear
Some babble behind the door,
And incense came in a steady stream
Out from a crack by the floor,
My father didn’t come out for meals
His voice was becoming hoarse,
He’d take a tray at about midday
But never a second course.
The maid resigned on the first of June
She said that she saw his face,
Was shivering uncontrollably
And muttering, ‘Loss of grace!’
The cook took both of us under her wing
And swore that she’d see us fed,
But wouldn’t come out of her tiny room
At dusk, she’d ‘rather be dead!’
The fire broke out in the library
On a Sunday, after Mass,
I caught a glimpse of my father then,
His face was as green as grass,
The shelves and the books had grown a mould
And it spread all over the floor,
I knew I had to get out of there
And ran right out of the door.
My father leapt from the window then
Came crashing down in the drive,
I knew before I got close to him
He couldn’t have been alive.
Two horns spread out from the place his head
Had crumpled into the ground,
But these were horns of a green fungi
Like the book on the shelf he’d found.
They quarantined us around that house
And came with chemical sprays,
‘This fungus seems to be hard to ****
It’s going to take us days!’
They checked the wreck of the library,
I even went in myself,
With everything burnt to a crisp, still lay
A book on the topmost shelf!
David Lewis Paget
Jul 14, 2014
Jul 14, 2014 at 7:40 AM UTC
Borne under the good sign,
Or the bad,
If the enigma caught on,
to the trailing self,
it would be a question,
would the superlative,
be monstrous?
Or the make shift believer;
Would it all make sense?
Scribbles...
Either I have signed my life
or destroyed it,
In the pursuit.
It is the mental mind,
That produced this end,
The markings the etching,
That causes a chasm,
It will obliterate the skies!
Magnitude.
The sense of belittlement,
had been extinguished,
The tribes borne of the future,
would marvel at etchings,
Engraved in sand,
The beauty all extinguished,
Among the belittled beauty, at,
simple existence,
of complex life,
The hereditary displacement,
coherent to our establishment,
There is a latency
in progression,
The mixture's
Teeth,
Bind,
Conform
In singularity,
The future forgets itself,
the zen logic is missing,
between pustules,
between synapses,
between the heavy,
and the lucid.
Nov 14, 2014
Nov 14, 2014 at 3:07 PM UTC
I’ve lost my muse, I’ve lost it all
Give me some liquor and I swear I’ll stand tall
Tall enough to touch hands with God
Or at least high enough to fall
Fall from his graces,
To a place where on my knees I’ll crawl
For forgiveness in damp caves at dusk
Creeping through bile, pustules and ****
To a place somewhere said in between
Heaven and Hell, it’s there I’ll be seen
Sep 19, 2010
Sep 19, 2010 at 5:51 PM UTC
In the middle of the night
Toiling, boiling, out of sight.
Lurking on in caves or beaches.
What's to fear? Undulating leaches,
Bulbous tongues, or blotting popped pustules.
Nay, only thrice was found she on thy vestibule.
In normal dress, and broad day light,
not so pretty, and not so bright.
Mourning morning not such a creature.
Call the judge! Wake every preacher!
Feigned ignorance won't get you far
Just look, they've already set the bar,
That from the breeze your limbs will swing
When like the others forced to sing
Of demons and charms and heresy,
They shall force your tongue, by my troth, even upon me.
For which I might procure the same fate as you,
Pricked and drained, with a blackish hue.
O please! This girl is none to fear!
Throw her in water up to her ear!
See by the way she sink in foam,
Splash her with holy water and hear not a groan!
These lips hath spilled no blood,
No pact with the Devil, no sign of false flood.
Spare her and likewise me,
For I know if she be tried, so tried I too shall be.
The fire! The smoke! The Flames!
Suffocated with chaos. Who else to blame?
The feckless masses, like sheep they believe.
No mercy, no God, no time for reprieve.
Sep 9, 2016
Sep 9, 2016 at 1:20 AM UTC
His flesh and her flesh in a volcanic dance
The rest of them, next in line obviously and aware, become a collective watcher;
Perfection, they cannot be next; her left to chance.
They only watched the now, the yellow fog distancing them; perchance
The girl was just a bit older, or had killed the diseased satyr---
His flesh and her flesh in a volcanic dance.
Do it this way, no that way! I did, I did! We did our fruitless prance.
Everything is calm, but it is never, ever over, and it never will be; I am my own hater.
Perfection, they cannot be next; her left to chance.
Nothing really bad ever happens due to his expert use of the whip against our backs and lance
Against the pustules, except I lost who I could’ve been in my life. Later
His flesh and her flesh in a volcanic dance.
It was a love and hate story of our generation’s history, a true romance.
The victor got to change the meaning, the purpose and we became “innocent” bystander---
Perfection, they cannot be next; her left to chance.
They floated in the fog, the young ones. I watched their self-induced trance,
She wasn’t perfect, so of course they didn’t want to be her.
His flesh and her flesh in a volcanic dance.
Perfection, they cannot be next,; her left to chance.
