"undernourished" poems
Papa,
my beautiful papa.
He doesn't look at me anymore.
His smile has disappeared from his face.
Papa's bones are as thin as the weeds out back.
Remember papa?
You made me that handmade bike because you couldn't afford me a real one.
Your hands were the only things that helped me and momma.
The medicine you take, the bed you live in,
Your only depends.
I'm the one you should depend on papa.
I hold your fragile hand as you shake in fear.
Papa, your fever is too high.
On some nights, I sit with you in the oddest hours, keeping a cool damp towel placed on your forehead.
The medicine can only hold you here for so long.
Papa, I can't sleep knowing that you're coughing your life away.
I stay up thinking of the days we use to spend in the blistering sun.
You drinking your ginger beer, giving me a sip.
It was sweet, yet burned on my tongue as it went in the back of my throat.
Warm feeling.
Papa, you were there for me when my days were dark and momma wouldn't be around.
She works a lot more now.
Why does life have to take the only thing I need to live?
Papa, you're getting weaker.
The hammer and nails you use to use, now mock your lack of strength.
Momma can only do so much.
Remember when the holidays would come around and you'd be out so long?
Scorching yourself to find the one gift for me?
Weary and tired you would always be,
you did it for me.
Papa, it's my turn now.
I loved the way you would smell during the mid-summer days.
The burnt cigarettes and fabric sweat was your name brand smell.
Every night,
you would come home beat with sweat beads on your forehead from the hat you wore.
It resembled the long weary hours you worked for that money.
Stale bread bottoms and scarce water was all we had.
Holy socks and beaten shoes was all I needed.
It was all you could afford papa.
Now life is in my hands.
Your sickness is the only tight bond left that's keeping us close.
Papa, you're daydreaming again.
Collarbones and hip bones are not suppose to be visible on you papa.
It's hurting me more than it's hurting you.
Your eyes are glossy.
The hair on your head that was once thick and brown,
has now gone grey and thin.
You're undernourished.
Papa, I can see the fear in your eyes.
You're worried about me and momma.
Don't worry.
Sad how the doctors turn their heads in shame.
They can't do anything.
If you leave me as I'm speaking,
remember that your life has given me great fortune.
Whether it was working till your knuckles bled or staying up all night with me,
just know that you're a wonderful papa.
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 8:14 PM UTC
Don't criticize, don't criticize that man
For enjoying something you deem a waste of time
Let him have something for himself
In our petty little lives
There is nothing keeping us going
Taking care of a wife and children
That is the only duty he is obliged to
Mother and wife must give up her life
Once that child is born
There is no greater purpose than for her to see that child through
The only thing giving them hope
Is the love hanging by a thread
And when there is no faith hope tends to snap
Don't criticize, don't criticize them
For seeming different than you
Let them have something for themselves
If it means keeping them alive
Working double shifts,
Overworked and underpaid
Her hands are always in pain
And you dare snare at her
Because she doesn't dress as well as you
Never home and undernourished
He is only trying to provide for his home
By being at work day and night
Feeding himself is only secondary to the hunger of his child
Don't criticize, don't criticize me
For being wrong, I will fall down to my knees
Let me have something for myself
If it means keeping me alive
Jan 17, 2011
Jan 17, 2011 at 6:58 AM UTC
It was a small little thing
Between us a silent game
I wished it ‘good morning’,
As it brushed my window frame.
It swayed happily at me
Softly holding onto its root
The chance-grown guava tree
I thought would never bear fruit.
‘Good morn, Guavo, how are you?
My window frame, did it hurt?’
‘Nay, I’m fine, had my cup of dew,
I really made a good start.’
I loved this cute little thing
To ask it ‘how do you do?’
Loved the undernourished sapling
Why I really had no clue.
After sometime it started to fade
Keeping relations is not so easy
‘Guavo’ disappeared from my head
I forgot the lean sickly tree.
Then one day my wife came along
A big round guava she brought me
‘Taste how it is, the plant is fine and strong,
It’s from your friendly tree.’
It came back to me inside and deep
Our time-buried sweet story
Guavo hasn’t forgotten our friendship
I must run to it and say sorry.
There it stood proud and high
A full-grown guava tree
Swaying in the wind, saying ‘hi,
I haven’t forgotten thee’.
