"varicose" poems
Albert had an ARTHRITIC knee
which gave him curry
The core of a BOIL is oft hard
to extract
Yesterday June experienced
a server stomach CRAMP
Too much dry weather
can cause the outer DERMAL layer to peel
Never read in a poorly lit room
for you'll have EYE strain
After eating spicy pickles
dad had bad FLATULENCE
Some twenty eight years ago
my friend Helen had her GALLBLADDER removed
They say that a glass of water
will stop HICCUPS
From end to end
our INTESTINAL tract is thirty foot long
On Sunday afternoon John
broke his JAW playing football
Some people have
very boney KNUCKLES
One of my work colleagues
is prone to getting LARYNGITIS
Colin suffers terribly
with MIGRAINE headaches
Sometimes people tend
to endlessly NAVAL gaze
A woman's OVARIES need to be checked
on a regular basis for any abnormalities
The PANCREAS secrets a hormone
known as insulin
QUININE once was extensively used
in the treatment of Malaria
Since my sister has put on weight
she cannot find her RIBS
The STIRRUP bone lies
within one's ear
Dan Aykroyd the famous comic star
has webbed TOES
Should you bump your ULNA bone
it may give you reason to groan
The VARICOSE VEINS is great aunt Ruby's legs
were very pronounced
Does anyone know of a good remedy
for unsightly WARTS
At our local hospital
we have an antiquated X-RAY machine
As tiredness and weariness sets in
one YAWNS quite a lot
****** ZOSTER can make
a person constantly itch
Oct 20, 2013
Oct 20, 2013 at 1:31 AM UTC
how sad to be misunderstood
to be evicted from life
to have the full tenure
of a torrid human existence
gesture horribly at you
in faultless reputation
like that of a rancid rage
over a lost trinket
or to be quarantined
while fingerless skin scolds
and noiseless voices are raised
in a donated generosity of savage ignorance
striving to make copious amends
in vain efforts to regrettable
slow acting poison that boils the mind
oh how sad to be misunderstood
such varicose viciousness
oh it’s sad quite sad to be misunderstood
to live through and inoculated hour glass
giving limitless time to a wildfire of idiocy
and when your breath speaks they laugh
black laughter that shatters wet umbilical truths
shudders
knowledge gestures to smoking nostrils
oh how sad, how sad it is to be misunderstood
to be drenched in the rain but not get wet
in which antiquity rests with its
mythologised stupendous ill effects
getting vivid shadows massed all around
oh how sad it is to be misunderstood
until dactylic, hexameter, elegance
completes and slithering syllables
by their antiquity focus a shuddering shriek
that sends an exploding heart through your chest
Oct 3, 2013
Oct 3, 2013 at 4:56 PM UTC
I won't be the weak one,
Although when I think and speak
I may tweak some I'm just
Searching for reasons
To justify the swell.
I will ride the undertow
Sunken beneath bass lines
And blunt tails
Intending to take it slow.
But I get a little excited sometimes, you know.
So when this undertow undoubtedly
Washes me ashore
I'll be the imaginary statue
Erected in my honor
Proudly saluting every fleeting
Emotion that sailed
Straight through my harbor.
You see,
Harboring hatred is a trait
I forfeited
To make way for the minuscule moments and glimpses
Of human existence penetrating
Layers of jade and years
Of conditioning and I am successfully
Transitioning into persistently
Acknowledging the raindrops
As they hit the pavement and pop.
You see some people feel the rain
While others just get wet,
A wise Rastafarian
Once famously said.
And I think on it all
Far too frequently for a quiet mind
But I've never had one of those
Not even after rolling papers
Intertwine and smoke fills my eyes,
Because I am accustomed
To a constant consciousness
And I'd much rather this
Than nothingness
And thus I sit, contemplating
Consequence
Aspiring to avoid the guilt of
Seasons past,
For I am past the point of
Punishment and pain ghosts and
I have plenty of pangs from all
The echoes
In my brain and in these
Rattled apartment's stains
It's not all in vain
Life grows these varicose
Veins
Colored-in, crawling across the
Window panes
Of the chamber where my soul remained
Through the bridge until the end of
The refrain.
I am in reign.
I rock the crown.
I roll the dice when
I am down
I try to think twice
Before I frown
I contemplate the value
Of the men that I allow
To lay me down
Now,
I am grown and I am proud
Because I am humble
And I'm not loud
Any longer,
I listen
To the subtle sounds of
Human respiration.
I am the incarnation
Of ancient incantations that
Shake down the walls which
Separate us all
All the way to the ground.
