"putrefying" poems
She hates that she is a woman
The putrefying weakness perceived in the curves of her body
The naivete shown in her blues
With the unintentional flutter of butterfly lashes
That refuse to meet the glances of those that pass by
The fear-- Of what?
That stereotypes are true?
She doesn't even know
And it sickens her.
She sickens herself.
She hates that she is white
The blandest vanilla
The marble statue
Somehow revered
Worshiped
Privileged
But simultaneously overlooked
Boring
Unimportant
The Caucasian mongrel
In light of the fact that her People
Have no proud history
Which she can name herself heir to
She hates that she is middle class
Not poor enough to struggle
Not rich enough to be free
Just situated dully in the middle
A footnote in the statistic
That they tell her she must use
To identify herself
She hates that her belief system
Has to be called by a name
That she has to choose
To be a part of a group
As part of her "identity"
And she is not allowed
To stand by her own integrity
She hates that she is American
The pudgy, loud-mouthed, laterally-speaking nation
The brashly jumps into conflict
Guns blazing
As its political system decays
In the stench of its overwhelming debt and corruption
But in truth
She hates
That they force her
To whittle her essence down
Into Gender, Race, Class, Religion, and Nationality
A vomit-inducing statistic
As if there was nothing more to her
Than the facts surrounding her existence
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 6:11 PM UTC
A Letter To My Aunt Discussing The Correct Approach To Modern Poetry
To you, my aunt, who would explore
The literary Chankley Bore,
The paths are hard, for you are not
A literary Hottentot
But just a kind and cultured dame
Who knows not Eliot (to her shame).
Fie on you, aunt, that you should see
No genius in David G.,
No elemental form and sound
In T.S.E. and Ezra Pound.
Fie on you, aunt! I'll show you how
To elevate your middle brow,
And how to scale and see the sights
From modernist Parnassian heights.
First buy a hat, no Paris model
But one the Swiss wear when they yodel,
A bowler thing with one or two
Feathers to conceal the view;
And then in sandals walk the street
(All modern painters use their feet
For painting, on their canvas strips,
Their wives or mothers, minus hips).
Perhaps it would be best if you
Created something very new,
A ***** novel done in Erse
Or written backwards in Welsh verse,
Or paintings on the backs of vests,
Or Sanskrit psalms on lepers' chests.
But if this proved imposs-i-ble
Perhaps it would be just as well,
For you could then write what you please,
And modern verse is done with ease.
Do not forget that 'limpet' rhymes
With 'strumpet' in these troubled times,
And commas are the worst of crimes;
Few understand the works of Cummings,
And few James Joyce's mental slummings,
And few young Auden's coded chatter;
But then it is the few that matter.
Never be lucid, never state,
If you would be regarded great,
The simplest thought or sentiment,
(For thought, we know, is decadent);
Never omit such vital words
As belly, genitals and -----,
For these are things that play a part
(And what a part) in all good art.
Remember this: each rose is wormy,
And every lovely woman's germy;
Remember this: that love depends
On how the Gallic letter bends;
Remember, too, that life is hell
And even heaven has a smell
Of putrefying angels who
Make deadly whoopee in the blue.
These things remembered, what can stop
A poet going to the top?
A final word: before you start
The convulsions of your art,
Remove your brains, take out your heart;
Minus these curses, you can be
A genius like David G.
Take courage, aunt, and send your stuff
To Geoffrey Grigson with my luff,
And may I yet live to admire
How well your poems light the fire.
6.5k
After my mother died, my room was filled with roses. When the flowers died, my room was filled with their sweet, rotten stench for weeks on end; it sunk into my pores and into my DNA and years later, I still smell like dead roses.
My sister confuses this smell with dead lilies.
A bouquet of red roses was placed atop my mother’s coffin as it lowered six
feet down into the earth. After the roses died, I wonder if my mother could
smell them like I did? I wonder if she still smells them, or, more likely, how long it took for the roses to disintegrate into dust like her?
