"rickets" poems
I deal in Ultimatums
I am the Scorcher of the Sky
By any other name God
My Dreams sway the movement of the People
Crowned Eternal for all to See
In My right hand , the World
My left, Reality
I conquered the saviors of the People
I've fed on the Blood of Sin's Virginity
I gave them fire and Greed
then showed them how to deconstruct the Seas
these Sacrificial heads roll just for me
I am the Sultan of the Sand
from me Spawned the most decadent brand
bombs and ticks, clocks and rickets
are merely the Product of my Seed
I made the Sun weep blood
I made the Stars shine in ecstasy
I built upon Avalon
I broke the Roman Siege
no Empire on this Earth will stand against me
creation and destruction is my creed
I Am Ego
Bow Before Me
Oct 20, 2010
Oct 20, 2010 at 8:26 PM UTC
The Press surrounded the boarding house
That was kept by Mary Toft,
Her sailor man was Rickety Dan
Who was hidden, up in the loft.
‘Come out, come out, wherever you are,’
Cried the head of the Press Gang crew,
We’ve got you a berth on the frigate ‘Perth’,
‘Don’t make us come looking for you!’
Mary stood by the door and blocked,
‘You’ll not be coming in here,
You can’t Impress in a private house,
The law of the land is clear.’
‘But this is a plain old ***** House
It’s the Navy’s right to come in,
You don’t say no to a guinea or so
From a sailor, looking for sin.’
‘I’ll have you know it’s a Boarding House
Not a ***** House, Oh dear!
You’d better go off for a pint of gin
And swill it around in your ear!
A Boarding House is a private house
And protected, under the law,
You’d better go looking somewhere else,
Like ‘The Angel’, down at the shore.’
‘We’re here to pick up Rickety Dan
We know that he’s here with you,
There’s no protection since Bony came
And the Navy’s short of a crew,
So stand aside, by the rising tide
He’ll be lost to you, Miss Toft,
For somewhere out by the channel ports
He’ll be clambering up, aloft.’
Dan had rickets when he was young
His legs were bowed like a bell,
He heard the door come clattering in
And he heard young Mary yell;
He seized his favourite capstan-bar
And he leapt right out of the loft,
Then laid about him from right to left
In defence of his Mary Toft.
The Press consisted of Isaac Raines
A farmer, plucked from the hay,
A weaver, minus the broken frames
The Luddites had taken away,
A shipwright, also a ropemaker
Who had joined to avoid the Press,
‘As long as you bring them in, my lads,
I’ll not let you go for less!’
Dan lashed out with the capstan-bar
And he laid the weaver low,
Sent the farmer to tend his fields
With only a single blow,
Chased the shipwright out of the door
Where the ropemaker had fled,
Knocked the Lieutenant down to the floor,
Then saw that he lay, stone dead!
‘I’m gone, I’m gone,’ said Rickety Dan,
‘I’d better head back to the sea,
It’s bad enough that I’ve killed the man
They’ll all be looking for me,
I’ll go and sign on an Indiaman
If I have to sign as a cook,
Once I’m safely away at sea
It’s the last place that they’ll look.’
She never saw Rickety Dan again
Though she’d wait at the turning tide,
Whenever an Indiaman came in
She would dress herself as a bride,
And even after they’d left this life
With Dan no longer aloft,
A bird perched up on the mizzen mast
Would look out for Mary Toft.
David Lewis Paget
Sep 21, 2013
Sep 21, 2013 at 5:39 AM UTC
Don't cry,cry the poor Indians
Don't ask,ask anything,for
You will be certainly hand-cuffed, and
Then, put in jail,put in jail.
Planned by ill-will misled we are
Misruled,oh! friend patriotic.
Cricket is rickets on nation's body
Youth is illusioned to spoil India.
Let Lord Krishna dance again upon
Hoods of snakes polluting life source.
Not our vote for note-bundles
Vote for chosen future splendid.
May 18, 2012
May 18, 2012 at 1:42 AM UTC
I’ve diagnosed it with industrialized rickets,
stomach is open and distended
metal is bowed with greenstick
fractures, hard and bendable,
compensating with growth
disturbances and wider wrists.
If I squint enough
there is movement
in permanent metal, micro-movements
as the ants shape sand hills
far from half-buried
fire-hydrants and barely there
Red Hot Chili Peppers
laced with frat-boy yells.
I’ve named it insieme
just far enough away to be together.
It’s body isn’t big enough
for all the purpose that it has.
At some point it’s been welded,
Atomic number 29,
add tin and it becomes 79.
Gold. It’s on fire, comprised
of a thousand tiny synthetic
flames fused together by rust.
It’s too open a place.
It should be found in ignorant alleyways
where half smoked cigarette butts marry
pavement, where brash teenagers go to cry.
The ants make sense though.
Dec 2, 2013
Dec 2, 2013 at 12:45 PM UTC
Another day has come; and gone...
Come the night we’re on our own.
Lay us down and tuck us in,
And let our sleep come when.
Suddenly we have no say:
Unbidden dreams take us far away.
Our minds will rapidly unfurl:
We belong now to another world.
Finally! morning lights our eyes awake.
Dreams’ murky memories we try to take.
“Hush now; say your goodbyes.
The sun arises in his skies.”
For Rickets.
Copyright © 2010, 2013 by John Russell; all rights reserved. No reproduction allowed in any manner whatsoever without permission.
Oct 9, 2013
Oct 9, 2013 at 6:02 PM UTC
The melancholy is there alright
But real unreal in sense of simple
Thinking wrong right turn?
Who knows?
Some future state of economic social
*********** that leaves all free to breathe
With sun and joyful rain at every turn.
And dragging selves that wrap themselves
Against the slowing rain
Are gone.
But here we are, and here it is
Rickets or gravity
Little difference. We are left
To ourselves.
Apr 28, 2015
Apr 28, 2015 at 3:14 AM UTC