True power is found
Where unity resounds.
Oct 13, 2014
Oct 13, 2014 at 3:26 PM UTC
you wedge your pointer finger between your canines-
in an attempt to appear sublime- or nervous- or seductive
either way it doesn't succeed.
your tooth, teeth
speck of blood, bleed
emerging as you pierce your calloused
yellow patch of skin
(layers & layers of the girls you've touched before)
but you crave one more-
for in every sleepless night
there's a quote to be fill- a new slit to drill-
you're a man.
i can sense it-
throbbing and shaking beneath your olive exterior
how you long to drag
your now bloodied, prior prettied
finger up an off white thigh-
to disregard the things obliged-
to forge the paradigm
from faulty tools,
splintered and battered in a worn down knapsack
duct taped to a hunching back,
you're a man.
thoughts of droning monotone
quiet your hungry bones
(i can hear them)
rattling as you ****
your head and lift that heavy glance up to me.
i can see you,
flopping and thrusting and sweating, which
after years of curiosity has handed me
nothing,
but sweaty sheets and burning ***
i lay beneath you, silent
i'm a woman.
avert your eyes ( i am tempted to plead)
from the onset of premature varicose veins
(i am pale, glasslike, arched & stained)
allow me to suffocate the already immune-
girls born into the world with big black brandings
stamped onto their lightly acne ridden foreheads.
(SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE)
trim your ribs, shave off the cellulite-
turning a blind eye to accessible insight..
a salad for lunch, make it dinner too.
finger down your throat, orange acid hurling,
stick like dancers twirling,
they bring tears to your eyes,
if only {you} possessed the grace-
but there are pounds to erase.
i'm a woman.
thirteen years of advertisements stapled to your eyes
standing barefoot in a bath tub with chunks of blood
running down shaking legs
kicking off a now crimson pair of old underwear-
stuck & tangled on trembling feet
[ silence your voice and push up your *******
til they're touching your neck.
get a nose job
get a blow job
you're a woman ]
May 10, 2012
May 10, 2012 at 10:50 AM UTC
mom was always self conscious about her veins
she veiled them with pants in eighty degree weather, constantly looking for cures for varicose and spider veins and always asked me if she looked bad
mom never looked bad, not even mediocre. she was mom.
mom shone through with a holy radiance of giving, i knew that when she got to heaven (even if heaven was never real god would make a heaven just for her) she would be blessed and her veins would be erased.
i would write her a letter telling her how her veins were art on her legs with colors that were abstract for the human body
i would tell her i love the paintings on her legs because they reminded me of all she did for decades, tiring her feet, never sitting down, giving her self up for half hearted people.
i would tell her stories that her veins were paintings made by God to show her how unique she was, and he formed murals for her that would never go away, with lilac, violet and green paints that stained his fingers
i would remind her maps and magnificent cities had veins of their own, they were the roads and tunnels that people traveled on to find their destination.
my hope for her is that she remembers her flaws are art that don't have to be hidden in a museum
Mar 7, 2015
Mar 7, 2015 at 2:31 PM UTC
A few miles inland,
Told to lock all windows and doors,
There is Chlorine in the air,
As England remembers Soviet Russia,
Chemical spills tickling the throat of the century,
Stinging the eyes of the children
Bored in the beer garden of Britain,
The roads are all blocked and the whiskey is watered down.
People leave slower than ever,
Swimming in pools of exhaust fumes,
CO2, Radio 2, M52 bound,
Vehicular nightmare wound,
Lost in the A-Z of our Father’s arteries
Reversing through his varicose veins,
Stopping short of starry futures,
Air pollution spoiling meteor showers.
An end, an end,
Over and Over again.
Jul 7, 2016
Jul 7, 2016 at 10:30 AM UTC
Spare me from suburbia.
I hate the chatter.
And the cookie cutter houses.
And people worrying about what shade of Estee Lauder they need to look 20 years younger.
The bigger the SUV ...the better.
Yeah that's my saying too.
Oh yes it's Doggy Spa day! yippee.
Freakin morons.
Put your Gucci shades back on quick before you get to the underpass and see the man who fought for your freedom so that you can enjoy your Sushi on the right side of town, begging for anything you can spare.
But thats right you have nothing to give, do you.
I mean you couldn't possibly dip into the college fund for little Jessica, who by the way is snorting blow as we speak, in the projects across the tracks, while you think she is attending the high school pep rally, as all good cheerleaders do.
