Category: Poems

• Hidradenitis suppurativa

  

  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

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• A sonneteer trapped underwater breaks the rules

  

  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

  ---

• 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 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

  

  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

  ---

• Purpose

  I watched everything I held dear

  splinter, break into a million 

  pieces, my life turned upside 

  down and nothing anybody said

  or did helped me. 

  I ate, drank, slept and smoked, 

  becoming the king of all zombies, 

  a being who loved closed spaces 

  and hated the sunlight, 

  a brooding vampire scared of 

  venturing outside because

  he knows he’ll catch fire. 

  Could I have done anything 

  differently? I ask myself, 

  but I know now 

  that irrespective of if I made my 

  choices or if someone else

  made them for me, 

  I would have seen the same misery 

  because we’re placed in particular 

  points in the grand scheme of things 

  to serve some greater plan

  and what we do or don’t 

  always aligns with it, 

  and I guess this was my purpose, 

  to endure by existing, 

  to move on without strength, 

  to fade to black. 

  June 11, 2023

  creative writing, depression, free will, life, love, Poems, poetry, suffering

  ---

• Bland

  

  I remember walking on the

  beach in Mahabalipuram, 

  the waves raging, 

  the winds howling, 

  the pages on which I penned

  a poem for you swept away

  and I thought 

  that the rage that made that 

  moment, the celestial anger

  that burned through both 

  the earth and the ocean 

  described us perfectly —

  two ill-fated lovers 

  like magnets repelling each other.

  I gave into my cruder, baser

  instincts that one night 

  which titillated you, 

  making you surrender to lust, 

  and in that moment we 

  made promises in breathy whispers 

  and held each other, saying 

  we’d let the other know everything, 

  but thinking back, our passion meant 

  nothing, and our ecstasy 

  was without substance. 

  Perhaps we were never lovers 

  to begin with, and I doubt 

  we’ll be friends unless we let 

  the other in. So let the ocean 

  sweep the debris and ashes 

  away because the smiles

  and tears only amounted to a 

  weak simulacrum of love 

  and everything that comes with it.

  June 5, 2023

  apathy, heartbreak, life, love, lust, Poems, poetry

  ---

• Look at us

  

  Will we love each other 

  like we did here in the next 

  life? Will there be joy and glory 

  or ashes and debris?

  As a lifetime of fighting 

  a body wasting slowly, 

  and a mind crawling into the

  abyss inches towards completion 

  will we leave a legacy, 

  something someone will clasp

  and remember us by, 

  or will we become 

  fading memories 

  ensconced in the 

  darkest alleys 

  of a friend’s mind? 

  You said you felt like

  none of this matters,

  and that broke my heart, 

  but then you went 

  out of the way 

  to comfort me, 

  urging me to believe like 

  I once did, saying your mantra

  aloud, things will get better…

  things will get better…

  things will get better…

  Somewhere down the line 

  I stopped hoping in you, 

  and that crushed you. 

  I wanted you to put 

  your hopes in me 

  and you couldn’t, 

  and I don’t blame you —

  my chaotic drift from a deep,

  spiritual nihilism to 

  a radical faith and then to 

  incoherent madness 

  had to be too much 

  to swallow. 

  So, irrespective of where 

  we are when 

  this story is over, 

  after all the small 

  narratives combine

  to form a big picture

  and we finish our books, 

  let’s hold each other now

  and hope that 

  we’ll see more than 

  pain, wrath, swollen flesh, 

  nystagmus and madness, 

  and even if we lose hope, 

  let’s hold each other because 

  love without purpose 

  sometimes goes beyond 

  a purposeful love, 

  and though people mock it, 

  calling it simple emotion,

  I’d rather spend 

  an evening with you,

  coming up with stories 

  and names we

  call each other, 

  engendering a lust 

  for life, 

  and pushing us forward 

  despite the past 

  being one messy, 

  bloody scar. 

  June 2, 2023

  beauty, friendship, happiness, love, poem, poetry, relationships, sadness, sorrow

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