Just a Writer

Hidradenitis suppurativa

Photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels.com

First you notice a small

lump, and it’s always on your

arse, or your inner thigh (a euphemism

for right next to the balls) or

in your armpit. You’re tensed and

you hope it doesn’t grow.

Don’t touch it! You tell yourself,

but you have this incessant need

to check if it’s getting bigger.

You hold it, caress it, squeeze it,

run to your mother and ask her

if it’s the same size. It should fade!

You cry aloud. Please fade! I can’t

handle another surgery.

You wash, apply soup, maybe

even shampoo, and you sleep.

The next day it’s huge, red and

full of pus. You know you need an

I&D but you try antibiotics.

Soon it’s an antibioma —

large, round, and fiery.

It’s the size of a jawbreaker.

A strawberry flavoured one.

Look, there’s another one on

the other side!

They wheel you into the OT,

use general anaesthesia

which is better than spinal which

makes you believe you’re paralysed.

And you have a few more holes in

your body that need dressing.

Betadine and saline; a gauze

that makes it difficult to take a

shit. You parade your privates

for the nurses to see,

you honour the doctors with

the stink of unwashed wounds

in your armpit.

You lie down and pull off your

pants. Flaunt those buttocks,

hold those balls so they get a better

view. They say smoking did

this to you. You watch and wait now

for the next lump, hoping it isn’t

wedged right in the arsehole.

For dVerse

P.S. This is OP, and this my second offering for Open Link Night. This is my second blog. I’ve commented on your posts using my first blog.

December 9, 2023

creative writing, dark humour, disease, dVerse, medicine, poem, poetry, suffering, surgery
A sonneteer trapped underwater breaks the rules

Photo by Blaque X on Pexels.com

I hate Shakespeare, Milton,

and Petrarch. I despise

iambs, anapaests and trochees.

I’m giving up on meter.

All day long I stand

in this cage watching shoals of

mackerels like grey lesions

on blue skin. I don’t know

rhythm or time anymore,

and the only time I see something

other than aquamarine

is when a shark bites a diver’s leg

off. I look forward to it now —

red —

beautiful, but violent red,

gushing, spreading faster than

the clock ticks. Day melts into day

or is it night?

December 9, 2023

creative writing, dark humour, free verse, funny, humour, loneliness, Poems, poetry
Chaotic Symphony

Photo by Steve Johnson on Pexels.com

Even though I often go through these periods of melancholy — the grime enveloping everything from the hardly used gaming desktop to the overused Kindle with so many e-books about topics ranging from climate change to a dark, soul-crushing nihilism, there’s this unexplainable lust for life that pushes me forward.

It sometimes throws me in Elysian fields with aquamarine skies and muses alighting on every leaf- blade — a cornucopia of inspiration, and sometimes in arid lands where the symphony of creation is barely perceivable. I should give up. Quit and resign with the cynical fatalism of a pessimist when you present him with visions of utopia with golden skyscrapers and sonnets sung by the masses. But I persist. I can’t explain it, but I do. I press on.

Maybe it’s an apathetic, I must move forward, even if it’s for no reason or a suppressed, enthusiastic hurrah! emerging that remembers when I loved playing football on the streets and the warmth of friendship. Whatever it is, I’ve noticed that it’s there even when Stygiophobia consumes me and I launch into compulsions to ward it off. Praying on the cold marble floor until my knees hurt. Shaking my head, and saying, “No, no, that’s sin. Forgive me Lord!” Confessing my innermost thoughts to my mother because I believe God has forsaken me. Writhing in anguish.

It has popped up even when I’ve lost touch with everything real — Delusions like phantoms with spectral daggers threatening to stab me while I waged what I believed was a holy war with myself. The punitive need to suffer and guilt myself for disobeying God. The concept of God as a destructive, terrifying judge. Words of some puritanical Boanerges who enjoyed frightening people and leaving them there without a glimpse of redemption damning me for eternity. You can’t question God because you’re like a mule compared to Him. He can do as He pleases. The possibility of salvation becoming impossible — A dream vanishing faster than a pop song fade-out.

