"typhoid" poems
Her man had left for California.
Left her with nothing but the dog
to fight the emptiness of her apartment.
She told me she couldn't sleep anymore,
told me she couldn't eat anymore.
She got sick,
so sick— swore that it was
tuberculosis, malaria, typhoid fever—
My experience led me to my own diagnosis;
another case of a love long lost.
I didn't have the heart to tell her.
Instead I slept with her,
despite the risk of sickness.
She was afraid it was contagious.
I laughed, told her I would
take the risk.
I stayed there two weeks, laughing.
She could eat again,
she could smile again,
she made up love late into the night.
It seemed like this
quarantine was paradise.
Till up one night there was a
knock on the door.
It seemed like her bags
were already packed.
It seemed like she was gone
within the few moments it took to see
who it was behind the door.
Told me to lock up the
apartment, leave the key under the
*** of wilted hydrangeas.
He was back from California.
It seemed like she was cured—
of her malaria, her yellow fever, her cholera—
Just like that, a clean bill of health.
A modern day
miracle.
It seemed to have been
contagious,
after all.
Aug 21, 2013
Aug 21, 2013 at 1:06 PM UTC
Someday I'd like to wander free
like butterfly, like bumblebee,
perhaps to plant a willow tree
beside the silent solemn sea,
before these things exist no more,
from mountain top to shifting shore,
when, soon, bald eagles cease to soar
and build their aeries nevermore,
and fish forsake polluted streams
(where sulfur swims and typhoid teems
since no one really cares it seems)
to die inside our toxic dreams
while ice caps melt and winter steams,
and all the air surrounding reeks
as children choke, for no one speaks
of fracking wells or oily leaks
(Big Brother's silenced all critiques!),
and rancid rains acidify
so woods no longer multiply
(for God so wills, we can't deny,
which is, of course, our alibi).
And as the deepest ocean fills
with plastic bags, and garbage spills
upon the plains, across the hills
and turns to poison dust that kills
wild dingo dogs and daffodils
which sink in swamps’ forsaken swills,
the mocking bird makes light and trills
(midst waning wails of whippoorwills)
"Behold the surreal scene that chills
and greet the dread that death distills!
You've had your day with all the frills
that brought the flood and final ills
that can't be cured with bitter pills
nor yet undone with further thrills
of profit gained that grinds and fills
dead desert sands with dollar bills."
EPILOGUE
Though swaddled still in infancy,
we feel we’ve reached our primacy
(aloof, though preaching piously,
disdaining deeds of decency)
and have no need of augury.
But in the pit of prophecy
the crucial questions seem to be:
“Is doom Earth’s fate, our destiny
to twist in tides of agony
destroying nature’s progeny
with no return a certainty
assured by death’s finality?”
and
”Should we plant a willow tree
to someday weep for you and me?”
Jun 16, 2015
Jun 16, 2015 at 2:45 PM UTC
Upon a midnight’s visage airy,
T’was a lake frozen by fairy,
…and weighing on mind’s tonnage bearing?
There for ice’ opaqueness winter’s seized,
…and arms encased in rime; trees.
“Oh my,”
At dark of sky thought the eye of something troubling upon my mind?
And the frosty cloudy glass,
Take to it upon my axe,
…and the sting of shards will pass.
And will I eat at last.
Thusly, thrusting through the skull, wettened, weakened for the cold.
…and burden carry I with me,
So encased in rime is he,
Doth make of fishing’s night a chore,
Something that I do abhor!
…and stare I did into that sea,
…my frory breathe in imagery,
Dismay it did fluster me, when my eye captured by Sea,
...and in whirling thoughts could reflection see?
…and something else came back with me.
Pool with drops, light curves, dark rings; in vapid mind now find nothing...
T’was a misty sheen seen after showers?
A damp muggy place of reflecting hours,
Typhoid strange did make snowing;
The Asteraceae of my wilted flowers,
…and that Wren philosophically sings,
…and at lake a lone be -ing,
Appearing peering my soliloquy, I am therefore I into thee.
…and fixed calm stared back at me,
“What pray tell I Enquiry?”
Did something else look back at me?
...and glaring gaze thus did see, something I had hid from me,
…and gawking in my mind did ogle; a malevolence of thought once frugal...
A gaping, oscillating, pierced Abyss, forced farther back into consciousness...
Deeper in and further still,
Climb atop Old Arthur’s hill,
…and the winged Raven’s nearer, reflected on me in my mirror?
…and time did pass turning frozen dying, icy tears of sadness from my crying,
…so did silent Hume release, all the pain that’s troubling me; whilst frozen frame thus held in peace?
I fell forward and felt submerged,
Both characters, both now have merged.
And that creature which accompanied me?
Found a solace back in wine dark sea.
Jun 7, 2016
Jun 7, 2016 at 12:31 AM UTC
Pick a cause, any cause, and slap your receipt on your bumper.
