"surgeons" poems
For Naomi Lazard
Sometimes I can't wait until I look like Nadezhda Mandelstam.
-- Naomi Lazard
My friends are tired.
The ones who are married are tired
of being married.
The ones who are single are tired
of being single.
They look at their wrinkles.
The ones who are single attribute their wrinkles
to being single.
The ones who are married attribute their wrinkles
to being married.
They have very few wrinkles.
Even taken together,
they have very few wrinkles.
But I cannot persuade them
to look at their wrinkles
collectively.
& I cannot persuade them that being married
or being single
has nothing to do with wrinkles.
Each one sees a deep & bitter groove,
a San Andreas fault across her forehead.
"It is only a matter of time
before the earthquake."
They trade the names of plastic surgeons
like recipes.
My friends are tired.
The ones who have children are tired
of having children.
The ones who are childless are tired
of being childless.
They love their wrinkles.
If only their were deeper
they could hide.
Sometimes I think
(but do not dare to tell them)
that when the face is left alone to dig its grave,
the soul is grateful
& rolls in.
8.2k
You are the town and we are the clock.
We are the guardians of the gate in the rock.
The Two.
On your left and on your right
In the day and in the night,
We are watching you.
Wiser not to ask just what has occurred
To them who disobeyed our word;
To those
We were the whirlpool, we were the reef,
We were the formal nightmare, grief
And the unlucky rose.
Climb up the crane, learn the sailor's words
When the ships from the islands laden with birds
Come in.
Tell your stories of fishing and other men's wives:
The expansive moments of constricted lives
In the lighted inn.
But do not imagine we do not know
Nor that what you hide with such care won't show
At a glance.
Nothing is done, nothing is said,
But don't make the mistake of believing us dead:
I shouldn't dance.
We're afraid in that case you'll have a fall.
We've been watching you over the garden wall
For hours.
The sky is darkening like a stain,
Something is going to fall like rain
And it won't be flowers.
When the green field comes off like a lid
Revealing what was much better hid:
Unpleasant.
And look, behind you without a sound
The woods have come up and are standing round
In deadly crescent.
The bolt is sliding in its groove,
Outside the window is the black removers' van.
And now with sudden swift emergence
Come the woman in dark glasses and humpbacked surgeons
And the scissors man.
This might happen any day
So be careful what you say
Or do.
Be clean, be tidy, oil the lock,
Trim the garden, wind the clock,
Remember the Two.
6.7k
Woof.....woof.....woof...woof....woof....wooof
Some Red setters dogs are eating Jewish people
in England
But why, do call them off, they are british people,
The are hard working, Industrious, Entrepreneurs,
Professors, Doctors, Lawyers, Bankers, Entertainers
Scientists, Writers, eminent Surgeons, Artists, these
are nice Britons....stop the dogs, stop the dogs.....
Woof....woof....woof.....woof.....woof...woof woof
Some Red Setters dogs are eating and biting some
Labour MPs all over the country
But why, do call off the dogs, No! we have a list and this list, highlighted the behaviour of a number of Left MPs, including Jess Phillips for telling Corbyn’s ally Diane Abbott to **** off”, John Woodcock for dismissing the party leader as a ******* disaster” and Tristram Hunt for describing Labour as “in the ****
and all the other hard working Moderate MPs who dared protest at Anti-Semitic stance or supported the Jews .
Woof.....woof....woof....woof.....woof.....woof...woof
Some Red Setters dogs are devouring some minor
Royal from Africa
But why, do call off the dogs. No that ****** has a big **** he's
Charismatic, intelligent, wholesome, has good work ethics, polite,
wise, charming, generous, witty and a ****** good lover and to top it all he's Royal. Now that's ******* GREEDY, how much can a
******* man have. NO! he's a goner. He is too perfect, he must be hounded and persecuted to death.
Woof....woof....woof.....woof.....woof.....woof.......woof
Grrr.....woof.....Grrrrr....woof...wooof...Grrrr....wooof
Congratulations People, we have got rid of them all
we now have real democracy, we have a real society now
Get in the dogs ... And all you useless ******* people shut up!
