Best Putrefied Poems
Two ladies named Jan and named Lin
professed a forgivable sin
they cornered a dragon
wrung her in a flagon
and gave her away as cheap gin
The old dragon's name was Jooling
who had a habit of drooling
she couldn't stay dry
on ground or in sky
around her urine kept pooling
The ladies had had quite enough
The dragon smelled like bad stuff
so after they did drain her
to cement they did chain her
and threw her sad stench off a bluff
Into the ocean dragon fell
on hitting water she did melt
The girls were relieved
at what they'd achieved
and glad to be rid of the smell
They went on to gain great success
without all that putrefied mess
their poetry was renowned
no matter where it was found
The dragon's now fish food they guess
THE ARDINGLY JACKDAWS
The jackdaws know from prudent aviation
As they scan the land for real estate that's prime
In touch with best of value in location
The venerable old schools pass test of time
While feral doves and hawks migrate to city
Where humanity's detritus scatters wide
With copious pickings putrefied and gritty
The jackdaws, more selective, have their pride
Choosing well kept lawns and sports fields to supply
A table that's both generous and refined
Then from above look down with corvine eye
On a land that nourishes body soul and mind
Like others who discern a deep heart's cry
Their instinct calls them back to Ardingly
Ossenburger, the business genius,
when he graduated from college,
he started a budget mortuary service.
Five dollars a corpse!
He was the Wal-Mart of death.
Burry ‘em, burn ‘em, float ‘em down the river,
get ‘em by the gross like a bag-o-chicken wings.
Bodies stacked like cord wood rotting beneath an eve,
he had a secret process for sorting, storing, and disposal.
He hoarded the cadavers like a squirrel hoards its nuts,
buried and forgotten,
never wondering where they’ll pop up.
Dough rolling in from all the strapped families,
Ossenburger was the drug lord of putrefied flesh.
While puddles of fat caramelized within the soil,
he donated excess funds to his fondly held private school.
He wrote off all his charity,
he hoarded up the dough,
with more babies born daily,
he kept profits up with our death toll.
Pencey held him in architectural esteem.
For all his generosity
they used his name
for their new wing.
Tell us Ossenburger about your fancy car,
how you dream of stiffs between each shift
and Jesus ignores our prayers to say how lucky you are.
Our only bit of justice, some smidge,
some smear of slight relief,
is hearing Marsalla’s flatulence
during your puffed up prep school speech.
On the edge of metropolitan midnight
he lays in a breathless silence
rasping the evanescing yesterdays to his windows
both open and locked,
while the unknowing below in stale smoke barrooms,
wait to sear his wounds and retell his life
in putrefied requiem.
Abashed metropolis
echoing of muted voices once adorning the streets
in practiced synthetic ritual,
the vile awash and seeping through asphalt cracks,
the scent of rot, old and new, smattered on old brick edifices
silences the ascending smoke plumes
belched from and within dirtied concrete towers,
the final endeavor from within a dying mans spirit
reaching out to no one
City’s voice wails from the antechamber in darkness
anxieties fracturing the panes amongst the downtown fire
of urban panic
lucidity congealing away within him, kept only in the moment
by metronome dripped medicine
exposing him to his damp streets, dirtied culverts, sewer ditches
chemically induced and maintained.
Fighting for his identity within this sterilized chaos,
whispering for the few of open mind somewhere below the window sill,
quicky stepping onward, over his newsprint life,
calling out one last time
There he lays in cold white sterility,
calling silently to his windows, both opened and locked,
watching his stories catch and fade in the dull humid streetlight
wisped away on steam grate stale winds,
the dying soul, eyes closed, his aged lined face
muddied, scraped, and walked over,
through the grime of progression left on sullied pavement.
The devil done put a new face
on an old sales technique
It's brash, it's bold
It's tricky sweet
But it tastes sour, this maggot treat
He swapped the fresh for the spoiled meat
Had to bait the trap good,
hide the kill switch under the hood
Alternative facts is the new money wood
This new source of energy lies
beneath methane colored skies
Smells kinda putrefied,
smells like somebody died
Fracked up those new found lies
Alternative facts is the new dung
polluting the skies
But you still gotta sell it to the people
as sweet-smelling pecan pies
You gotta know how to
bait the trap good,
hide the kill switch under the hood
Alternative facts is the new money wood
Turning truth into lies
requires filthy lucre ... this has always been understood
Bait and switch,
don't give 'em what they agreed to get
Spoiler alert: this truth-teller is gonna snitch
Those alternative facts being piped into your homes
is gonna make somebody filthy rich
Bait and switch,
don't give 'em what they agreed to get
Give 'em the old landfill reservation trick;
so when you enter your latrine, you better watch where you sit
Check the fine print on the sales agreement,
you'll find you bought yourself a pile of excrement
Historical footnote: The Australian government removed Aborigines, the first natives, from their ancestral lands that was rich w/natural resources such as gold, silver and oil. They placed them in Central Australia on barren ground reservations atop toxic landfills. The American government did similar treatment to Native Americans.
We shall meet again, my friend
in Johannesburg, my friend
After the revolution
Ha! Ha! Ha!