We don’t talk about the body after death because we don’t like to be reminded of how vulnerable we really are. In high school, a boy asked me to prom using roses and lilies that were all different shades of reds and oranges and yellows like fire. Lilies like funerals and tombstones and formaldehyde.
I don’t think he meant to remind me of death. I don’t think his intention was to place me in a casket similar to my mother’s with its pink padded walls. I don’t think he realized that’s where I went when I saw his basement covered in bouquets of hellfire. I think he meant the roses to be romantic,
but I looked at them and saw my mother’s putrefying face, saw her intestines eaten away by savage bacteria and bugs, saw her eyelids drying out and peeling back like black and dead and withered lily petals. Embalming does not prevent decomposition, only prolongs it. I have embalmed my mother's
memory in the shape of a teal notebook. I cannot tell if it has
begun to decay or not.
May 24, 2016
May 24, 2016 at 2:31 PM UTC
The stench of burning flesh and *****
Imbuing the air
Carcasses of infant demons
Putrefying in the crater
Dissected impure angels hemorrhaging
Repugnancy dominates
Shrieking
Quivering
Floundering as they flutter their rotten wings
A profusion of worms
Falling from mouths like a cataract
Smoke coming out of their halos
No longer reigning
In this, their hades
Swollen with beasts in utero
Perpetuating abominations
Soon it will be their turn
To liquefy in the lava
Jan 6, 2014
Jan 6, 2014 at 4:45 PM UTC
morning
the city is gruffly petted with heat
buildings quiver in the primeval whither
wide mouthed and whiskered
the catfish thrive in the sewers
taking aggression to the air and fixing to the trees
the insects speed into vigorous breeding
in the populated afternoon city is sternly scored
pressed down on its wilted fur pushed from back to front
each itchy person is its own greasy hair
salt beads from brows and stinging eyes are blinded
scolded and bonded the witless humans slow
natures patient pace is not kin to their will
antsy
ticking noises and electric whines whittle the air
discomfort makes life immediate
a deal to be flustered with
every enduring breath is consciously felt
alive and in suffering
i crouch my form in shelter
a jilted couch to lean against bordering a grown over lot
watching the foxes patrol in sweltering sun
what expected prey brought them into the light ?
i release my hurt understanding (it patrols also)
my hurt snakes through the long tough grass and tacky broken glass
it moves further raised in a mirage hover
over welting heat from the melting tarmac
this way i please my way into nurture
this way i ease my suffering
hum with the wires
and smile at a good day putrefying
Sep 18, 2022
Sep 18, 2022 at 6:24 PM UTC
Suckles at first were curst
To be the homes of flies,
And smell'd like open tombs
With putrefying eyes.
But Christ, who saves the worst
(If so He wills) from death,
Did mercy give the blooms
By giving them His breath.
Jun 24, 2023
Jun 24, 2023 at 4:39 PM UTC
I'm sick of writing
self-righteous sadness
just to drain the abscesses
left putrefying small cavities
that sneaked past my demeanor
so cleverly, so cautiously
Sticky fingers are a hard thing to manage
when everything is crying out to be taken,
i suppose.
I mainly remember ***** smeared in shisha
on the door of a shed where we would go to get drunk
and listen to the two albums left on my rich kid phone
because it's the only music we had, and silence was just slightly too unbearable.
But **** I want to stop citing all these ******* sea wolf songs
before i lose the discography to my inner ocean
and have nothing left to sing my sails
away from here.
Jun 8, 2013
Jun 8, 2013 at 1:59 AM UTC
Do you people know.
How much this **** gets real?
Do you know how it makes my heart drop?
Throw-up.
So many Amore chunks.
You ever hung a persons tongue from a wire hanger?
Then let them convulse.
I'm about to do that on my nickel wound stirngs, I'll never stop having a pulse.
I got the only pulse.
Iv'e destroyed every vein in my body with notes of
putrefying chaos beauty.
SCREAM. SHRIEK!
The jazz tones palpitate my tongue,
chatter my teeth,
destruct my *****
The ones in my feet
Like drugs
only positive
motive based
rather than sordid.
