Best Malady Poems
Suddenly
when melancholy arrived,
she engraved the words 'sad'
deep into my manic mind.
Then abandoned me in
a pit of sinister silence.
Who turned out the lights
inside the moon?
Now the horizon looks like tar
and the voices become louder.
Every morning is a miserable melody
in this malady of heavy sighs.
I strum the invisible strings
of my mourning mandolin,
but they keep on weeping
in a chilling refrain,
as each note cuts deeper.
Now my bed is like a crimson river,
soaking in stains of regret,
as daggers of stubbornness,
stab like unspoken words.
These tears taste so acidic.
Eyes feel saggy with dark circles,
like droopy, decaying flowers and
I don't know if I'm tired
or aging too quickly,
so they remain closed.
Time ticks too slowly,
as I remain in stillness,
with a hollow cocoon heart.
Its shell full of cracks,
waiting for happiness to
knock on the door.
Pouring rain for days
Pools of water all around
Scarce drinking water!
TATEIAN WHEELS OF LIFE
Twenty Dora-band aids barely cover one of my scars across my chest. It's my stomach this time. But one hour of reading James Tate makes my mouth curled upward, with an outward breath and smile. Though as morning ended, I thought, "My mood today is nowhere, I haven't been able to find it yet."
Today, the corridor is filled with little children and blond mothers, plump nurses. I fixate on the water dripping down the side of an empty shampoo bottle resting on the shower chair, enough shampoo to last a lifetime vacation here at Malady Motel. Toddler screams echo down the hallway from another ward where I pretend they are impervious to anxiety, and merely screaming because they know the mind plays tricks on us from time to time; they are screaming to warn me of the warden approaching for early lock down.
One morning of no medication, to follow the tinkle of the lead llama's bell: Can you cope, can you breathe? Tell me how you are, can you cope with the job, can you cope with seeing me while you work? Can you cope, can you breathe? That's all they ask, god bless these doctors with nothing else to talk about. Heaven forbid they read the news, at least the headlines, the front page, something for small talk.
My fingers flash lightning, ice forms in my palms. I need to breathe; I need to. Breathe waves to wash over me. My mouth speaks thunder, and if I could stand, I would spin the wheel, see where it lands again. If they were to leave my legs, I promise I'd return the blood I borrowed, leave it for another. I rock and hum in hopes of a calm hush wash over me, white noise, to cover my ears like the sound of a fetus sleeping through a stethoscope, breathe through a straw, wheeze a song for tomorrow.
***
Februari 19, 2017
The heavy lead blocks
Feeling completely spavined
Ineluctable
Zymotic gulf like nihilism
Hollow skull starved
Explodes wherein of itself
The wells enlarge
And vomit happy
Under sunken stars
As Baryshnikov they
Perform deep under laps
Enveloped lightly and kingdom come
Pallid as an interwar prostitute
The ball in the stomach floating like a foetus
Intense maladies and ulcer-bile-black night skies
Cross-hair river bed
You could chase me if you
I know where the gunshots fire
I know all the exits
Brechtian how easy into slumbers
A real face to death is an occasional depression
She pretends to care
Written emotion lies to all
The core of her is rancid
Her center made of fantasy
She tries to impress all
With saccharin sickly prose
The woman turns a blind eye
Her true intentions revealed
"But love's a malady without a cure. ~ John Dryden"
Love is indeed a malady, greatest malady of all
Since birth we all whine for love
And exclusive love we want from others.
All for love wars have been fought,
endless crime happens
Acids are thrown, rapes occur, murder is done....
Many suffer from depression
But what is love?
How many of us are certain?
Selfish wish to be pampered obeyed and served when young
Selfish desire to acquire someone charming and good
Desire to be the most important in eyes of someone
Desire to be loved and cared
Is this love I ask?
Love is divine blissful feeling
Which is positive and joy giving
Deep desire to see someone happy
To serve that person the best of our ability
Without thinking of oneself
Absolutely no desire, wants, expectations
Only wishing to give without any desire to receive
Such is true love
Mostly parents exhibit it
In name of love, to acquire it
Millions are sad on earth
Love is indeed the greatest malady on earth.