Maybe I push a boulder up a hill while I wither, the cigarettes smoked and energy drinks consumed adding to each day’s fatigue, even though they should give me a dopamine rush. I move like a shadow, blending with dusk and fighting away darkness. I silently crawl. I don’t know why, but I do. I may have lost all reason to live, but if tomorrow they gave me a time machine and said, “Go back and prevent your mother from marrying that horrible man. That abusive coward with his faux-sentimentality and selfishness,” I’ll say, “No,” because I want to continue in this twisted way. I want to destroy myself and hate my life while I fall in love with it at the same time.

November 13, 2023

beauty, creative writing, hate, life, love, poetry, prose, prose poem, suffering
Saving you

I know I have some sort

of twisted messiah complex,

a Jack Shephard need to save

(remember Lost?)

He told me yesterday that

she’s seen a ton of grief,

that she’s barely holding

it together like a frightened

child not knowing where

to run when the sky turns

red and white streams of destruction

rain from the sky,

and the idea of saving her,

of her holding on to a

saviourish version of me

chock-full of mawkish sentimentality,

eerie wisdom gleaming in my eyes,

kissing her forehead and saying,

I’m broken too, although

I’ve never felt the stab of losing

someone excites me.

I need to be there… I will be there…

forever and always… my love is

a carousel of unadulterated

passion… the beauty of knowing you…

PLEASE FUCKING STOP!

Human love isn’t eternal,

it’s finite and often finds itself

creeping on barbed wire fences

of hate, anything beyond I can only love

you so much, but that’s more than

enough is worship, prostrating oneself

before some perfect vision.

So I guess it’s time I cut the

with-arms-wide-open, saving-you-

from-yourself-crap and

reevaluate everything I’ve known

about passion.

October 18, 2023

creative writing, delusion, funny, humour, love, madness, poem, poetry, reality
All our sorrows

I

I bring her a bouquet of roses

and she looks at me tearfully.

I told myself that I could salvage

this, though this was the seventh

time. I shouldn’t have let the kid

watch. I don’t know what punitive

spirit from oblivion possesses

me, making me more animal than

Nebuchadnezzar during those

seven years. At least he ate grass.

I devour everything and everyone

leaving just motes of dust

on the broken floor.

II

I’m older now, and I think

I’ve repented. I found God

and hopefully didn’t lose Him.

There’s a maelstrom within,

breaking sense and reason

and I reach for the pills on the

table, popping them —

blue, red, white,

hoping for that false peace.

No war, no anger, no rage,

no hate, no madness, I whisper

while walking in circles around

the table. I’m the splitting image

of my mother, but I’m my father’s

son. The rake becomes a torture

device, the spade a bludgeon,

the fork a sharp trident,

the spoon, an eye-gouging

abomination. I fought everything

and everyone and when the

dust settles on the broken floor,

will I weep or kneel embracing

a Pyrrhic victory?

III

I love the boy and hate the man.

Sometimes I think I loved

him a little too much,

but I did everything to be someone

my mother wasn’t. I tried my best,

but I often feel like I’m cursed.

Now my joints break,

a sharp unpleasant warmth

rushes through my body, which

no amount of insulin can cure.

How long God? The boy says God

doesn’t care about our brokenness.

We’ve argued and

fought, and. though he is

his father’s son, there’s another side —

a sweet song from unknown depths,

urging him to be more than

some soul-crushing Goliath

with a tongue sharper than a razor

and fists of steel. Is love enough?

When the dust settles on the

broken floor, will everything

and everyone mean something?

September 17, 2023

abuse, family, life, love, pain, poem, poetry, relationships, suffering
The rivers slowly bleed

The world’s in revolt, and rivers slowly bleed

You and I have rejected love’s embrace

Consumed by anger, apathy and greed

The world’s in revolt, and rivers slowly bleed

Snap the bruised reed, burn the books they read

Incur the wrath of gods, spurn wings of grace

The world’s in revolt, and rivers slowly bleed

You and I have rejected love’s embrace

July 25, 2023

creative writing, form, life, love, meter, Poems, poetry, rhyme, triolet
Working-class zero

A working-class hero,

a blue collar soldier,

a vigorous man though

never larger than life.

Those are stories from

the first world where

a carpenter cooks with

a Harvard Graduate on

a reality show, a team

challenge, an unlikely duo.

