Best Bedlam Poems
Cain killed Abel on a Monday night
Abel didn’t get a chance to put up much of a fight
Cain said, “am I my brother’s keeper?” God said, “yeah,” but Cain said, “nah”
Adam just shook his head and rubbed his jaw
And Adam said,
"Good grief, my oh my
We’ve got a Tom o’ Bedlam, get a load of this guy
Well this is not ideal, but what ya gonna do?
It’s the world we’re living in," well Abel lived in it too
Orestes killed his mama on a Friday night,
‘Cause his mama killed his daddy, not the world’s best wife
Orestes pleaded his case that what he did was really good
The Fates said, “what the heck is wrong with this dude?”
But Athena said,
"Good grief, my oh my
We’ve got a Tom o’ Bedlam, get a load of this guy
Well this is not ideal, but what ya gonna do?
It’s the world we’re living in," his mama lived in it too
Genghis Khan burned a village on a Wednesday night
The villagers begged him to put out that light
But Genghis was busy fighting and conquering the land
He had a vision for the world that they just couldn't understand
And his army said,
"Good grief, my oh my
We’ve got a Tom o’ Bedlam, get a load of this guy
Well this is not ideal, but what ya gonna do?
It’s the world we’re living in," those people lived in it too
Jack the Ripper killed some women on a Saturday night
With a couple of slashes from his handy knife
The world got around through the city of London
But everyone said, “didn’t those women kinda, have it coming?”
And the people said,
"Good grief, my oh my
We’ve got a Tom o’ Bedlam, get a load of this guy
Well this is not ideal, but what ya gonna do?
It’s the world we’re living in," well those women lived in it too
Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon on a Sunday night
After reading the book Catcher in the Rye
He saw what was wrong with the world, too many phonies parading around
And someone oughta put 'em all into the ground
And the papers said,
"Good grief, my oh my
We’ve got a Tom o’ Bedlam, get a load of this guy
Well this is not ideal, but what ya gonna do?
It’s the world we’re living in," well John Lennon lived in it too
I remember you
cartoon smile and egg-shaped head.
Do you remember
how the rainbow formed on the water,
how the neon lights flickered,
or the scent of nectarines on your forehead?
They were happy to see for the first time
behind glass window,
between speaker box voices --
unopened package,
untouched collector’s item,
you shiny new contraption,
star of the play,
hero of the hour,
flavor of the season.
Seed of your father,
soil of your mother.
Fruit of love,
fruit of conflict.
Decision’s aftermath,
delusion’s consequence,
Are you accident,
intention,
problem,
solution?
Bough in the river,
wrenched in the current.
Hand reaching for hand,
hand holding your own.
Bedlam baby with the guilty smile
do you remember
how you would not fracture the mullioned frame,
how you could not shatter porcelain,
or how you hid in changing alleys?
I will save you
you will save me.
My hand in yours.
I am the boat
you are the journey.
There's been bedlam down at the food bank store
Rushing and shoving through the opened door
I've even seen fighting there on the floor.
What's happening to people, can’t they share?
When it appears there's hunger everywhere
All we need is some love, kindness and care.
* * *
Again I'm going to the food bank store
For my little girl Daisy Loo, who's four
Always hungry and it hurts to the core.
Life has not been cushy since her dad strayed
I wouldn't have him back if on knees he prayed
By him and my best friend I was betrayed.
She is welcome to him he's nought but trash
Having a love affair behind my back
Without care for me or our little lass.
Though it's tough to manage without one's man
I work every day to earn all I can
I clean houses while Daisy Loo’s with nan.
Can't believe her dad just up sticks and went
Not much is left after paying the rent
To feed my daughter when all has been spent.
As for the hubby, he's past history
Food bank store manager's coming to tea
He's fond of Daisy Loo and fond of me.
Tonight chefs special will be beans on toast
And I’m going to be the perfect host
Believe me I almost gave up the ghost.