May 23, 2013
May 23, 2013 at 7:03 AM UTC
I hold fury in every space between my ribs
and in every hollow of every bone
Never before had I felt the strain and stress, the heart palpitations that result from the loathing abhorrence and simple seething self hatred that come from loving more than I am loved
Proper Nutrition holds that
the body must take in enough to replenish what it expends and still be left with a small surplus.
My body is undernourished.
My ribs are bare.
They feel the cold, though they've no nerves.
I feel the cold.
I am by no means insatiable.
But I must take in more than just the crumbs that would feed
a bird.
Feed me. Feed me. Replenish me.
Cover my bare bleeding ribs with your warm hands
Collect each drop of blood as it runs off
Bleed yourself and put the marrow back into the hollow of my bones.
I lay belly up now. But I am a hell hath no fury Hades Hound
And I will not hesitate to bare teeth and rip flesh from bone.
(The starving will feed)
Dec 25, 2012
Dec 25, 2012 at 12:40 PM UTC
Dry, undernourished soil
beds our roots
as they fight for survival.
Thunder and lightening
swirl in the humid air,
but the suns harsh rays
grow hotter,
breaking through
the sweet hallucinations.
Aug 2, 2010
Aug 2, 2010 at 6:11 AM UTC
real councillors
explaining
over used
explanations
to people who
understand more
than people
believe
dark corners
with mysterious
invisible eyes
visible to those
unlucky enough
to see them
with eyelids
shut
light traces
musings
and patterns
lacing bodies
with streaks
of red
and stains
of pain
toilet bowls
lent over
by overbearing
undernourished
starved and
underweighted
figures
of bones
shaking hands
firmly planted
against brick
walls
cracked bruises
harshly noticeable
and starkly
stiffening
dried tears
only means
they were
wet once
Dec 22, 2013
Dec 22, 2013 at 8:02 AM UTC
soft acoustic plucking
reverberating strings
buzzing tones flutter
freely creating visions
differing from space to space
occupied between my ears
twists whole majors into 7th quarters
altering the landscape from within
bleeding fingertips hide broken verses
note for note we lie to the sound
expressing pleasure in the mundane –
gently strumming with loving caresses
melodic to the point of melancholy
old tears sit on a stained floor
eclipsing the smiling children
that hide just beyond the glass pane
glossing the pain with symbolic imagery
a crucifix dangles
swaying to and fro
barely audibly tapping the fat statue of an enlightened oriental
in the shadow of a dream catcher
made not by native americans
but instead by undernourished brown waifs—
bending tones for a better view
I shed the physical and go incorporeal
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 6:48 PM UTC
how don’t know to get the you in: a dis(miss)ing of anchorage, akin to ungrabable, purpled sky, and blackvelvet’s talks to morning sand. to get the you in: a table top of no greed. legs of giveness. to haiku the hell out of.
we are in the process of stunned voices praying to pregnant earth: word fruit meets wet tongue. prophet with no pockets up sand up. in a world that is to know what your sun exuding sounds like.
sweet loathing, singing cell. undernourished, remembering only two tons of. bites down boldly onto wear. ritualistic sweating betrothed to thecosmos. shake loose my skin. legs of giveness, and something that wouldn’t be about you.
or something about you that wouldn’t be. hiding in the corners of language that mask gaping unrelatables. Unrelenting maybeoneday. i’ll decide to hear you (sh)out. the italics of Monday evenings.
Black tea, bumps head into mosquito bites on your thighs. oops, sorry, can i hug you? sorry. So from here we can deduce thetruth that oops, can i hug you? sorry its obvious, tied. eyed our lives in one swoop and now i’ll never possess of a series of creeks,
primordial. Like when the earth’s virginity was lost to the last respiris of a first dying. you as a plethora of suntan lotion3. but lotion is lotion, like the sea, it cant be quantified or split up into in order to be a “plethora,”
and still there’s no one to rub down my back places my black places I can’t reach or see and so can’t mimic like a leglessness, a series of syllables.
Jun 17, 2014
Jun 17, 2014 at 9:35 PM UTC
Indianapolis bleats and blares and protests too much
that the Hoosier state is an idyllic business paradise
with low taxes, low costs, low unemployment, low everything.