And report to the Labor Camps 7:30a.m. tomorrow
You're Working Class and now you ****** have to work!
Sep 12, 2018
Sep 12, 2018 at 6:45 PM UTC
Real surgeons use needles,
Stitch you up thread by thread,
But that's not close to what I do,
Because I know it's something you dread,
With the tape in one hand,
And your heart in the other,
I will help you fix your broken self,
One day after another,
As broken as you are,
It doesn't matter to me,
I just wanna be with you,
And help you, You'll see,
So I hope you read this,
Think about absolute zero,
Can I be your redneck surgeon,
Can I be your everyday hero,
Dec 29, 2010
Dec 29, 2010 at 4:35 AM UTC
My Prize for Waiting
~
*tucked in all by myself,
resting dark and quiet
in the thin place^
where the distance between
this world and the next,
is no distance at all,
but a few inches separating,
easily fordable, back and forth-able
my palms, hands down,
come to rest on my *******
and the two thumbs in unison,
begin to sweep the streaming space of their in-between,
conducting a radar sweep-search for the precise point
passageway to poetic mystical places,
hoping to snag any residuals for safekeeping
no hurry to either arrive or depart,
in patient attendance for
rhythms of woven word arrivistes,
coming in no particular order,
asking to be seized, greedy to be
nominated and recognized, immortalized,
as great poetry, prize worthy,
kept for all time inside others poetry chests
but in the thin place,
dream records are not kept,
hazy scraps at best retained,
a recipe for a witnessed totality,
is only a soupy reduction of a
few seconds of hazed video,
that can neither give nor get
no satisfaction
the plastic surgeons attempt to reconstruct
the body of the meal, the real deal,
alas, there are no prizes either
for botched surgeries and pretty but meaningless
poetry scraps
the only evidence of my travels,
a flushing, blushing residual flow,
slow to dissipate, a hangover makers mark
of a sojourn best described as unsatisfying,
my blush, a prize for waiting but failing,
“the most peculiar and most human of all expressions”^^
woe to me when returned in ignominy,
medaled in only base irony,
me and philosopher Pliny,^^^
both dying while recording our own private Vesuvius,
our bodies preserved by voluminous volcanic ash,
but alas, you cannot recite the ash of poetry
so one waits, cut and pasting brown edged
burnt photographs epistles,
that are clinging and clung to the distaff spindle,
insufficient to weave a flax complete
and yet we return perforce twenty four hours from now,
to snag another prized piece of meaningless,
my prize for waiting
in the solitude of the thin place*
3:35am Saturday April 6th, 2019
~
last nights scrap
***cease your whining,
seize your waiting,
therein is your own paid price
for the prize of inspiration***
inspired by Jean Fisher,
a real prize winning poet
Apr 6, 2019
Apr 6, 2019 at 4:26 AM UTC
You bring me good news from the clinic,
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist
Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask. The nauseous vault
Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.
They've changed all that. Traveling
**** as Cleopatra in my well-boiled hospital shift,
Fizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous,
I roll to an anteroom where a kind man
Fists my fingers for me. He makes me feel something precious
Is leaking from the finger-vents. At the count of two,
Darkness wipes me out like chalk on a blackboard. . .
I don't know a thing.
For five days I lie in secret,
Tapped like a cask, the years draining into my pillow.
Even my best friend thinks I'm in the country.
Skin doesn't have roots, it peels away easy as paper.
When I grin, the stitches tauten. I grow backward. I'm twenty,
Broody and in long skirts on my first husband's sofa, my fingers
Buried in the lambswool of the dead poodle;
I hadn't a cat yet.
Now she's done for, the dewlapped lady
I watched settle, line by line, in my mirror—
Old sock-face, sagged on a darning egg.
They've trapped her in some laboratory jar.
Let her die there, or wither incessantly for the next fifty years,
Nodding and rocking and ********* her thin hair.
Mother to myself, I wake swaddled in gauze,
Pink and smooth as a baby.