Food bank store team and all donators too
Thank you most kindly and God bless all you
Much love from me and my girl Daisy Loo.
* * *
4th August 2021
Panic at the Food Bank Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Kai Michael Neumann
THE BEDLAM
Creature of Madness
And Lo, then rose The Bedlam from its lair,
dark creature infiltrating night
creating from its darkness unseen sight
infecting every fiber of life’s core
demanding from those lessened – even more.
Demon eyes that peer from deep within
the souls of maddened ordinary men
consumed in empty terrors without end.
Misshapen countenance constrained
by mind so fully twisted to deranged
the physical takes on the face of fear
flaws of growing madness coming clear.
Thus does The Bedlam cut one from the herd
starve him till he feeds upon his self
devouring what might have set him free
imprisoned in its moonless lunacy.
Now mindless the maddened sits alone
tormented gargoyle slowly turned to stone.
John G. Lawless
6/8/2015
submitted to – London’s Pantheon of the Gods – Poetry contest
sponsor – Jerry T Curtis
Why not drown in this wave-like illusion
And so simply blind what they call meaning
From any meaning whatsoever.
Swim in a whirlpool of meaninglessness?
Floating objects are all we are.
Lost amongst smiles and laughter.
Feigning a little joy, maybe sadness.
Driven by this violence we call lust.
We are nothing. Nothing at all.
We are but bundles of changing emotion.
As limited as a fish in its fish tank. Bumping into
Corners of endless glass walls. Pretending to swim
Freely in the ocean.
BEDLAM WAR SATIRE
Spring here in all her glory.
Bedlams in a field with mummy munching grass,
fresh green shots in small bellies. What is this?
One bedlam has blood round her mouth.
Been eating severed fingers of dead soldiers, still fresh.
Not the bedlam’s fault that war came
to their field killing daddy bedlam stone dead.
Maybe this finger pulled the trigger
on the gun that killed him.
Stupid soldiers, all dead.
Best to be a life bedlam.
Woe unto you, Oh! mortal man
For from amongst your brethren soon shall you depart
Depart and be made whole with the death clan
For death only awaits, when with your brethren you part
Woe unto you, Oh! mortal man
For from before you crept past and fast, life
You,like in an abbatoir, a vegan
Dilly-dallied vainly and in strife
Woe unto you, Oh! mortal man
For you countable days were tempestuous
Uneasy like a swinging fan
And the tales of your life,vicious
For from your bossom erupted volcanoes
Sprouting forth evermore
Great upthrow and more like bellows
And you knew peace nevermore
Ignorance they say
Is bliss
The bombs they hurl
Over the sky
Bringing down cities
In seconds
The blood they shed
Too expensive
To be bought back
Wasted
For a selfish purpose
Somebody else’s
Sense of right
Picking sides
Where both sides
Shoulder no surety
For their lives
Here we are
Sitting behind our screens
Modern human beings
Watching this macabre tragedy
Something we hear of only in history
Someone’s home
Someone’s life
What difference does it make
To us who have the comfort
We watch shaking our heads
But worrying about the next bill
Or the next day
They might not have a choice
To choose tomorrow over completion
We don’t understand uncertainty
Joking about our misery
We needn’t hide, fight to survive
Our misery still precedes all
That’s a fact and will always be
There’s no shame in admitting
Ignorance is bliss…..
……Reality
Though ours
Is not what we need
When tired
When weary of hard work
Helpless
We sit on the other side of the world
Listening to the word
Hands tied behind our back
Pushed to the edge of the plank
We don’t feel their pain
We can’t dry their tears
A situation so gory
Not our story
So we sit with only empathy
Sympathy and fear
Some decisions we can’t make
So we’ll only voice the emotions
We keep bottled to prevent judgement.
We pretend
Even though we aren’t
Ignorant
Ignorance is bliss
Because that’s what we see ourselves as
It’s who we are
Commoners amidst bedlam.