But here in the land of

slush and gutters

where you clean someone’s

toilet for a salary

that equals the amount they

spend each day on

cigarettes and cola bottles,

you’re nothing but a

working-class zero,

a brown uniform wearing

sewer rat, taking it out

on your wife after they make

you use a latrine,

give you an amebiasis tablet

because they know

that you’re the cause,

for their farting and

explosive shits.

Dirty man! Touching

filth and dipping his hand

in our curries. Yes,

that’s who you are.

The arak drinking,

beedi smoking,

diseased whore screwing,

beneath their class

dirty man with halitosis,

and you can’t do a damn

thing about it.

July 16, 2023

caste, class, labour, life, pain, poetry, poverty, reality, suffering
The streets called your name

When you were young,

the streets called your name,

beckoning you to go places,

explore, search, and discover.

And though your father’s

madness and obsessions

pushed you into corners

while mother wept, telling

herself she loved the brute

despite the rancour that bit her

with each fist raised or choke,

you listened and meandered along

alleyways filled with scrap

and yesterday’s bones, oblivious

that one day you’d see the potholes,

the used needles, the trash,

and the dog shit for what it is,

stripped off innocence or

more importantly, naïveté

because you lost your innocence

when the madman howled like

a rabid dog, screaming,

“This hurts me too!”

as if the slaps and curses and

the gnashing of teeth,

was simply discipline,

a mild spanking while you

watched mother fend him off,

a beast from a realm far from

Bethlehem, a demon of death,

a psychopath of the ‘old school’

his father and his father’s father

were part of. Today you no longer

step on those roads

regardless of if the sun gleams

off the asphalt or if puddles

of water prevent movement.

You’re not listening, you stopped

a long time ago, the silence of

enclosed spaces your reality,

meaning and wanderlust

motes in the attic, or worse,

fabrications of distorted minds.

July 4, 2023

abuse, childhood, depression, innocence, life, Poems, poetry
Possibilities

Photo by Christopher Seufert on Pexels.com

I’m here texting you

at 1 am, wondering if

the time and space

that separates us

means anything.

I have Gin Blossoms playing

on my old Macintosh

and you’re probably

listening to Hunter Hayes

or some other

modern sensation. We’re different,

but placed at this point

in time, in these circumstances for

an unseen reason, and I can’t

help but wonder if in

another world where time flows

backward, and eventide

brings its hushed whispers

and sober greys at some odd hour

we’d have a Benjamin Button

romance: geriatric, calloused

hand holding preceding

a horrible, middle-aged hebetude

when each day ends with a smoke

and a shot of whiskey leading to

an effervescent twenties,

the wisdom of age losing its vigour,

recklessness and nonconformity

making us think of spliffs,

tattoos and muscle,

sex appeal and metal

while silver becomes off-white

and then a blazing red

as we dance to the rhythm

of music that plays backwards,

speaking English that sounds like

Pig Latin, but is really a language

slicing air with its strange

consonants and harsh syllables

while it drifts backwards

with time, the weird aubade

occurring when it shouldn’t.

As my thoughts weave a web,

catching these concepts barely,

I wonder if this is all there is,

and what could

simply could, but won’t,

and whether what would matters

on what I say to you,

or what you say when you

don’t speak, or is simply

another way of saying what will.

June 19, 2023

creative writing, friendship, life, love, pain, Poems, poetry, Possibility, sci fi
Doubt

Sometimes I love you

and sometimes I despise you, but

I question my affection because

it often stems from emptiness

though I say the sweetest

things, retreating into the world

we made for ourselves with its

characters, inside jokes, and

anthropomorphic bears,

the little space where we can

be ourselves despite the shit

we’ve seen. Is it true love?

I ask myself. Isn’t there more to

love? More substance? More

depth? Isn’t it more than things

said or even felt? Doesn’t it reflect

in the way we treat each other

and the sacrifices we make?

So I doubt everything,

and wonder whether I’m capable

of love at all or if all I do is

joke and tease. Even when

my actions align with what love is —

putting you in front of me,

making those much needed changes —

I wonder if what I’m doing is simply

duty, a following of a routine

that masquerades as the

real thing.

June 11, 2023

creative writing, life, love, Poems, poetry, reality, suffering