5.2k
you used to come home loudly in the dark but
quietly in the day we’d be together
to compensate
we were only in love on Halloweens
you in those hundred dollar costumes worth two
in material and tiny fingers
**** rats and ER surgeons
to me with a pop-culturally relevant ******* mask
Frankenstein (to the dumb dudes that go to these things)
that chisels me like a jell-o mold
that blurs her infinitely beautiful walking-away
the blooming glances pairing parting lips to talk ********
caking the ***** reeling in our heads
winding round the spindle hooked tight
pulling my hard-hat plastic-green face
to the windmill
Apr 15, 2014
Apr 15, 2014 at 3:02 AM UTC
108
Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the Culprit—Life!
4.2k
177
Ah, Necromancy Sweet!
Ah, Wizard erudite!
Teach me the skill,
That I instil the pain
Surgeons assuage in vain,
Nor Herb of all the plain
Can Heal!
4k
It wasn't tackled with a surgeon's finesse
But the battered brute of conviction.
I can still see the two man cross cut saw
Jammed deep in the bark - but a tickle.
A mail of thick branches disguised as
Dense fodder stood strong against waves.
Throwing everything at it - raining sawdust -
As the giggles were heard for miles around.
Now standing crippled, taunting as it sways -
The battle's won but the war will have its day.
Jun 12, 2015
Jun 12, 2015 at 5:22 PM UTC
this is for the Dreamers, Lovers, and Surgeons
for the Hopeless Stargazer who immortalized his Subject with one hundred and eight sets of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter
for ***** tight clad teenage boys who envied frisky fleas, struggling to make holy ungodly passions with cheap arguments and metaphysical pick up lines
for Disillusioned City Dwellers, who, wandering lonely as clouds, stopped to quietly reflect upon wind-beaten moss-covered crags, and heard God’s whisper thunder from petals and blades of grass
this is for the Dreamers, Lovers, and Surgeons
for Bespectacled Slave Drivers who submersed idle minds in anthologies, forcing them to **** neon yellow on dreams deferred and rivers; slicing and dicing Grecian urns with red ball point pens; bruising and battering, in blue ball point, roads not taken; scalding supermarkets in California with pyroclastic flows of graphite
for those pushing to tear apart lines and letters, reconstructing ,deconstructing, agonizing, imaginizing, bullshitting, and brooding on to crisp white sheets in times new roman twelve point font
for the Monsters and Lollipops that exist in the millimeters between a skull and a brain
this is for the Dreamers, Lovers, and Surgeons slumbering beneath Restless Leaves Under the Moon
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 10:39 AM UTC
SPREADEAGLED
Bucharest,
*
Spread-eagled and naked
in her crop circle -
this one in a sunflower field:
she’s a wheel of limbs,
some sort of a ********
lusted after by the seed heavy
flowers bowing to her curves
like drooling surgeons.
*
She’s finished with running,
waiting for the fading light
to join the last of her loves,
faded with processed proclamations
of undying certainty
which were a little worse for wear
after courting
and checked into intensive care
soon after.
*
Love thought it had
ducked its obligations,
passed again
like a heavy goods train in the night,
shunted across the border
while guards waved it on;
interested only in sleep or beer.
*
But this time she’s making sure
love returns,
pays its duty and dues
and hits its target.
*
So, splayed
aryan and vigorous,
apeing a pagan
resurrection,
she waits
for the skydiver
who – with precision
confidence – happens
to be bearing down
on her charity target,
slowly filling her
with his ***** shadow.
*
She sunbathes under mirrors,
she’s a real
tough nut to crack.
I repeat myself into her.
Aug 29, 2012
Aug 29, 2012 at 11:09 AM UTC
They amputated
Your thighs off my hips.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all surgeons. All of them.
They dismantled us
Each from the other.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all engineers. All of them.
A pity. We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.
We even flew a little.