Now hushed bleak sterile corridors
recall the cries, laughter and tears
of those once termed insane;
all is still now.
Rooms behind forbidding windows,
shutters slam-dance lazily in the breeze;
all is empty.
No actual cells, no straw on cruel stone floors
or padded walls,
reality is cracked linoleum and Formica;
all is quiet.
The local Bedlam towers black,
decaying dead slumber,
etched against a red-tinged horizon.
No movement now within the confines
of her walls,
other than upon the evenings of the
Autumnal moon, when perhaps
resonances of the past send strange
drifting spectres to walk the balconies
and pace the grey great hall,
acting out the bygone dramas of this home,
this refuge, Asylum.
Those who would dare to
venture here
on such tragi-comic nights would see;
but no one comes here and no one sees
and all too few care or understand,
for all that is past are now dead memories,
and all that is to follow
is the truest madness...
beware the enemy who can
fart your national anthem
it was a mob scene at the microphone
kill him kill him they laughed
nobody wanted to miss the show
a perfect blend of pandemonium and bliss
sound bites took their ears off
but how else can one enter the future
with enough for gas money
a basket of Chinese takeout and a cigar for the road
I wasn't free as a kid either
trying to live happy with an unhappy soul
we're going to be a brave scout
aren't we little boy
the place was crawling with dilettantes
NazI pederasts and machine politicians
parents now hunkered down and on the run
from the children bounty hunters
this is the era of retribution
officer Claudia held her gun on him
I need as a minimum a fat 8 inches
can we do business she murmured
OK I'll take achoo as meaning yes
wishing only to stay true to my vow
keep a poker face no matter what
certainly I know right from wrong officer
having tested them both thoroughly
under laboratory conditions of course
on the normal frequencies
it seemed to do the trick
it's a trick of light because light is proof
all is rumored is a good disclaimer
another night of sinister symbols
broadcast across my eyes
in a Japanese bukkake tourist accident
I'd like to make a withdrawal
from my camera account now
when the steam pipes blow
and the manhole covers blow
so life is an insane riddle then
so if right and left marry
will the kids have two heads
From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon
Artist Portfolio: http://walteralter.byethost32.com/
He walked a tightrope for a while
toed the line with guile
as the popcorn crowd ignored the show
But his slow, deliberate pace
brought him no-more-close to grace
than had he jumped to nameless fortune’s call below.
This, he came to know.
So...he drank his guts out for a while
heaved up sorrows in a pile
of wretched whiskey-pricked despair
But the Mysteries couldn’t lose
if he ruined all his shoes
and rent out all his dumpster hair
He resolved, again, to care.
So...he beat the Bible for a while
suffered through a Saviors Trial
with bloody thorns and ashes on his head
Bringing in the sheaves
he taunted prostitutes and thieves
until some wino thrashed him next to dead.
It was something he had said.
He bounced in Bedlam for a while--
mattress walls, halls of tile
and ring-around-the-rosies in his head
And when the Angel Death appeared
he wore a bonnet with a beard
and danced a disco-dirge around his bed.
They found him dead.
....he flew to paradise in style,
they met him with a smile.
He sat on the bed of roses
They were spread in a confused manner
Certainly intrepid in their graciousness
Their petals waning at their edges
And there alone, he sank into another
She was distant in his dream
He was imagining all the need, the drunkness
Like he had had a dose of laudanum
Conspicuously poising itself on his solemn sorrow
With the wit he had left and the sanity he could collect,
He made for the drawer
Collected a collage of her dresses
And marred together with the roses
The red, the yellow, the white,
Her best colors made him another cushy bed
Kitumba
Delight of the night, light and the half lights
Cleft sensation grips the arch in fascination
Lips taunt the tips as they swell in ********.
Sizzles of heat, in sweat filled condensation.
Blush whisper the shadows as the love sighs.
