Good Sense Of Humour Blunts The Sharp Blades Of Reality Poetry
Contest //Sponsored by: Natasha L. Scragg
Contest Judged: 8/30/2025 4:27:00 AM
( 2nd Place )
Written: August 5, 2025
When life threw me a curveball,
I stumbled—then chuckled mid-fall.
Lumped knees, not pride, I wore like bent,
because sneering is something I've seen.
In chemo rooms and vestibules,
I frenzied dry jokes on aseptic walls.
Doctors simpered, nurses would beam—
a punch-line where the fear had been.
When agony thumped hard and sleep grew thin,
I let the silly light writhe in.
A meme, a whirl , a silly song—
made aching days feel less so long.
No, humour incurable or patch,
But it's the ally, not made to part.
It doesn't silence, hurt or truth,
but let me smirk with my aching tooth.
So here's my laugh, though life gushes beneath,
it's how I rise, not how I lament!
There still trying to figure it out
How you make another year
No doctors Pills Aseptic techniques
Or Answers
Just tons of Books Strong Coffee
And Sunlight
They say it's in the "genes"
And of course the "therapies"
Where you hash
Your past
Confront your demons
And for a future
Stay stuck
While people find themselves
Lose their habits
And remain the same
You work on
Loosening yourself
Please
"The Longevity Factor"_
Alex Nelson_
Early 90's_
Poets embrace the septic of poetry,
and frighten those who are shameful and ashamed ...
People in daily toil, pathetic practices
find ... how then do not fight against
the stablishment ...!?
Rebel dissatisfied people mix melody
and chaotic music against counterculture ...
Ah! if these people had hopes,
if they didn't have just that media instinct !?
How different could this life be ....!
Let us therefore understand that the sterile
so aseptic,
so amorphous concrete,
heraldic, so hermetic,
nonsense of so narcotic ...
So on the tour, we must subvert life
consciously always and always ...!
The lonely man was born alone
in a dark alley left
between dirt, garbage and trash;
he was found by an old tramp,
a clochard, an homeless.
A wailing of joy and hope
for that warm and human touch
then suddenly the perpetual silence
for a new tremendous abandonment:
white lights and aseptic walls.
The dumbness marked his life,
rejected, mocked, avoided,
isolated even among crowds
as a child, as a boy, as a man;
his world forever the night,
his friends shadows and a stray dog
like him rejected, repelled:
among leftovers he was looking for food;
among scraps he was searching for clothes.
Among the waste - unexpected - a bundle:
a childish smile from the folds
untied the heart and the hardened tongue.
"No, you don’t, you will not be a beggar;
no, you don’t, you will not live in pain! "
The lonely man clutching himself
walked towards the sun,
walked towards the light.
Don’t hold me to blame.
The road was never straight
nor the wind mild of frame
Your bedside monitor screeches
one incessant, contrary acoustic.
Giving notice to all abroad that
time has moved on elsewhere
Let me raise you up and brush
away the marks that play a
cracked tune on your broken
parts, like a drummer breaking sticks
The glass of your eye
holds the drink of my heart,
where champagne bubbles try
to revive an empty space no
longer receiving its rhythmic pulse
The mood of your limbs ,
restrained by dysfunctional form
and snared by aseptic plastic,
bring a darkness to this room.
And, like American Indians
encircling a wagon train,
Dante's allegorical limbo
encircles your bed, pining
for your life renunciated husk
Its the silence I am surrounded by,
a hundred people,
waiting patiently to die.
Their little rooms of beds,
neat little rooms,
colors full of life,
so contradictory to the reality.
Silence now as they sleep,
one day bleeding into another.
Do they even realize death approaches?
We fill their days with pain meds,
and children's games.
We fill their heads with love,
and hope wasted.
Silence is our only real offering of comfort.
To be the onlookers to aging,
we feel gifted.
We are given a glimpse into our futures,
laying in a cold bed,
a room filled with colors and death,
wondering, if we can, when the last exhalation will come.
Now sitting here in the dark, early morning,
I fail to see the beauty and hope in this scene.
I see reality in this old flickering tube lighting,
I see the aseptic, clinical side of death.
And for all the lies I tell them,
for all the false hope I bring,
for all the bright, unnatural smiles I give,
I am sorry.
I see reality here in my dark hallway,
listening to a hundred dying breaths.
I am a witness to death.
And I thank God I am on this side.
Auspicious August was a king of old,
who used aspersion as if it were gold.
Baron Aseptic, he declared: filthy,
and his best virtue, his asperity.
The Baroness called the king audacious,
her husband was very assiduous.
“He austerely cleansed all crime from his land,
King August could not claim something so grand.”
Though true, most ascribe her words to her end.
August assailed the Baron to defend
Pride and Respect. The Baron was astute,
killed his wife to appease the royal brute.
His atonement acceptable, the king
made him Groom in the princess’s wedding.
Its the silence I am surrounded by,
a hundred people,
waiting patiently to die.
Their little rooms of beds,
neat little rooms,
colors full of life,
so contradictory to the reality.
Silence now as they sleep,
one day bleeding into another.
Do they even realize death approaches?
We fill their days with pain meds,
and children's games.
We fill their heads with love,
and hope wasted.
Silence is our only real offering of comfort.
To be the onlookers to aging,
we feel gifted.
We are given a glimpse into our futures,
laying in a cold bed,
a room filled with colors and death,
wondering, if we can, when the last exhalation will come.
Now sitting here in the dark, early morning,
I fail to see the beauty and hope in this scene.
I see reality in this old flickering tube lighting,
I see the aseptic, clinical side of death.
And for all the lies I tell them,
for all the false hope I bring,
for all the bright, unnatural smiles I give,
I am sorry.
I see reality here in my dark hallway,
listening to a hundred dying breaths.
I am a witness to death.
And I thank God I am on this side.
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