3.5k
I came out of the north-west
Staggering from the storm
The surgeons had repaired my body
And my mind hung by one hinge
So I headed for the coast of Wales
To assume the healing rhythm of the sea
And breathe the briny air
Where no-one knew me
Nor called my worn out name
Sweet freedom in isolation
And so, in smiling solitude
I walked and smoked too much
Staring at the moody ocean
As we all inevitably do
As though it holds answers
And indeed it does
The answer is "being"
One hot but breezy day
I followed the coast from north to south
Not too far but far enough
Until I came upon a harbour
Tiny and insignificant
But a harbour nonetheless
With a clutch of small boats
Bobbing and swaying lazily
On the backwater slack water tide
And somewhere close by
A nautical bell tolled the rhythm
Of an endless heedless movement
And an oddly comfortable melancholy
Rocked me in it's arms
Lost and found
Beginning and end
In as much as everything matters
Though nothing matters much
This place was nothing to me
No more than countless others
But that harbour bell
So patient and so constant
Touched something deeper than knowledge
Perhaps it was the state of my health
Or the glowing heat of the day
But some vulnerable receptor
Vibrated to that gentle toll
I've been in many places in my life
And seen wondrous famous sights
All seared into my minds eye
But their memories will last no longer
Than the haunting harbour bell
By Phil Roberts
Mar 29, 2016
Mar 29, 2016 at 5:36 AM UTC
I envied the cadavers haunting my nightmares,
watching those before me
spread upon a metal slab
bodies are hand-me-downs of regurgitated poetry,
with wretched closets in which I take their place.
This ventilator called "loved ones"
forcing breath into anguished lungs-
tragedies belonging to these poets meant something,
a desire to save the words written,
but never the one who becomes a eulogy.
Agony burrows inside of me,
conversations with my mother's ghost
still,
the living are possessed by
the dead's shortened tomorrows.
To die by suicide wouldn't give,
authenticity to hurt.
I am learning the autopsy of a soul:
extracting a heart from the chest,
as it's sense of belonging was never there.
An inability to weigh the words bleeding from valves,
aside lungs I'm unable to breathe through.
How ungrateful is it of sorrow to ask for hope?
placed in a pill divider to swallow,
muscles within my throat so tight.
Wondering,
How many times did I diminish my voice?
Inside the brain,
schematics of labyrinths with no end to betterment.
Surgeons reach for a soul,
an iridescence small enough
held in a gloved palm,
watching it writhe.
Placed upon a slide,
but even a microscope
cannot perceive the pain a soul hides.
Once more,
stitched with needle and thread.
Wilting of my own garden,
comes one day-
an incision is made opening me up.
My heart showed the same
blood-red ink, writing apologies
on the marble floor.
They opened my arm,
displaying a noose of veins.
In this moment,
they removed my soul
only to gift it to another
birthed from torment
ripped out of the arm's of their mother
& into the embrace of woe.
—V.H.
Mar 8, 2018
Mar 8, 2018 at 12:01 AM UTC
What if machines ruled the world?
Whatever would there be?
If surgeons were all robots, without knowledge.
Just controlled by programmers.
Whose programs could be manipulated by international spammers.
All out to make a rapid buck.
What if all the soldiers were not human,
If all of them were robots.
What on Earth would be?
I guess with robotic soldiers, no soldier boys and girls would die.
The robots could battle each other.
No need to worry about hurting each others fathers or cursing their mothers
What if they became corrupted?
What ever would we do?
What if these metal and plastic maniacs ran amok?
Maybe a power surge, at the wrath of Thor and his thunderstorms,
Their circuits may be rather short.
A corral full dying robots, successfully caught.
Awaiting decommissioning by their human masterminds.
(C) Livvi
Dec 8, 2014
Dec 8, 2014 at 7:28 AM UTC
You took a scalpel to me, my dear
Skillfully working your way through the layers
Epidermis to lipids to muscular tissue until
The bone
You carved your name on my radius
Lovers' initials on a tree
Marrow leaked across your hand
A gift of the broken
You tried to sew me up, my dear
Realising you had gone far deeper than first thought
Surgeons hands you have not
A hack job, bound to leave scars
You've left me with bumps
Burns
Itches inside my very being
Refraining from scratching
In fear of what might come pouring out
Oct 14, 2013
Oct 14, 2013 at 5:03 AM UTC
The heart has four chambers running in conjunction with one another pulsing -- The blood’s pressure alternates consistently and swiftly and is just enough to allow for our survival.
it does very little else but allow for our survival.