Apr 24, 2015
Apr 24, 2015 at 12:46 AM UTC
The thoughts that haunt me,
creep up at night
Visions of fly overs,
passing headlights
The deepest oceans,
filling my lungs
Every soul,
I've ever done wrong
My health anxieties,
white pustules and red gums
Eternal suffering,
even after relief
These are the things
that **** me in my sleep
I'm sad and lonely
but I'm not alone
My family they love me,
my sweetheart and friends
Though I have a mind
they cannot mend
I'm shallow sometimes,
even self obsessed
These confessions of mine,
hurt me and cut deep
With depression in mind,
I can find no relief
One thing I know
If I can't get to sleep
The road I will go,
The road I will go,
The road I will go,
the road oh-so-bleak
Sep 26, 2016
Sep 26, 2016 at 10:01 PM UTC
pustules still
on my jawline at
thirty years old
my yawns wretch
my proverbial ***
outta that there
but not before
a cashier girl
has some clue
I'm a loser
an old house &
it's foundation
slow-bombs itself
I'm caught between
me & my version
of you
Apr 20, 2025
Apr 20, 2025 at 6:18 AM UTC
Waning scion
encroaching
a course
An Isolated course;
coarse is its skin
blind-sight is its eye
with flutist wind
whistling its mind
Sly stars dripping
under fogged
horizons
the moon shuttering
light,
fleeing from the
gaunt wood
where I reside
Night,
shroud of
razor black
oozing pustules
of defect and blight,
mind snaking through
bowels--
grisly bowels kept in
swamps
kept in dark and damp
kept underground--
stone underground
Sprouting
out splintered
atonement,
slumped on a
broken wall
Gray above,
light humming
under feet,
through scabrous
stone and sodden clay
One hope lingers:
plunge worrisome
hands into the
viscous floor
Tugging fingernails,
bartering
screams with the wind,
grounded pain arises through the dirt,
latching to my veins
Injecting the soil and stone into my
twitching heart, feeding the cells with
native essence
Purging the human from
the silken skin; spraying it into
the sediment home
Bedrock welcomes my sight
and my trench
shapes my stale body.
Becoming soil and rock
and worms and root
offers a listing breeze
to the now formless thought
The dirt is in me
The rock is in me
The qualm is without
Oct 10, 2018
Oct 10, 2018 at 1:20 PM UTC
The earth is steaming
Boiling from within
Pustules forming in oily breaches at the surface
and below,
All the skeletons flouresce -
Do you not remember how we scorched every star into being
And breathed shards of silver moonlight into the sky?
Before we knew how to build invisible cages,
when all we had ever known
was the light?
I miss the tingle of stardust on my skin most
While scrubbing at dank layers of smog beneath each half moon nail
The ash of a day in this city making itself at home -
Have you dreamed of it lately, that glorious inferno? Dying a thousand little deaths while we baked
in fields of swaying corn
How lumious we seemed
bathed in liquid gold,
When all we had ever known was the light.
If you could breathe I would take you there again,
Will us both back to the safety of that life,
The great wide anywhere with the infinite violet sky,
And foaming waves slipping up the dunes-
Could you imagine our place, frozen out of time, where we could watch every planet turn and every leaf fall? I remember each constellation you called to light the way home, and how the earth trembled beneath our feet,
how we loved like we couldn't help ourselves
when all we had ever known was the light.
Sep 6, 2017
Sep 6, 2017 at 8:16 PM UTC
Maybe my life is like someone's album cover
There's millions of songs and I haven't heard even half yet
all I know is that my backpack groans like a saddle
when I put it on my back
It's a little happiness every morning
when my room smells like incense
Or like the air outside
Maybe my life is like a raspberry with an infinite or nonexistent
number of pustules
Maybe my life is like the word pustule
all I know is how scratchy my blanket feels
how the waves sprayed in my face from a thousand feet below
literally- how albus dumbledore stood there
but not really- how the lightning didn't always mean thunder
and how spring feels after a long winter
Maybe my life is like my sister's car
Maybe my life is like the people in my sister's car
drunk and a little confused,
all I know is that they're fun to hang out with
have great ideas when they're high- and sober, too-
that the cold mist is ideal in summer and terrifying in winter
that my sleeping bag is comfortable on any surface
and Blues Traveler's "Run Around" is my life song
but there's tons of others, too
Maybe my life is only like my life
and there's no appropriate analogy
that can capture what's actually going on.
Apr 4, 2014
Apr 4, 2014 at 10:35 AM UTC
One might as well call this an equinox
For night and day are equinoxious now:
Mosquitoes, soul-withering heat and damp
Itch-allergens and rattlesnakes not featured
In advertising fantasies about
Bugless, unbitten happy families
Posing with plates and carnivorous smiles
Before neighbor-envious chromium grills
And playing free of heat rash and pustules
Around surgically sterile swimming pools
Jun 20, 2018
Jun 20, 2018 at 4:01 PM UTC
In that the wandering was aimless
pain though quite painful was
painless in comparison to what had gone
before me
and after came more pain but by then
I was used to the injury that history
had bestowed upon me,
gifted though none too bright,
taught how and what to write
by the Pharisee,
was God ever good to me?
A desert came
more pain
visions in the freezing night,
and in all the wandering, the
******* and squandering of my
youthful days,
finally to fitfully gaze upon the
one
and the stars shone on
and the light appeared
what we fear the most
is not fear
but the fear of fearing
who fears the tearing of their skin
when the pustules burst
is that not relief you feel?
the postulant turn to a burning cross
with a fire in her eyes that cry for the loss
of a saviour she knows from the book.
May 6, 2017
May 6, 2017 at 5:45 PM UTC