Indiana’s the Walmart of… wait, don’t fret about those woefully low wages,
the Indiana Chamber of Commerce reassures struggling, undernourished souls.
The low cost of living means that scant pittance isn’t really as bad as it seems.
Yet, all the blather and palaver and ideological would-you-rather
somehow fails to stem the ongoing, bleeding, gushing
exodus of the college educated out of state to scattered scintillating cities.
Propaganda engines like the Indiana Economic Development Corporation
trumpet all these purported jobs at some factory or warehouse or call center,
yet years later, a TV reporter stands in an empty field that never got developed.
Sep 5, 2017
Sep 5, 2017 at 4:06 AM UTC
Good god you're in a freaking mess .
Over cultured under-dressed.
A pearl living in suburbia.
A face crippled by wrinkles.
Support offered only, by undernourished blood and bone.
You try to raise a smile, but your supportive cement foundation breaks.
Your lips a shade of putrid pink.
Once a girl of glamour.
Sported a pearl necklace.
A sporty kind of gal.
Etiquette on legs.
Standing before me.
After the night that she fell from grace.
Society disgrace.
Just high and mighty dregs left behind.
Sediment at the base of an old whine bottle.
I cared enough to notice you.
Must have been the nurse in me.
I stopped.
We chatted.
I saw how you felt.
I felt it too.
We drank tea together.
I rested the leather on the soles, of my overworked shoes.
I so enjoyed the moments I spent.
Those spent creating you deep in my mind.
(C) Livvi
Oct 18, 2014
Oct 18, 2014 at 8:49 AM UTC
There is this
ancient friendship
between
our souls and destruction,
and in between
lies a tasteless,
mysteriously giant
mother ******* waterfall
scattered like a suicide!
&
You all are,
You all are standing,
tragically cold,
freezing like a dead rabbit and
stationary, like that one undernourished artificial snake,
whipped from time to time.
Do you now dare to make the jump?
to break on through the other side?
- Samar Charulingah Godfrey
Nov 4, 2018
Nov 4, 2018 at 2:22 PM UTC
There was Rebecca,
And there was Jon.
Rebecca lived in a peaceful neighborhood,
Where the wind blows through the trees and the sidewalks were brittle.
Jon lived across from her,
They never spoke, never glanced, never shared a laugh.
Rebecca was sporty, very loving, and loud,
Jon was poetic, mellow, and very quiet.
One hot summer evening, Rebecca was sitting on her front porch picking pedals,
Jon was leaning against his window, drawing tallies on his wall.
There was a moment of silence,
Everything stood still.
Jon turned his head towards the window to the sight of beauty,
Rebecca, sitting on her porch picking pedals.
Her burnt-sienna hair glistening in the sunlight,
Jon's eyes were locked in place, he was drowned in her bloom.
Rebecca looked up, locking eyes with Jon.
At the same time,
They stood up and glanced at each other.
Jon racing down the door while Rebecca jumping up from her porch,
Her pedals fluttered off her dress.
Across from each other,
They both walked up till their noses touched.
Rebecca's hands locked in Jon's,
Jon's eyes were lost in Rebecca's.
As the days went by and the weather shift,
Rebecca and Jon were inseparable.
Jon would pick petals with Rebecca on the porch,
Rebecca would sit by the window writing poems with Jon.
The more time they spent,
The more tallies appeared on Jon's wall.
When the skies became grey and the wind was ice cold,
Jon couldn't pick pedals with Rebecca on her porch.
There was days when Rebecca couldn't write with Jon at his window.
Jon would stay in his room,
Twenty more tallies covered his wall.
Rebecca was sick at heart,
Lingering in her house.
That didn't stop the love between Jon and Rebecca,
A month flew by.
The snow started to thaw off the grass,
Everything became greener again.
Rebecca was ready to write at the window with Jon,
She wanted to pick pedals with him every second.
Rebecca wandered onto her porch,
She didn't see sight of Jon at his window.
Her thoughts start to worry her,
She leaped from her porch and scurried across the street.
She ran through muddy puddles and skimmed on the dewy grass,
Rebecca knocked on Jon's door,
No reply.
Rebecca's days were lost and sorrow,
She felt no life in her.
When summer came back around,
Rebecca was back to picking pedals by herself.