This is interesting to note as the heart has been known to break.
If a heart is broken is death the result or can it be repaired?
...a question which few will ask but many feel
Perhaps the surgeons can fix your broken heart. Go ask them.
Perhaps a defibrillator can revitalize what has shattered within your chest.
anything is worth a try...
Feb 28, 2014
Feb 28, 2014 at 11:59 PM UTC
oh how we worship the pretty people
despite them being the source of so much evil
and lust to be just like them
we find so much ******** believable and think each of them a gem
the glamorous, the beautiful, the ****
"did you see the new tweet? after the show I hope they text me!"
we follow them through the movies into their church steeples
hollywood and all it's heights of it's anointed peoples
the magazines are their bibles and we hold none of them liable
for the lies they've told or the lives they ruin being unreliable
with every story they're spinning
they want us to believe they're "winning"
marriage, divorce, wife number three
new baby carriage, move to the golf course, life under palm trees
remain calm and know things are always ok if you can sing and be pretty
I pity the soulless with hot faces, no social graces but lots of *** in the city
and we love their scandals we can't get enough
every news stand proving america has more than a crush
on the movie stars, on the models, on their cars, on the rush
of thinking we could be them if we just got a new nose and a tuck
who put Brangelina's kids' new brother on every magazine cover
but never the military heroes who live to protect you while they duck for cover?
**** the sheep who keep the weakness in our families
who want the news filled with the new runways fashion and grammys
instead of the problems that need solutions and what real life should mean
we need action and my reaction is to lift the small faction of thinkers up to be seen
we need a cause to cut loose the famous like weights and hate their **********
ignore the models, shun the actors, pay the teachers, appreciate the surgeons
being pretty is a gift not a skill
being hot isn't exactly curing cancer or healing the ill
but we still want what we can't have, much worse than reality
another prada handbag under the disposable christmas tree
them or us, I don't know what's a worse diversion
I guess I'm just not pretty enough to be a "real" person
Aug 1, 2013
Aug 1, 2013 at 1:03 AM UTC
Orangey so tangy loosely
her words flowery so
rustic fun* erotic*
the panic straight
jacket going ginger
snaps her ticket
*Pocketful of sunshine
in your pocket*
****** the maestro
In the stars of the cosmos
On the edge but earthly
Let's go slow
Did we miss the
whole entire glow
"So Tickle me Pink"
The stardust funds
of the trust
Having a light fuse
The picturesque
Fields so mystique personality
Lights up unique
Your word against mine
In a matter of fact were in
It's your cue waves pull me in
If so the sky does it remain
always blue such a variety
Of cookies no outrageous
Time for Oreos
What's inside its outside
Cleopatra's eyes snap away
Like a masquerade
Don't rain on my parade
Love of Virginia innocently
Love is the drug
insanely
Scrapes on her knees
The western front
Ginger Snaps
Those bottle caps and buzzing
honey bees Tangerine trees
Galavant like General Lee
Ginger the gunslinger
She's the singer
eating Saralees
Whats to boot
But getting closer
To the naked eye
to the surface be wise
"Owl Hoot"
So lovely genuinely
He's husky and ruly
Apps Gingersnaps
Exchanging cat naps
Her lips in higher
states of trips
Trying to get there
Bohemian Rapsody
The Queen of the
economy
Photo editing Unicorn pony
Another brainless wedding
We are the champions
What a snitch like a witch
Bad luck switch the lion's den
Topiary timeless good luck Zen
Loud sirens
Drug trafficker morons
The plastic Surgeons
Backstabber persons
Blue jeans snap taking a
Sniff Shiba Uni howls
To be loved in beauty
My Mom Judy good
earth bounty
Tall and sleek every week
Smells of Ginger
no danger
The earth on her cheeks
Can love be any truer
Into the Gala the apple
of her eye never goodbye
Jan 23, 2019
Jan 23, 2019 at 8:17 AM UTC
Edgar Lee Masters. 1869–
Silence
I HAVE known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence for which music alone finds the word,
And the silence of the woods before the winds of spring begin,
And the silence of the sick
When their eyes roam about the room.