Everyone is doing it.
Everyone needs something to be passionate about.
What's your disease?
Not a one of us has it but **** if we don't act like it.
Walk it off.
Blame federal taxes.
Blame the government.
Why not your cause?
Why not your ailment?
Cus' you know Johnny is going to die if we don't do something,
and Susie's just runnin' outta time.
Buy a teddy bear to show you give a ****
Donate that extra quarter.
It all piles up somewhere.
But who, I mean who ever bothered to cure anything?
A million lab coats are workin' on your answer.
Just give em' a sec,
this stuff takes time.
In the mean time throw another buck in like your the only one.
Like this is the only problem left.
Like Santa only cares about breast cancer
or the church only cares about Alzheimers.
It's got one of their own you know.
Uncle Jim's got cancer of the liver,
where's his save the children fund?
Timmy's got cerebral palsy.
Sara's got Aspergers.
Randy has the Typhoid.
Pick a brand any brand and show you give a ****
Like the only one who gives a **** about the only thing that matters.
Forget them, what about me?
What about my issue?
What about my family?
Does the take a penny leave a penny in the seven eleven make you feel important?
Good.
Look here, buy this pin. 10% goes to Katrina victims
Feb 3, 2011
Feb 3, 2011 at 8:49 PM 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 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
POLICEMAN in front of a bank 3 A.M. ... lonely.
Policeman State and Madison ... high noon ... mobs ... cars ... parcels ... lonely.
Woman in suburbs ... keeping night watch on a sleeping typhoid patient ... only a clock to talk to ... lonesome.
Woman selling gloves ... bargain day department store ... furious crazy-work of many hands slipping in and out of gloves ... lonesome.
2.4k
I've caught you like the common cold
but I have no interest in getting better
spare me the nyquil
I'll pass on the penicillin
I have no love for codeine
your presence is the most sobering thing I know.
I miss spoke a few seconds ago
there's nothing common about you
you're a rare strain of virus
and I'm patient zero
diagnosis: terminal
infect me,
corrupt me,
do your very worst.
break me down into my component parts
and return me to the earth from which I came.
I have made my peace.
I will rise from that same earth, lazarus of chocolate skin
a little stronger
a little wiser
immunized by your viral love to the horror of the world.
so take me
make & unmake me
I would die a thousand deaths by your hands.
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 13, 2016 at 5:18 PM UTC
we were built so fragile
just about to fall
but look at how we fight
look how we stand tall
human bodies
weren't made to sustain
but we conquered it, we broke it
we bared the pain
from typhoid to bad falls
a deep cough, mental stress
after all we are susceptible to
you'd think there'd be nothing left
but we have survived plagues
we have fought through the wars
airplanes were built to sore the skies
submarines to explore the waters
heart break can **** you
(trust me, i'd know)
but 7 billion broken hearts
and we still don't let the hurt show
we walk into work
we raise our children
we do what needs to be done
even when we're broken within
we help one another
empathize with anothers pain
put aside our worries for theirs
even when there's nothing to gain
kindness, solidarity
contribution, charity
we are the children
of a nation that survived
when the volcanoes erupted
when the ground shook
when our homes were consumed by fire
and all we could do was look
when the floods took our babies
and the tornadoes took our homes
we rebuilt from ground up
and prayed for our children's souls
prayer and endurance
might and fight
we have pushed through the darkness
without the promise of light
ask me and i'll tell you
how my dad was so sick he was left for dead
ask me and i'll tell you
how my mom sat every moment by his bed
ask me and i'll tell you
how many nights i slept well
ask me and i'll tell you
how my mom never let us find out he was ill
ask me and i'll tell you
the tears she wept when he was well
ask me and i'll tell you
the tears she wept when got up and left
ask me and i'll tell you
i've seen hurt, i've seen pain
ask me and i'll tell you
i've seen guilt and i've seen shame
ask me and i'll tell you
the stories of my grandparents during the war
ask me and i'll tell you
that they still smile, even though they remember the horror
ask me and i'll tell you
how my aunt held her 12 day old daughter
(her name was nour)
ask me and i'll tell you
how she kissed her forehead before laying her in her grave
ask me and i'll tell you
how easy it is for humans to break
ask me and i'll tell you
how easy it is for their worlds to shake
but ask me and i'll tell you
how much strength we have shown
even in the depths of darkness
we still have hope.
we are the children
of a nation that survived.
Dec 21, 2016
Dec 21, 2016 at 8:49 AM UTC
Thinking at the speed of light must be like –
Touching a popsicle under typhoid’s fever.
Could it be the scent of sorrow for someone else?
An error buried but burrowed? Borrowed?
I’d imagine, “it,” a bird at my sill
And resulting boot through the air;
Broken before(s), bludgeoned becomes,
So cracks the smile, so cracks the mirror,
So breaks and so becomes,
The speed of light.