She looked up to see a surprised guess at her porch,
Jon's mother.
*Rebecca, with all love and respect,
Jon is now walking on the other side.
He's where the sun shines brighter,
It's been months since he's been ill.
Jon's been counting the days he's lived,
It was only 122 days, counting the tallies.
The more you came over,
The more it was hard to hide.
He was pale, undernourished,
Too sick to come out.
The thought of telling you was too grievous,
He didn't want the love to end.*
The mother walked away,
Giving Rebecca her moment to grasp.
Even though her love for Jon was bare,
122 days was all she needed to know she had someone special.
She promised herself to always pick pedals on her porch every summer,
Just for Jon.
Feb 13, 2014
Feb 13, 2014 at 8:08 PM UTC
I remember as a little girl
On a visit to an aunt’s friends house
I was sitting reading a story book
As quiet as a mouse
I asked to be pardoned
To go to the loo
They were all playing dominoes
So I knew what I must do
I opened up the door
And placed my foot on the first stair
Then I heard someone in a low voice say
“Are you sure that she's all there”?
I felt a tear run down my cheek
I was doing what I ought
Only speaking when I was spoken to
That's what I was taught
When I’d done what I had to do
I went back down the stairs
The domino game was finished
And there were four empty chairs
They were all in the kitchen
Drinking cups of tea
My aunt she turned to me and smiled
And handed a cup to me
She noticed my tear-stained face
And stroked it with her hand
I told her what I’d overheard
She said I was too young to understand
I was insecure throughout my childhood
Never felt like I fitted in
Undernourished because I wouldn't eat
Now I’d just be classed as thin
From the age of five
My time at school was fleeting
Feigning illness to avoid the bullies
And escape another beating
I remember cowering
In the corner of the school yard
Cigarette butts stubbed out on my arms
Left painful, sore and charred
Name-calling and violence
Made me feel inferior
Set upon by bullies
Who thought they were superior
When I became a teenager
Things they got much worse
The bullies were now older
Younger ones they would coerce
To taunt me and lie in wait
And leave me in a battered state
When i got my first job
The bullying it went on
Because my face didn't fit
I was put upon
Got lumbered with the ***** jobs
That no-one else would do
Like swilling down the filthy yard
And scrubbing the outside loo
One afternoon, the manageress
Secretly asked me whether
I would do ****** favours for a delivery man
And I reached the end of my tether
I got my coat and quit the job
Never looking back
I later heard that the manageress
Was found out and got the sack
Now that I am older
No-ones victim will I be
I stand my ground, nobody’s fool
And i am happy being me
Jan 28, 2017
Jan 28, 2017 at 4:42 PM UTC
I'm here to rest,
allegedly here to float strain
but my nails remain feeble
infirm
decrepit
I lust and long for an
explicit crusade
I beseech
warily
for a map to pilot this dehydration
a quest for humidity during my
days of which shade
remains scarce
raising my skin
every vein billowy to embrace
for the
sensuality of pain has casted a void of solitude
of which my
sanity can endure for only a
finite number of days
I lust for the dispersal of this fever
and
to the sun and its heat I subside it's fury
to the west
I bury and pursuit to forget the 12 hours I have left
lean
undernourished
hungry for a frenzy
but
God did not forename
the complication of a skull
my brain
has arms and legs
there is a brain inside of my brain
deadly
persists the length of its
fingernails
I admit
and believe, in truth
must profoundly exist
Oct 21, 2017
Oct 21, 2017 at 2:45 PM UTC
1.
The darkness fled before me
While I stayed in the light
The black covering both land and sea
Destroying sight.
Basking in the heat, burning in the sun
We toasted the darkness, once it had gone.
God had said, wringing out his curls, ‘let there be light’,
Clearly, the dark came first.
But god floundered at night
And darkness he thunderingly accursed.
It was sent temporarily away
While god fashioned ‘Day’.
Yet, the dark was firstborn
The preferred planned child
And visually undernourished and presciently worn
Was the expected, the ideal, not the reviled;
Day was only a change of mind
God, the twister, making us see when we are blind.
2.
It was of an infinite hue, purple not black
Deepening towards the centre, consuming everything
A materialisation of Lacan’s Lack
Without substance, pleasure or pain.