And I ask: For the depths
Of what use is language?
A beast of the field moans a few times
When death takes its young.
And we are voiceless in the presence of realities—
We cannot speak.
A curious boy asks an old soldier
Sitting in front of the grocery store,
"How did you lose your leg?"
And the old soldier is struck with silence,
Or his mind flies away
Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg.
It comes back jocosely
And he says, "A bear bit it off."
And the boy wonders, while the old soldier
Dumbly, feebly lives over
The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon,
The shrieks of the slain,
And himself lying on the ground,
And the hospital surgeons, the knives,
And the long days in bed.
But if he could describe it all
He would be an artist.
But if he were an artist there would he deeper wounds
Which he could not describe.
There is the silence of a great hatred,
And the silence of a great love,
And the silence of a deep peace of mind,
And the silence of an embittered friendship,
There is the silence of a spiritual crisis,
Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured,
Comes with visions not to be uttered
Into a realm of higher life.
And the silence of the gods who understand each other without speech,
There is the silence of defeat.
There is the silence of those unjustly punished;
And the silence of the dying whose hand
Suddenly grips yours.
There is the silence between father and son,
When the father cannot explain his life,
Even though he be misunderstood for it.
There is the silence that comes between husband and wife.
There is the silence of those who have failed;
And the vast silence that covers
Broken nations and vanquished leaders.
There is the silence of Lincoln,
Thinking of the poverty of his youth.
And the silence of Napoleon
After Waterloo.
And the silence of Jeanne d'Arc
Saying amid the flames, "Blesséd Jesus"—
Revealing in two words all sorrow, all hope.
And there is the silence of age,
Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it
In words intelligible to those who have not lived
The great range of life.
And there is the silence of the dead.
If we who are in life cannot speak
Of profound experiences,
Why do you marvel that the dead
Do not tell you of death?
Their silence shall be interpreted
As we approach them.
Mar 12, 2016
Mar 12, 2016 at 2:24 AM UTC
This is for all the men
Who tell me I am beautiful
I can't hear you
Through all those years
Of being an ugly duckling
This is for my dog
Big blue eyes
My baby snugglebug
Sniffing for donuts
Chewing my hands in the morning
And the nail biters
And the chefs
Who lose fingers to the meatgrinders
And the farmers
Staking lives
On a drop of rain
I am vain
This is for the men
Who have faith
I am not the ****** Mary
Just another pretty face
Another lacy thong to take off
This is for the underwear makers
The firecrackers
This is for the characters
Who explode in the night sky
Like the fourth of July
And ordinary people
Are blinded by the colors
This is for the mothers
And the big brothers
And the Prozac poppers
This is for the bees that have stung me
I've eaten their honey
And my cakes would not taste
So sweet without it
This is for the surgeons
And musicians
And fishermen
For the men who have bought me dinner
And never seen a return
On their investment
This is for the beards
And chest hair
This is for my little sister
Who is finally growing up
The word "love" on her tongue
And this is for America:
Land of the free
Home of the mancave
Beauty is only as deep
As your mineral rights
The copper and coal mines of your eyes
Beauty flies as high as kite
Melts away like cotton candy
After a baseball game
This is for the men who called me beautiful
For all the beauty in the world
All the beautiful
This is for you
May 18, 2013
May 18, 2013 at 9:43 PM UTC
The heart has four chambers running in conjunction with one another pulsing -- The blood’s pressure alternates consistently and swiftly and is just enough to allow for our survival.
it does very little else but allow for our survival.
This is interesting to note as the heart has been known to break.
If a heart is broken is death the result or can it be repaired?
...a question which few will ask but many feel
Perhaps the surgeons can fix your broken heart. Go ask them.
Perhaps a defibrillator can revitalize what has shattered within your chest.
anything is worth a try...
Feb 27, 2014
Feb 27, 2014 at 10:24 AM UTC