Oct 22, 2016
Oct 22, 2016 at 10:56 PM 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
so keen were his senses he could
discern differences in grains of sand,
hear gulls' calls long before others, and
recall the number of footprints
he left on his stretch of beach
yet he spoke not a word
since she passed, stolen from him
by a fever he felt from across the room,
while others had to lay hands
on her to know
the doctor would come
and go, whispering words to his father,
not realizing the boy could hear: "typhoid"
lay in his lexicon along with "suffering"
and "death"
then the priest and prayer
too late for the woman--there
for the father, son, and her ghost;
beguiling words like "comfort"
and "eternal life"
the boy did not reveal
being mute was of his volition
allowing less sentient beasts to believe
his silence was a manner to grieve
"ruse" he also knew
months did pass, and the
others implored him to speak;
he would return again and again
to his shore, where he heard
wings and winds and more
but there no creature
asked for his tongue to move;
his naked feet in the surf were enough
and when his tears wedded the waters
the sea made not a sound
Jul 6, 2017
Jul 6, 2017 at 3:57 PM UTC
There was poison in the coffee
and i was too shy to tell
there was poison in the coffee
was it my fault?
i can't quite
can't quite recall
suddenly spouting lies
like a whistle
high and shrill
pointing fingers
is that what this poison does to us
first thing awake
it's just the falsehoods of porcelain dolls
and i sure hope that it was
poison
and not just who we are
i was so true last night
my lips formed perfect words
and i was harsh and charming
i meant every thing i said
since the morning i am a liar
and i do not wish to be
but look!
it spreads like a plague!
is it on the wind?
or in the water
like typhoid
carving up our innards
and turning the devil out
please,
let it be the coffee
that much we can cure
Jun 23, 2013
Jun 23, 2013 at 9:02 AM UTC
A Lover, cloaked in sorrow,
knelt beside his woman’s stone.
His Ann was only twenty two
when Heaven called her home.
Their love affair was secret
to all but her closest kin.
She had been pledged to marry
one of their long absent friends.
Those were dark days in New Salem.
Typhoid claimed her life.
Lincoln thought to end his own-
perhaps with rope or knife.
In those days friends feared for his life
So dark his mood became.
Some thought him suicidal
whom dark depression claimed.
A figure cloaked in sorrow,
deprived of a life with Ann.
Embraced his life of martyrdom
when the moment met the man.
Jun 22, 2013
Jun 22, 2013 at 10:18 AM UTC
20th Century dawn.
Typhus Virus took human shape,
was named 'Typhoid Mary',
infected and killed many.
Perhaps deadly microbes believe like her,
'We are harmless'.
1st September,2017.
Sep 1, 2017
Sep 1, 2017 at 10:00 AM UTC
This pumice really rubs me the wrong way.
Matadors moisturize with oil of ole.
Heidegger has moves like Jagger.
Any critic - Jaeger; Typhoid Mary - plaguer.
Who's the top chef that goes derpa derp derp?
Wyatt Earp.
I'll drain the swamp like Dagobah's.
A Clovis Person. Legolas.
The nipple's best on chicken breast.
Pin that on your Pinterest. To show all the dispossesed.
Witness Godwin's Law at work:
****** you're a ****
Pick up the phone and call Cthulu.
Get hung up on by Shaka Zulu.
Chalupa mis huevos, says the chihuahua.
Hey Tarzan. Ungawa.
Jesus walked across Titicaca.
Crane thinks the Bridge is over.
Biddy bah bah.
Mar 29, 2018
Mar 29, 2018 at 12:43 AM UTC
I want what devastates me
Sugar so syrupy sweet it sickens
Red liquid slows and thickens
Black lips painted poisonous purple
With thin lines of strychnine
My fair long haired Mary
Marvelous Magdalene
And terrible Typhoid
Saint and Succubus of lusting frenzy
Draining the core of me
Morticia the Mortuary Queen
With fatal fingers that feel
My moist internal organs
Throttling my throbbing heart
Dear black orchid
Princess of the pentacles
Funerary eyes of fire
Waking Walking Death
Yes she is so bad for me
Still, I want her so deeply
Jan 28, 2016
Jan 28, 2016 at 10:56 AM UTC
Chi you seemed to utter,
your nostrils fleering
sitting askance, appraised and any moniker?
I feel the world fading through your eyes,
a typhoid fruit you eat a hour ago
maybe even oyster?
windows variegated, peering out
you moved devoid of autonomy.
hopefully next stop Streatham Hill.