It delved in and out in senseless monotony
Heightening sensation here, there performing a lobotomy.
At times, it reflected me and then it reflected you
Assembling features, and reassembling,
But never with every ****** nuance true
It shuffled several, naturally dissembling,
Unable to be fixed. It pretended to be human,
But like you and me, it shuffled like a golem.
Flying away it came back with equal velocity
Opening its imagined maw
Emitting as it approached tongues of electricity
Through time it tore.
Past and future congealed into a putty-like mass
Dying with the light, it disappeared up my ***
Apr 11, 2016
Apr 11, 2016 at 8:31 AM UTC
Vaguely remembering a donkey ride
on a hill leading down to the river side,
a memory that's clouded by time.
You
want to pay me a compliment
I only want enough pay to pay for my rent and the few extras
a man might need.
And that's where the donkey comes in
thin ***** and
undernourished
I am
all of my thought,
my actions
and deeds cannot feed me
I am the donkey
time does not fool me
only I can do that.
May 27, 2016
May 27, 2016 at 1:13 PM UTC
The bread line
undernourished and
underfed line
time
it changed.
Aug 4, 2016
Aug 4, 2016 at 3:20 AM UTC
Money and labor for walls separating nations could build gigantic
kitchens and dining areas for thousands of homeless , undernourished
men , women and children ...
A place of hope in every major city in America , a living monument
to address the immediate need of every person ...
We're imploding hotels to build skyscrapers when one building could help take care of many , many desparate people lying in the street , living the nightmare of homelessness , the people that are brushed aside like ******* on the boulevard , the people we drive by and try to forget ...
The people that are fed on Thanksgiving and Christmas only to be forgotten , left to fend for themselves the remainder of the year !
Feb 6, 2016
Feb 6, 2016 at 9:57 PM UTC
You stand so brightly
In a world ever expansive
Holding yourself high with
What little strength
That tiny vessel holds
For you my flower
I would
Cut away the shadows
For you my radiance
I would
Surround you with light
For you my flower
I would
Make sure you are well nourished,
Content.
But for the fear that
I am building a prison around you,
I freeze.
So I let you feel
Winds of ice and,
Darkness prolonged and,
Undernourished soil
But...
But I make sure that,
Whatever you experience in this world...
Isn't anything more than you can handle.
Apr 10, 2017
Apr 10, 2017 at 9:21 AM UTC
I neither want you to press the like
nor the follow button
I just want you to
give me your attention
Just for a tiny second
150 million children
are orphans
worldwide
821 million people
are undernourished
every 40 seconds
someone
takes his life
In 2017
68,5 million people
were fleeing
a country
every day
7000 mothers
lose their luck,
their baby
Think about those numbers
and be grateful for just a tiny second
if you're not affected
All I want is
you to think about this
only for once
and make every moment count
as if he were the last
Nov 26, 2018
Nov 26, 2018 at 1:23 PM UTC
Stuck in a rut,
aha,
you say
there's always a rut
and one more day
but it's hard to pull free
(it's always about me)
the devil you know
do you know what I mean?
see
it's Saturday
which is a,
it really doesn't matter day
when you're forced by circumstance
happenstance
or ignorance
to labour
I'll finish at midnight
which is ***** or
alright
depending on how it feels.
but I'm not impoverished
undernourished or
homeless
I should be thankful for these
small mercies,
ever had the nagging suspicion that
if you had ammunition
it'd be blanks?
whether pigeon holed in a *** hole
or flying high
the sky is never the limit because we
can go further or is it farther?
I'd rather it was further
but
I'm just peculiar.
Apr 21, 2018
Apr 21, 2018 at 2:08 AM UTC
Seeking infiltration we ravish the flow of time. Wrecked with lust. We intertwine.
Swine. I'll leave you broken one last time.
Aching for a sense of fire. Come and play with my dark desire. Challenge the rapture of the flesh. I'll take you when you're at my best.
It's moist inside this virtue. Its vital as I pervert you.
I've had a taste. I need to feed, I'm holding a sadist inside of me. Swallowing you when you're on your knees.
Oh please.
Your tears falling on a ***** floor when you confess you love me more
Aug 12, 2017
Aug 12, 2017 at 6:32 AM UTC