All things are bruises
if you look hard enough
symphony of colorful E's.
positive, negativity.
Skram, ,Dock, Cross, Plot.
Rotatilled rows of pounding chest, human humanity.
The epic of chimpanzee.
Never understanding.
Being alone.
I will never be anyone else
Anonymous
I atone.
i wish i could make all my i's lowercase.
Freeverse, with a dial tone,
Trying to call out to every person by undeniable tension and catharsis
like rigor mortis death ligaments,
such purposeful
pretty
I believe every single woman/man
creating this. This
means more to my spirit.
than being sad.
Mar 31, 2013
Mar 31, 2013 at 6:37 PM UTC
Bearing the stench
of my decaying self
as a prisoner beneath
the walls of death
I crave for the mercy
utterly denied
I crave for liberty
I truly desire
As the sharpened roots
of the devil's sword,
the deathbed to the cloud
painted white
by the holy messages
from sanctity's skies
pierce through my mind
and stabs to death
my memories which shed
an ocean of blood
which craves for the mercy
utterly denied
I crave for liberty
I truly desire
As scavengers devour
the final bits
of my filthy carcass
to bloodless ruins
as a helpless soul
within this skinless corpse
I crave for the mercy
utterly denied
I crave for liberty
I truly desire.
Against the deafness
of my putrefying ears
I Heard the whispers
of your triumphant sword
to the beheaded warrior
of the empire of dusk
but even as your touch
lit up this earth
your iniquitous ignorance
to my deafening plea
muted my cravings
for the mercy siezed
muted my cravings
for the liberty decieved
Destined to die
a repugnant death
as I welcomed the scroungers
to my final breath
I silently yearn
O divine one
to be enslaved no more
and betrayed by none
I silently yearn
O divine one
to be bloomed as dawn
not ever as sun
Jun 22, 2010
Jun 22, 2010 at 11:13 AM UTC
Enlivened right with boughs of rage,
Through ****** thoughts and untouched page,
These eyes glare on with secret fire
Of anger, hindsight and dark desire.
I see how my cards often lie,
The same as poor and cast-off die;
A triple fit of numbers unbalanced
(They never quite
Fit in
To their slots.)
Perhaps I've gone a-raving mad,
Perhaps my mind's just gone a tad
Too in-depth into mundane things,
Making all the mole hills into kings.
Perhaps these worries are overdone,
In thin and fragile worry spun
To exotic, antiquated feelings
Of anger, envy, and revenge reeling.
Perhaps we spin these fates too hard
(They never meant
To hurt
My self image).
But still, I feel my mind a-flame
With hidden anger hard to tame
To society's cold, repressing style
Of crinkled eyes and facsimile smile.
Try to hold it back but fail;
It lands on them like a beached whale,
Stinking, rotting, putrefying,
Slowly, surely, swiftly dying.
This rage I had has bubbled down
Into nothing more than a thin frown,
For held back, harsh, with iron words
(Your secret dreams
Are just
Boiling curds.)
Jul 6, 2010
Jul 6, 2010 at 11:25 PM UTC
torn flower pettles
engulf the vastness,
devoid of time and reality,
of the growing distance.
a floral bath
doused in flourescence.
the white lilies
that signify a grave.
your charred corpse,
a bloated bag,
floats in a putrefying stasis.
only half a daisy-boy beauty.
the water fizzles
into acid. the hyacinths wither
into amorphous globules.
gap tooth dissolves.
Jul 29, 2018
Jul 29, 2018 at 1:07 PM UTC
*"Listen and weep
at
what we lost..."*
Somewhere in the deep green jungles
of South-East Asia
we freely
sold our soul,
hacked our humanity,
corrupted our compassion...
We buried the Truth
in that emerald paradise.
We are the dead
that walk with bankrupted souls,
we napalmed innocence
and in body bags stitched souls
and catacombed them
in the graveyard of
deceit
&
putrefying
decades of decay.
