Best Consumptive Poems

William Bonny AKA Billy The Kid
A Tale Of Billy The Kid
By Robert Gorelick

“Quien esta?”

Bang!  It’s over, 
you’re a legend now, 
Billy.

Born in Hell’s Kitchen in
ramshackle consumptive squalor,
New York’s crammed gang infected
rat-infested shacks 
and alleys.

Amid the iniquitous stench
of rot and the soul’s decay,
in a nation...

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Hi.
We don't have a lot of time,
or, well, I guess you do,
but I don't,
so let's plunge right into the first big question:
Which came first, form or function?

False dichotomy. No such thing as a totally dysfunctional form,
and no such thing as changing function without some form
distinguished...

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In the Work That Reconnects,
we have a dialogue exercise
in which Person A asks Person B
"Who are you?"
several times over a few minutes,
as it feels right to reprime this exploratory pump;
then person B does the same for person A.

The person hosting, facilitating, enabling
this reiterative question's redundant...

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Does your money derive from health-regenerative investments?

Well, what could that mean?

Do you make your money, honey, 
with both light and dark co-arising memory
of midway love and peace intent,
avoiding anger-fear monoculturally competitive
dominant-power relationships,
and struggles against others,
against Earth,
choosing to struggle 
in solidarity with cognitive-affective
chronic neuro-sexsensory dissonance?

Indicators of...

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Manhattan hi-rise nestles
a yawning head-in-the-clouds woman
ready for another consumptive day.
Shod in Choo's, coifed in beige
arising from a long slender nape,
she leaves her nest
after a wave to Amin, her Bichon Frise.
Down-to-the-lobby sashay,
swinging a Gucci full of plastic,
belies an air of loneliness
as she walks to a waiting...

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He feels the best of him slipping away
A sip a drip at a time
When will the he and him align
What is he missing
He can't stop thinking
in and out of focus drifting
as he witnesses his soul thinning
It unravels like twine
Looking to the Heavens for a sign
pretending...

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Devoted rays of sunshine heat, 
Like ribboned baubles on the lake, 
Ride slow the roll of waves to meet 
The pebbled shore where urchins bake. 

Sporadic faded slate-gray clouds 
Invade the space of empty sky 
Away from crushing caustic crowds 
Where silent sounds are sure...

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Cells and fibres exploding, consumptive thirst! Lip vibrate
A leaf trembling in dry enegry of summer's sizzling heat
Come turn to the modern oasis, the city's teeming spring

We came like pilgrims to a holy place, or children drawn
To village well, or city hydrant spewing, and through a...

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All I did was blink
and suddenly frail and forgetful
had stolen the vibrancy 
I’d taken for granted. 


Your look still bears that familiar smile
which sparks an ebbing life 
and brightens dimming eyes. 
But when you think
no one’s watching, 


I am…


as this consumptive malaise 
pervades your sagging...

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I quest my love from the depths of silenced shadows, 
amongst the reclusive dimness…
Where I compose my Soliloquy of Solitude 
as I gravitate to a ghostly grimness…
Fortitude I have none, for my hermitic heart 
pulsates within its penumbra prison…
I walk these calamitous corridors with the...

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Imagine you live in a daily environment
where and when everything you like
is already yours if you simply ask for this whatever with gratitude,
and is more frustratingly ungraspable if you cannot acquire sufficient gratitude to ask.

And, it doesn’t even matter whom you ask.
So you need not...

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Evening reaches out with an open hand
Like a forgotten presence appearing.
Every last hair bolts up by your command
Charging my living tissue with searing
Thrombosis to push those gusts to endure,
Rallying in your splendor with wonder
Opposed as delicious harmony pure,
Goading such playful rumbles of thunder,
Echoed throbbing, our...

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Sometimes,
not often enough,
I stop my morning routine
to watch the feeding drama breathe feathered flurries in and out,
on, 
and under,
my side-yard bird feeder

Outside my kitchen windows
over this morning's sudsy sink,
looking across a twinkling white field
of early March snow,
simply breathing us all in,
boundary framed inside/outside
by my southern...

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Wandering winds wind through tall thin trees
sending constant consumptive croaks
with sustained sonority.
Quaking querulously
a mellow message,
a somber song,
sweetly sung
by a
zephyr...

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How many times have I heard?

The family that prays together
stays together

And, the family that eats together
stays together

I know from personal Holiday
and every day
experience,
neither of these is necessarily true.

However, 
I wonder if the family that sings
and/or dances together,
does stay together,
if only in our dreams.

And how many...

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