And you might want to slow down just a little bit, because if you reach your hubby's highrise office even just one minute ahead of schedule, Candy won't have time to push her skirt back down, wipe her mouth, and re apply her reading glasses, before you enter...and that would be a bit uncomfortable , don't you think?
Maybe you just better turn around altogether and head back to suburbia baby!
There's a reason you are called a stay-at-home mom.
It's the safest place for you...trust me.
Reality causes varicose veins and then you would need emergency laser surgery to correct it, which would interefere with your PTA meeting this afternoon.
Nov 19, 2011
Nov 19, 2011 at 7:01 PM UTC
Nourish these seeds.
For the nourishment they each receive determines how prepared they'll be as trees.
Prepared young trees.
Told to find their own sunlight, lest their plight ends early. Branches seize.
Drifting, curious breeze.
Sin slips slyly through the forest, spreading guilt varicose under leaves.
Impending Winter freeze.
Even the most upright trunk may lose more leaves than it that shed a few in flirting with that sinful breeze.
Each believes, if it survives the winter freeze, it was of greater stature,
that its leaves, or trunk, or journey up set it apart from brethren battered.
But is a tree ever more a tree? Or do wriggles and postures not matter if, in the spring, they all are trees?
Oct 12, 2012
Oct 12, 2012 at 4:54 PM UTC
Memories
are like fire,
they can execute
or inspire,
satiate
cooked on a plate,
deforest
when
filled with hate.
Running like lava
through
varicose veins,
embers smolder
ready to ignite,
or extinguish the
remembrance.
Nov 10, 2018
Nov 10, 2018 at 7:11 AM UTC
Mattel gave us Barbie and Ken,
They never grew old, according to them,
But, can you handle reality?
Barbie and Ken are now over fifty!
Barbie is fat with varicose veins,
With hairy legs, not so vain,
And Ken shall never see his toes again,
His six pack has turned into a beer belly,
Walking makes Ken quiver like jelly,
But, hey, they're forever Mattel,
Barbie's too old to say, "Ken, go to hell!"
Sad, but true, our childhood friends,
Yet they did grow old, Barbie and Ken........
Jan 16, 2017
Jan 16, 2017 at 4:05 AM UTC
There’s a line in a movie which goes something like “pain is good, it lets you know you are still alive”. The obvious question that I can hear you asking is “So when the pain goes away you know you’re dead?” This inevitably leads to a conversation about life after death.
Now that topic can be dangerous if you don’t walk away from the conversation quickly enough, at one of “those” parties, you know the ones; the one you would not have gone to if you knew that the person who invited you believed in the power of healing crystals. So as the bottles of wine get emptier, the part time philosophers get louder and more opinionated about everything from the existence of an afterlife to what was the “real” message behind the final episode of M.A.S.H. And yes, I have been unfortunate enough to actually hear some overfilled part time philosopher postulate a well thought out, theory on the subject at an Italian restaurant in Brisbane and unfortunately was only up to desert so could not escape without missing out on coffee and Muscat and cigars. It was a tough call though. Ah smoking in a restaurant, those were the days, now where was I?
So given the opportunity to choose an activity which you know involves pain, i.e.: Rugby League, running a Marathon, Childbirth or listening to drunk part time philosophers at parties, why would you knowingly throw yourself into any of these extreme sports? Well maybe because the rewards of the end result are worth the pain involved during the activity. So that cool night in that Italian restaurant I sat through Scott’s theory, not knowing at the time if the pain of the story was going to be offset by the quality of the temptations to follow desert. And so that leads me to the reason for writing this. A friend of mine recently wrote. “Apparently any given situation can look good if viewed from the right angle. Sometimes I get cramps!”
Well my friend the Muscat was good that night, the coffee rich and earthy and the cigars cheap but free. Scotts actual theory is long gone from my head but the memory of that Muscat coffee and cigars lingers for twenty years.
I am lead to believe that cramps may be a symptom or complication of pregnancy, kidney disease, thyroid disease, hypokalemia, hypomagnesaemia or hypocalcaemia (as conditions), restless-leg syndrome, varicose veins,[2] and multiple sclerosis.*
So, given that if in fact it turned out that you had one of these afflictions and the cramps lead you to discovering this fact, I would say the cramps; like my terrible dinner experience, viewed from the right angle looks good! Now off to the doctor with you, I’m off to the bottleshop.
*From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 12:11 AM UTC
Here's a story about a gang of grannies
Who knocked over a ***** hose store
They were nothing without their support hose
And they just couldn't take it anymore
Late one night at an old folks home
A few grannies were hatching a plan
Their varicose veins were getting in their way
Of catching themselves a man
So they decided enough was enough
And they'd reclaim their feminine wiles
And there happened to be a ***** hose store
Down the road just a couple of miles
Now if they got caught what would it matter?