©Rangzeb Hussain
Dec 4, 2010
Dec 4, 2010 at 1:52 AM UTC
Happy, decaying blobs of quickly putrefying rot
painfully isolated water droplets seeking and fearing merger
self-aware matter freaked out by the obvious
poets
Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 9:18 PM UTC
The kitchen smells like a secret I forgot to bury.
A peach gone soft, skin splitting like a bad promise.
The fruit flies know something I don’t;
they’re the last priests of a dying faith,
and they’re waiting for me to leak.
I tell myself I’m healing,
but last night I dreamt I had to eat your heart to survive.
It tasted like burnt sugar and nail polish remover.
I woke up gasping,
your name soldered to the roof of my mouth
like a curse I didn’t mean to cast.
I call it the trick of wanting:
how I keep looking for your fingerprints in places you never touched,
how I flinch when someone says my name in the dark,
how I let the mirror watch me shatter
and pretend I’m a stained glass window.
Here’s the part I shouldn’t post:
I liked it when you lied to me.
I liked it when you said this isn’t about love
and I let you mean it’s about power.
The fruit flies keep coming.
I pretend they’re a sign from God.
I pretend they’re angels. Or demons.
Never both.
I pretend they’re a reminder that sweetness
is just another word for rot.
I pretend the buzzing is the sound of my name-
fermenting in your guts,
putrefying in your chest,
decomposing in your memory like abandoned fruit.
I know I shouldn’t write this.
But I do.
Because I want you to see it.
Because I want you to flinch.
Because I want you to know:
I am the girl who would eat your heart if I could.
I would peel it open with my teeth,
lick the blood off my lips,
smile like a god in a red dress,
and call it love.
And you’d believe me.
Jun 5, 2025
Jun 5, 2025 at 1:30 PM UTC
There you stand
Putrefying
Clarifying
Denying
There you go
Distantly
Achingly
Blatantly
Can't you see I've fallen?
Plunging
Plummeting
Ending
No one hears me
Silently
Softly
Regretfully
I'm no longer in that body
I'm no longer with that mind
I'm no longer in that bed
I'm now what you can't find
Comatose
Brain dead
Comatose
Tears shed
Yet my spirit lingers
Holding onto you
My eyes, they stare ahead
They only see right through
Let me go
Let the pulse fade
Let me go from here
The deal is made
Comatose
Dying
You won't stop
Trying
Dec 31, 2013
Dec 31, 2013 at 5:26 PM UTC
Alias indomitable invincible
Donald John Trump oozes wrath
inexorably plunging every species
of life toward apocalyptic warpath
mercilessly threatentens world
wide web promising bloodbath
validating ex post facto commander
in chief as nonpareil sociopath
hence... this call to arms gives run
for money challenging any psychopath
lest inevitable according to dead
reckoning prediction of
wisest sages calculated math.
Thus one poetic footsoldier doth broadcast
dire straits emergency, and inveigh
grassroots action mandatory meaning
registered voters must
cast ballot per se
else planet Earth will...
burn thermonuclear gray
rendering oblate spheroid
uninhabitable, I daresay
if bleak forecast father time doth delay
global warming would outweigh
former worst case nihilistic scenario,
nonetheless Gaia will serve
as repurposed ashtray,
whereby inextinguishable fiery storms
approximating calculus of doomsday
nsync with intolerable weather forecasts
if complacency rides roughshod field day
defying lack of immunization oy vey
against opportunistic unfamiliar organisms
viral and bacterial agent provocateurs
microscopic gangbusters
nothing could allay
winning scrimmage play
thinning overpopulation whereby
scavengers make short shrift
plethora once living flotsam and jetsam
perhaps requiring rotting, putrefying,
goods put on layaway
(type of foragers -
reference https://www.google.com/search?
client=safari&channel=mac_bm&ei=
KECaXe_UA6SO5wLh-7gY&q=list+
examples+of+scavengers&oq=list+types+
of+scavengers&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0i22i30.
58737.70074..70997...0.4..0.223.1875.
21j2j1......0....1..gws-wiz.......