Enticement moves the camber in eager flow
Bewitched, smothers her bodily lust to slow
Nipped bud, craves the finger touch to glow.
Limbs falter in wetness, gorged harsh captivity
Eyes waver to the lustful body in fusion bouts
Aromas fume to break again, in passion clouts
Tranquility surrenders to the taut thieving lout.
who left trail of heartbroken sage woman
commander in chief deliberately stoked,
née sparked long
simmering smoldering, and stewing
long festering white supremacist altercation
fiendishly igniting racial conflagration
exploding during late spring 2020.
No matter no child left behind kibitzing
(yours truly as boy plucked petals
off daisy reciting "she loves me,"
"she loves me not"...
cupid loosed an arrow
into boyhood neighborhood sweetheart
she innocently bespoke
"I wanna marry you,"
when uttered courtesy Sherry Jones,
a little girl who lived
approximately three doors down
along cul-de-sac within Apple Valley
perpendicular to Lantern Lane,
or more age apropos,
when young gallivanting
purported vestal virgin ladies
nonverbally signalled
libidinal proclamations of emancipation,
as demurely expressed
lest unlucky (chaste into)
precocious phallic proclivity
suffered the punishment
of being buried alive.
Now back to present day,
when our old geezer,
the prototype garden variety
male of present poem -
any resemblance between general referenced
fella and living persons purely coincidental.
He (yours truly) easily qualified as
overly cocky whippersnapper,
i.e. young buck and/or Casanova wannabe
experienced bit torrent
hormonal secretions gushed
particularly in close proximity
wherein wafted pheromones -
think a waif faring ingénue.
As evident and quite obvious,
I fabricate (prevaricating
my signature trademark)
rather than stating bland reality stark,
yet will plainly explain issue
in summary essential rhyme
without reason constitutes
nothing more spectacular than
garden variety generic pockmark
excised pustule ofttimes hallmark
of teenage/ pubescent pimply benchmark.
Bedlam and mayhem in the mistress's boudoir
(Nsync with variations on a theme:
various and sundry
pseudo lurid fictitious escapades)
mostly I did merrily wet
whet madness aye ever did dream.)
The missus personal trappings
strewn helter skelter
every perilous step fraught
with danger analogous
riding as passenger
with death cab for cutie
'course thy quasi bohemian rhapsodic Queen
of denial feigns ignorance
attributes hazardous condition
linkedin with accident prone
little lord Fauntleroy's
double doppelganger, me
trumpeting pet husband,
her unrequited germane Liebchen
willing to risk life and limb
doting hand and foot
as proper husbandly duties.
He (ahem... me) exhibits drama
whimsically visiting slapstick pantomime
especially pretending to remove sneakers
pulling with all my feeble strength
off little feet of wife
half-heartedly struggling,
lamely denouncing marriage
nevertheless conveying jollity
regarding marital entrapment
er... rather unbridled wedded bliss
constituting fits and starts enduring
about two dozen years.
I reciprocated amorousness,
whether toward MaryAnne,
(his long ago coldly dismissed
sagacious enchanting first paramour,
(half a dozen years my senior),
whose astrological forecast
accurately predicted promising
acquaintanceship/relationship
potential soul mates
(two score years ago -
gone to naught),
which latter aforementioned humble lass
decried he fomented
incessant emotional grief,
he cruelly (albeit unwittingly)
doled out nothing
but lackluster lovelessness
attributed to identical zodiac signs (Capricorn)
(matter of fact shared same birth date
January 13th - six years age difference)
stubborn misconstrued perception,
whereby fancy free and footloose
selfish nasty short brute nevertheless
deemed himself undeserving of love - humph!
Addeneum: Approximately four decades
re: one quarter century after
aforementioned baptismal initiation
love stricken paroxysm
forty fifth president of United States
took (i.e. plagiarized) many pages courtesy,
cruel playbook authored
by Matthew Scott Harris,