'Cause it was a very small price to pay
And even if they gave them life in prison
Well that was probably just one more day
Now the leader of the gang was ninety years old
'Cause she had done this once before
She'd served a little time in granny prison
For robbing a false teeth store
Now their purses were their weapon of choice
Cause that's something they knew how to use
And if you've ever been hit by a granny purse
Then you know it can leave a bruise
Anyway, off they went to claim their prize
For it was much too late to turn back
Dressed in only their housecoats and slippers
Their purses and a burlap sack
To make a long story short they pulled it off
Just in time for the old folks dance
And you better believe those grannies looked sharp
In support hose and pink hot pants
Sep 13, 2012
Sep 13, 2012 at 2:33 PM UTC
there were old men
laying around the
pool
like cigarette butts
in an ashtray
burnt out and
diminishing as
their feet
dangle in the water
lapping up against
their knees
they talked about
the old war
the good war
back in a time when
there was war to
believe in
now what?
now they have their
feet in a pool
fat white skin
burning in the moonlight
while knobby knees
are canvas to varicose
veins and the occasional
scar
--oh this one from
surgery, this one
from a foxhole
dug out some
hillside near Salerno
sliced up the
side of my leg
nice and good, yessir,
killed the
**** guinea
though don't worry--
and they would hold
out their arms
to explain how
they held those old
standard issue springfield's
while arthritis shook
that imaginary
rifle to the point
of danger but
they never noticed
leaning in to stare down
the sights
aiming carefully at
some elusive
foe across the pool
they would laugh at
how much they hated those
guns
they would laugh at
the insanity of it all
how young they had been
how old they were now
how much had changed
and how much hadn't
their wives were all gone
left widowed or divorced
all it seemed they had
was Tunisia or
Italy or that French
beach early morning in
1944
the world is a battlefield
for old men
with no
weaponry but old
stories caked in dust
Aug 28, 2013
Aug 28, 2013 at 12:17 PM UTC
CAST a bronze of my head and legs and put them on the king's street.
Set the cast of me here alongside Carl XII, making two Carls for the Swedish people and the utlanders to look at between the palace and the Grand Hotel.
The summer sun will shine on both the Carls, and November drizzles wrap the two, one in tall leather boots, one in wool leggins.
Also I place it in the record: the Swedish people may name boats after me or change the name of a long street and give it one of my nicknames.
The old men who beset the soil of Sweden and own the titles to the land-the old men who enjoy a silken shimmer to their chin whiskers when they promenade the streets named after old kings-if they forget me-the old men whose varicose veins stand more and more blue on the calves of their legs when they take their morning baths attended by old women born to the bath service of old men and young-if these old men say another King Carl should have a bronze on the king's street rather than a Fool Carl-
Then I would hurl them only another fool's laugh-
I would remember last Sunday when I stood on a jutland of fire-born red granite watching the drop of the sun in the middle of the afternoon and the full moon shining over Stockholm four o'clock in the afternoon.
If the young men will read five lines of one of my poems I will let the kings have all the bronze-I ask only that one page of my writings be a knapsack keepsake of the young men who are the bloodkin of those who laughed nine hundred years ago: We are afraid of nothing-only-the sky may fall on us.
1.5k
blue checkered jacket
the cloth faded.
kneeling onto yesterday
holding on to tomorrow
her leathery tan hands cup
a wrinkled tired face.
the white tasseled hair and the bulbous nose.
hope has left her eyes,
the light has turn to rain.
beneath a torn brown skirt
short varicose bowed legs
forever journey to no place.
everything she owns in a big paper bag.
She has no home.
Nov 18, 2016
Nov 18, 2016 at 4:28 PM UTC
My hands fascinate me
because all I have left
of her is the dirt under
my fingernails.
The lines in my palms
all point towards the
past and everything I've
ever held.
And my fat knuckles
are getting harder and
harder for me to keep
cracking them.
Nails, bones, knuckles,
tendons, joints, creases,
cuticles, scars, burns,
varicose veins.
No two hands are
ever held the same.