0i71j0i273j0j0i131j0i67j33i22i29i30.
wnDI0kLrKWM).
now ye might hashtag me chicken little
synonymous to Rome burning,
while Nero did fiddle,
perhaps scaremonger i.e. Cassandra
alamist bah bing away, a realist foaming
at figurative mouth with spittle,
would you believe cautious optimist,
who presents prediction,
while this poem heed whittle.
Oct 6, 2019
Oct 6, 2019 at 5:18 PM UTC
I never could bring myself
To cherish, to dwell old things
No matter how precious and incredible
They mean much but nothing at all
Everything--no! If not remembered
It possesses a curse so much worse than that of Satan
For rather than a dark willed essence
From worlds unknown
It's neither malicious nor ugly
No, an irresistible temptress--
I know it.
The old things are no more than
A petrifying, putrefying reminder
That in their memory falling from minds
Everthing and I, too, will be forgotten.
In a decade, a century, or eon past my time
Certainly due to life's laws
And true nature of everything essential
I'm a flighting flick in a sea
A daunted shadow beneath the surface
A face among billions passed and passed.
Aug 4, 2014
Aug 4, 2014 at 9:17 PM UTC
**** me, but don’t end my existence.
****** me, but let me still breathe.
Shoot me, but not with a gun.
You can end me, yet not take my life.
How? By torturing me eternally,
By making my life a living hell,
By turning my pain into misery,
By destroying what’s left of my spirit.
Your words burn through me more than bullets,
Your cruel stare creeps into my skin worse than being pierced,
Your cold hands burn out the fire left in my heart.
Your once so warm voice is now just a demon’s whisper.
The pain in my mind is poisoning what’s left of my sanity,
The ghosts in every corner judge me senselessly,
The shadows are catching up to me no matter how fast I run.
The devil himself has bargained my soul.
You who I loved the most is who hurts me the worst;
I who gave you everything gained nothing at all.
You who swore the heavens and the constellations on our love;
I who like a child believed your deceptions and fell for your trap.
There’s no need for a lethal shot or weapon to destroy me:
Simply the fact that my putrefying heart still beats for you,
That my decaying mind still thinks of you and will till I finally rest,
Is punishment enough for the grotesque crime I committed,
Loving you.
Apr 22, 2017
Apr 22, 2017 at 11:55 PM UTC
Shallow breaths, leaking sweat glands
Time downshifts, speaking becomes a chore,
Larynx quivering violently
Swaying side by side, dancing aimlessly
You zealously prepared for this,
But dreadful emptiness fills you
Pride spilling, eager to drive your head into necropolis
Anxious to belong with putrefying corpses
Wishing the heavens will take you back,
But Hell chars you out of your misery
It's like begging spilt milk
To flow back into its broken glass
You stand here now, so jump the gun
Dive into the abyss, defuse the ticking bomb
The chicken will be dressed anyway
Might as well rise to the occasion
Lift the curse of silence
Say it, say what you're unable to say
Fumble speaking, but speak anyway
Say it even if it doesn't make sense
Sing, and descend with the sunset
Oct 1, 2015
Oct 1, 2015 at 8:36 AM UTC
Tears streaming down my face
as volcanic emotions rupture the seams of this frail earthen vessel
and as molten fears roll down hardened cheeks
they remind me of broken cisterns
trying to carry the burden of
precious water to thirsty souls
Tears streaming down my face
flow from a place dark and cold
beyond the surface smiles
and feminine guiles
lay a pain waiting to explode
it’s been brewing for years
and the threads of this patched soul
can’t conceal these putrefying sores
anymore
And so they flow with the passion
of rivers on a quest to find the shore
seeking answers mystic as ancient folklores
corroding tightly concealed dungeon doors
waking painful dreams untold
Yes these tears stream down my face
and this time I’ll let them go
let them flow upon diseased waters
bringing purity and wholeness
like HIS Blood that has saturated ***** sheets
I'll let them caress this pain
rain washing this soul clean
I’ll let them remind me of where I’ve been
my tendency to sin
the hope i can only have in HIM
I’ll lay myself upon HIS brazen altar
pour these tears upon HIS throne
Allow this cistern to be remade whole
sweeping away the dust and the cold
I’ll come home
to that place of rest in YOU
May 11, 2015
May 11, 2015 at 6:43 PM UTC
After a protracted time
I’ve come to realize
Why you and I
Could never work.