Premier contest winner 6th position
Date: 10/14/2020
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Blackened and twisted,
she spews words full of hatred
in her cries for help
A malady of the mind
Dominates the will
As the surging river
Overruns the mill
Omnipotent craving
The bullpen cannot hold
A temptation unremitting
Annulling principle
No affection or reason
Or threat of penalty
Can possibly deter - or -
Potentiate the will
The proverbial all pervading calm and inner peace,
Stability is what we choose to call it- to earn greens,
To eat them, to share it or to control it. So escapable
Yet, always avoided. The veil of contentment ever
So fallible.
Moving from thatched roofs to brick and mortar,
Crawling from unleavened bread to croissant and
From the hard cold ground to the fluffy bed of roses-
We cry, we try, we fall and we die, but then there's
This small moment of rise.
Unseen, often unfelt, unknown and yet mildly present.
The only pure drop of human essence that is- but a drop;
Yet, if embraced it presents enlightened apes with wings to
Soar beyond the cutlery and the bed and diamonds and
Roofs. Its there but never yet...
Why do I the naive poet type my verses on this machine?
Why does the rickshaw puller not opt to buy a higher
Mechanism of sustenance? Why do you think of conquering
The space while the same increases in light years between us?
Where is that drop? That essence of intended genetics?
Or maybe intended is what we make of it. Individual freedom
And the consequent 'progress' or digress. A place where graffiti
Almost topples the la politica and, deaths of millions and voices
Of the troubled are channeled like the AM frequency. A drop to
Each one of you dear mortals!
Breathing free sans the fear of someone at the door, sleeping
In peace sans the unrest within, listening to the wind without
A play button to press and walking the muddied path without
The cacophony of horns. Some of the things we inherently want
When the body is born naked.
Then? We grow up and down and up again like a spiral. A
Careful reduction of the equation that wasnt meant to be a
Circumspect effort. I equals to human so you equal to?
Oh wait! There's a square root on top... Tough luck child.
That drop is there somewhere but we are reduced.
We grow up but never grow back!
© Malyaban Lahiri
Can’t function without it
The conjunctional life
And punctures confounding
A subjugal strife
My endurance depleting
My inevitable fallacies
Determined to beat this
Chemical malady
but
Deep down in the ditch
Is where I feel safe
Weak in the grips
Of insanity’s embrace
You can’t lift me out
Try as you may
Insipid, I pout
Is this where I’ll stay?
(Written 09/17/2018)
Listen to this naysayer,
Where thee never meets his course,
Deny deny deny,
Nein nein nein as the Germans say,
His heart is hard like a stone,
He battles with his own emotions,
That lead his head topsy-turvy,
He's ill tempered,
Loathsome bipolar they call him,
Mixture of poisons stifle his heart,
Where no words venture in that dark cavern cold,
Love never thrives in it,
This malady is left untreated,
Till the day he carries it to his grave.
I walked into a room full of sinners and saints
and saw a dozen representations of me
Some were shackled by the same temporal constraints
from which the rest were utterly free
Together, they constituted one greater whole
that encompassed the essence of man
Like letters on the papyrus of an unfurled scroll
Like feathers on a falcon's wingspan
What is a sinner but a saint in repose?
What is a saint but a sinner renewed?
What a beautiful malady the two compose
The crucible of their melody is the amplitude
No ladies, these bugs, not quite.
Asian lady beetles
Little thugs: they like to bite!
—————
An American 767, like a haiku, and must include a reference to a bug
From where so a fault comes to call,
There from hint comes how to forestall:
Boils and blisters that burn,
Back by hot foments turn,
From ailment does its cure unroll.
_____________________
Translation |11.01.2025|
Poet’s note: Sanskrit has thousands of verses of wisdom called Subhashhitam. The wisdom of this verse tells us that remedy arises from the melody. The transliteration of the Sanskrit verse follows:
Yatah eva agatah doshah
tatah eva nivartate |
Agni dagdhasya visphota
shantih syat agnina dhruvam ||
Human Malady
Everything has it's time
When an event is ripe
Nothing can elude it
As the chiming of a clock
Designates a specific time of day
So events in our lives
Yesterday is history
Today is here, alive with us
Tomorrow is pregnant, unknown
No matter our escapade, life goes on
We have a task, not to be bogged down
By events, negative or positive
It is a malady all mortals must live through.
And, if we are strong enough
Bearing in mind, as we know
The weather has many different seasons
Every season has it's timing
Then, we can be sure
To go through life's maladies prepared.