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 12:16 PM UTC
And this is desperation
it is muttering to a windowshade and dreaming
"always" "always" always
it is looking without seeing
when every side street and roadside looks like
the devil's territory
it is what you sound like when you speak
all your sentences backwards
it is listening to sad songs on airplanes
and pretending like nothing has ever changed before
it is staring at varicose veins
like vandals
underwater
it is building shelves for every little thing
so every bigger thing goes not astray
it is becoming a martyr
for the morningdew chills
it is watching as skyscrapers blur
Apr 23, 2011
Apr 23, 2011 at 8:58 PM UTC
My ode to shorts---
We look like fat dorks,
When it's not so cold,
Even if we're so old,
Can't hide varicose veins,
Old age doesn't go away,
We know we look dorby,
We're all well past forty,
Summer's so **** hot,
This heat's a bit of a shock,
We all know we're fat dorks,
Has anyone really thought
We'd look good in shorts?
Nov 10, 2015
Nov 10, 2015 at 3:48 PM UTC
in death it had a certain beauty
that almost matched it's life
silhouette upon a moon light canvas
varicose veins across the sky
it's gnarled and craggy fingers
forking tributaries to the night
clawing, reaching, fighting
for width, for space, for height
spreading, searching, writhing
in a twisted wave goodbye
Jun 13, 2013
Jun 13, 2013 at 3:25 PM UTC
Your shingled roof keeps the sunbeams out of your head
Greasy grime-stained glass windows tint your cracked worldview
Spite dripping from the meaningless words you said
Time and again it rears its ugly head anew
Tiles misaligned by the slow shaking of years past
Rusted doorknob yielding to splintered wooden door
Vestiges of reason leave your mind all too fast
Eaten by insecurities, razed to the floor
Graffiti and dirt lie intertwined on your walls
Fractured wallpaper peels away in strips and flakes
The answering machine inside holds no more calls
The dusty mould on the tabletop swells and cakes
Broken pipes and tangled wires climb up your side
As varicose veins snaking up your wizened spine
All your flaws leak out and there's nowhere left to hide
Groaning in the wind, your voice hissing "They're not mine!"
Your boarded-up middlesection is always torn
Wind-ripped by desolating gusts of delusion
The flight of fancy, the gloried facade you've worn
Hangs from bitten brick, a decomposed illusion
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 9:35 AM UTC
In final autumn heat,
Two weeks after apple picking,
The bushel baskets sag,
Laden with the summer's pickings.
Growing sadness clings to me.
I sort the dead and dying
From the thinning lot,
Fearing loss of all to rot.
The first to go,
Soft and brown,
Nearly fall apart,
Require gentlest touch;
Dripping cadavers
Leave healthier neighbors
Wet, in danger of early death.
In separating them,
I hold my breath.
On spotted skins I then
Must concentrate;
Look for inner decay:
Sagging indentations,
Fallen stems;
Hollowed caverns
From bird bites and beetles;
The evidence of worms'
Varicose trails, faintly brown,
Just visible beneath the skins,
Revealing company within.
My eye looks inward first, then out.
I know what this malingering's about;
The cankers that I seek may find me out.
Hesitation clouds my separations;
I wonder what a paring knife might do
To save some portion,
To spare the summer work
Of apple trees.
I wonder, does the apple
Dread the knife, considering strife
As much as I, when I confess my sin
And writhe beneath the penance
My sinning puts me in?
Sep 23, 2017
Sep 23, 2017 at 11:36 AM UTC
Rap at those enraptured under fears of the bacterial,
as children try discerning ethereal from material.
Drowning in the oceans of history, since repeating
these anachronisms trumpeted a fracture fed imperial.
Curse the brittle bones encroaching faster by the minute,
while the sinners broaching laughter couch a ghost within a cynic.
Living flesh against a ghost.
Spoken word against it's host
Who's the zombie here,
between a thread of hope and varicose?
Who's to know the line approached?
Serve the rabble in our throats?
Turn the table in our notes.
Learn the fables from the jokes.
Jul 26, 2020
Jul 26, 2020 at 9:48 PM UTC
Milk white,
pure as unbroken *****
innocence lain bare.
My touch,
aches, despoils. Alarms,
so soft; a feather’s caress.
Creamy smooth,
lotion filled ***** disarming
with a frown, down-turned; tears.
Teases me, terrifies me in its shroud. Free me, set me loose
from this cage, this frigid incarceration, lay me bare. My *****
split and opened; exposed. Soft, pink tongue, coated crimson,
makes love to my wounds. My kitten, sweet, laps the saucer.
Abstracted from the fragments, broken in the wind of
your Madonna, holy, sincere. Shadow creases the
wrinkled skin, veins; varicose. Age comes ungracefully,
my beauty, wrapped in plastic.
Jul 24, 2014
Jul 24, 2014 at 12:14 PM UTC