I could feel it,
Each time I held you close,
It was all in front of me
Portrayed by your eyes
I could see it
Your eyes betrayed you
Even under an overdose,
With your comatose
I could see my loss
Floating on the waters
Like a putrefying corpse
Your stench haunted my days
And darkened my nights
But the pitch black night finally vanished
And the thick black cloud vaporized.
I realized how pulverized I was,
As I envisioned why we could never work,
What went wrong, how it went wrong and when I felt wrong… When you told me to be strong
And asked me how long I could wait for a ratchet
Only then I would have never,
Never promised you a single second of my time cuz
All you ever made me do was commit crimes in the name of love That’s why we could never work
For a dog can never be a soul mate with a wolf
A monogamous creature betrayed by a polygamous animal
What a shame for a god like me to lust after a dog like you
I should have seen it
But how could I when grief was my poison?
The venom which took me from the height I fell
And only came to realize
I have to fly high in the sky asking none why
For eagles can’t soar with filthy vultures
How I hate what I once soul craved
won’t adore dirt in flesh sepulchers
And death from a ***** I once hotly pursued in lust not love.
WOLFURIC # 1
Jun 29, 2018
Jun 29, 2018 at 6:39 PM UTC
it settles and seethes,
turns golden leaves brown
and dims all the lights in this
tuppenny town,
it smells of a ruin like fish
boiled too long or the fumes
from the sewers, strong,
putrefying as
if death in its turmoil
is itself slowly dying.
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 3:38 AM UTC
Reading during lunch
On the screened in back porch
When I notice
Apart from the other moths
That are fluttering and
Kissing the bent, thick
Stems of the spider plants
That grow against the dirt
Stained panels of the porch
A little white moth
Smashing itself against
The inside of the wire mesh
Windows
My book open on my lap
I watched him beat his
Powdered body fruitlessly
Looking for a way to rejoin
His other moths amongst
The spider plant blossoms
Wilted white and
Putrefying purple
Still open
I rested the books sturdy
Spine on the smudged glass
Of the coffee table
It took me a few times
To cup him in my palms
Giving him a wide berth
In his fleshy cell his wings
Still beat furiously against
The worn lines in my hands
I didn't open the storm door
I poked my hands through
A hole the hounds had made
And cracked open the restraints
Of the little white moth
He sat unmoving on the edge
Of my fingers
Wings still
Antennae still
Before fluttering off
Into the syrupy hues
Of the August afternoon
I sat back down
Looked to the open face
Of my book and wiped
The residue of the
Little white moth onto
My dress pants
Like the feverish beating
Of its wings on my hands
The bleached brushstrokes
On my dress pants
From the little white moth
Have since disappeared
Aug 31, 2016
Aug 31, 2016 at 9:04 PM UTC
At the skirts of the town on the hill near the copse where the trailer wide park situated then was whence they drive her in conscious though deprivèd of any ability to move or to scream or to even f moan whence they drive her snickering drooling high no need e’en for ropes or twines she just lies still and demure and obedient without even a drop of tear to gutter down her cheek to moist her flaky skin all dry within but without perspire to she can tho’ you know so they pulled up lights off keys in the pocket they look and they smile and they fawn on her while she lies there alone by herself and no one around nor to help nor to try so they leave and they close and they go and they open and drag on the gravel they throw and with hands on the belts they above and they brood and impend like the vultures that hover above the sight of their prey putrefying and they down and they stretch and Stay that right yess oh thats just perfectly fine stretch them nice pull then no tear those off and up whereas she looks into the sky on the moon so shiny and pale gal and bright and so chaste so unlike to oh she just stares while they’re doing their so very so distant business
Feb 7, 2020
Feb 7, 2020 at 2:44 PM UTC