Dec 7, 2012
Dec 7, 2012 at 1:46 PM UTC
She is bubonic
In her blue bonnet
Like a little black plague
Little rose petals
Withered corpse friends
Flushed with life’s
Last red blush
Swooning maroon
To her oncoming doom
And when I kiss her
She passes it on to me
Her disease becomes mine
My little Mary Typhoid
Dreadfully beautiful
Deadly but so lovely
With words of love
She snaps me in two
Jun 22, 2015
Jun 22, 2015 at 11:32 PM UTC
3/2/2016
It's March again
and I'm lost again
wondering about the Delaware
Feeling like a child
who got more than she could
bargained for
colds bitter
good, it was a short winter
I'll never be that wholehearted
girl again,
but it was a short winter
My writing is disgusting,
Only good when I'm suffering
and the thing is I'm suffering now
and I don't know why nothing is
coming out
The year is grey, egg washed and egg white,
Painted and glazed over with
typhoid
I don't walk anymore to the reserve
don't see a point in it
There's no motivation to
see the world
try to find beauty in things
I'm trying to find where
I went
and trying to find where
I put my sanity,
Left it in a biohazard box
picked it back up ungloved
I put my hiking boots up
feel bad for the unloved agronomias
and I think it always gets better
but since my poetry's getting worse
I can't say with certainty
my world won't either.
Mar 2, 2016
Mar 2, 2016 at 6:03 PM UTC
So you've got ebola
kiss me anyway
maybe it's a typhoid bug
and you're giving it, away
perchance, it's a malady
that will take my breath, and life
causing me to wanna die
greater pains and horrid strife
press yourself against me
closer than we should
sharing every molecule
taking all the bad
and celebrating
all the good
Sep 26, 2017
Sep 26, 2017 at 11:56 AM UTC
It's because nothing is real that I feel like I'm coiled in a spring, sprung in a Hopkins type rhythm,
has the poet risen or is he still in the void? Oh but
there is death in the typhoid that holds no malice,
dead and so young and one more rhythm sprung.
I have in the mirror the face of tomorrow, the steam sweats up nice on my brow, but the how and the why of it take me now and I die a bit makes it impossible to see any more.
Witnesses at the door try to sell me salvation
I furnish their coffers with my own brand of damnation, they tell their Gods law,
I close the door and store this information in a box under the bed.
And nothing is real in the virtual age
we turn virtual pages and use visual aids,
there's virtual writing on vestry walls and
Jesus calls virtually every day.
Dec 1, 2015
Dec 1, 2015 at 11:42 AM UTC
These used to be windows that kept the cold out,
that frosted over and made the harsh winters translucent.
Now they are nothing but the staring eyes of the dead,
offering the hope of a view but there’s no one behind them,
no child blowing breath on the glass and creating new shapes,
one pane now smashed and if neglect needs something to be broken.
The lives of so many fractured minds found their fate here,
it’s little wonder the ghosts don’t walk down the hallways,
there’s nothing to see but the decay of unreliable paint,
nothing to hear but the silence a building like this once craved.
The dead do not dwell here, the darkness is too empty,
the beds are empty and echoing footsteps do not pass the doors.
So much sacrifice went into the destruction of every dream
that even the living find the atmosphere repulsive and vile,
that even in its history, this building wails like its occupants
once did when the typhoid was bad and the madness set in.
A grave without a body, the loneliest place in the world.
Feb 16, 2018
Feb 16, 2018 at 4:46 PM UTC
Crazy times of dime bag
dreams and fevered river
scenes that would drown
the lice in Bukowski's beard.
There was a quiet stretch of
sand on the Iowa River, not
far from downtown.
I pitched a tent in the woods
behind that little beach.
Blue herons and blue *****
I hadn't been laid in a while.
A woman in a red one-piece
swimsuit used to come on
sunny days and lie in the sand
drinking Chardonnay.
I should have done like the
crawdaddy and backed
away.
I stumbled out of the woods
one afternoon, and began talking to
her and drinking her wine.
We laughed and drank under
that demented Iowa sun.
At night, we peeled off our
clothes and swam in the river with
the water snakes and ghosts that
floated down from the university.
I'm almost positive that
Dylan Thomas and Vonnegut
drank with us one night.
It could have just been
cholera or typhoid.
I built a fire after our swim, and we
danced naked and ****** next to an
old elm tree.
The otters and muskrats watched,
as the crawdaddyy slowly backed
away into the wine-soaked night.
May 16, 2025
May 16, 2025 at 1:21 PM UTC
The Limber-Bricks
There once was a booklet of verse,
so city it needed a hearse,
The pages were scraps,
The rage felt encaps-
sulated a need to rehearse.
That tattered old booklet was found
Down-trodden, brow-beaten, aground
the gutter drain oceans;
With sewagic potions.
How much better it was does astound!
How many more? The crowds asked upset.
But the booklet with droplets did sprecht:
Is there any for topsy?
Or scurvy? You’ve got me!
It’s lyrical typhoid instead!
Feb 16, 2018
Feb 16, 2018 at 8:39 AM UTC