We shall dine on gold plates
And wine on rich red blood
We shall roam the open veldt
from Pietersburg to Natal
Cape Town to Port Elizabeth
Our spears raised in triumph
Our poisoned arrows in their sheaths
Our teeth sharpened for the dinner party
Yes, we shall roam, my friend
From the Limpopo to the Drakensburg
We shall chant
We shall shout
We shall sing and jump and dance
After the revolution
Like the savannah in flames
Our laughter shall be heard
across the length and breadth
of this earth, my friend
Our darkness shall permeate
the golden castles and silver beaches
their presence has putrefied
They all shall be cleansed
Heja! my friend
Till we meet again
in Johannesburg
After the revolution
“ Does the Angel in the Whirlwind still Direct the Storm ? ”
As blood in rivers of crude black burned
the prophets mourned
and woe upon the angel dancing in the storm
to the reign of hail
and bitterness forlorn
have returned their heroes desperate
in ranks made heroic by stone white crosses
To victorious eulogy their march to stagnant
It is but the irony of sand and oil
and hell made fortress by the tongue of lies
And ever innocence in the whirlwind; dies
What of man by the beast encountered
shall savage applause from those demented
in praise to lift them on the tornadoes wings
the seraphim's debacle devours them
they are lost in the irony of oil and sand
as the foul tongue of lies
pours the betrayal of dust into their eyes
Triumph upon the righteousness putrefied
The prophets torn and laid aside
in revelations promises of demise
And ever innocence in the whirlwind; dies
(By the time of the shooting of
"The Misfits", the Miller-Monroe
marriage was in deep trouble.
The Pansy is Montgomery Clift,
The Tusker is John Huston.)
After the Fall
It started as a mental exercise.
I wondered if an East-Side Jew like me
(Richard Rodgers, Brooklyn Dodgers,
Staten Ferry, Tom and Jerry,
Radio City, Walter Mitty,
Buddy Rich, Seven-Year Itch)
could sing the song of Stetson-wearing guys,
could capture something of the poetry
of men who have no words.
But then it grew, as all these projects do.
And then I fell in love with Norma-Jean
(no, Marilyn is someone else). I knew
I had to show the world what I had seen
of men who chase the herds.
(Levi jeans, chilli beans,
mustang culls, rodeo bulls,
Misfit Flats, lariats,
pony carts, engine parts,
happy hour, whiskey sour,
bronkin' bucks, pickup trucks,
buying beers, tying steers,
fancy boots, turkey shoots).
Sincerely? Dearly? Yes. I loved that woman -
the one inside, not on the billboard, pouting.
I cared so much, I guess I had it coming.
I was The Man, the one to take it out on.
A mustang in the dirt,
the more I squirmed, the tighter drew the ropes.
She ran to Gable. Primal passion? Rather,
the one thing that extinguished all my hopes:
he was, to her, the archetypal father.
Varieties of hurt
are infinite. The Pansy, Gable, Tusker -
all sorrowing for something. Norma-Jean
has kept her looks (can't say that for The Husker).
Inside, she putrefied. Love turns to mean,
it's ugly to behold.
The pills? The booze? Or was the problem me?
Or maybe everything just comes unraveled,
but some can hide it where the world won't see.
The consolation of philosophy?
The journey is itself the prize. I travelled
in the realms of gold.
THE VULTURE
Scavenging wretch!
With a long neck
And a stinking breath
Feeding on carcasses of the dead
Bald headed crook with eyes that are red
Eating the putrefied worms of the barren Islands
He roams through the plains of the rich brown highlands
Glides beyond the horizon
When the waves start rising
Like a rocket he flees
Above the deep blue seas
No comfort for him in Antarctica or Australia
Never falls sick or susceptible to malaria
And flies through the sky
In search of a feast when nature do call
Thief of the thieves
Who never plays ball
Greedy funny fellow
Thin and tall
Never gives only gets
Never forgives and never forgets
Only cheats
Cannot be cheated
Never stands when he is seated
Deception is your perception of life
Traitor!
Stabs Caesar in back with a knife
Hypocrites that serve only time and riches
And will slip and fall in hell like ditches
Lurks behind the corridors of power
Insincere and avarious
Economic adventurer who plans by the hour
Money, money, money
He can never get enough
Cowardly fellow who always acts tough
He never attacks the healthy and robust
But will kill the sick
And eat his intestines with his big red beak
Petition
We animals and after mature cogitation
Enunciate bury the hatchet and in peace abide
To the law of the jungle oppose our deprivation
Terminate the masquerade and nature commodities equally divide
Confide to pathetic humans the charge
To their lust grotesque for power leverage
Revamp hostility to supremacy attain
Ignoramus jackasses seeking to hold the reins
Pharaohs,stars and emperors long proclaimed
The commanded the skies and earth germane
Their bones under earth's scum alighted
Unhurriedly putrefied and fetid smell did remain
It though takes all kinds to make a world
With disparate feathers flock like a bird.
Abdelwaheb Dhaou.
The wolves race through the woods...
A melancholic night breathing...
The moon weeping its elegant light...
As I drown in the lake of uncertainty...
A prodigious night...
Procreating melancholy...
A deceiver at command...
Portraying images of the divine...
The nature decaying to the bizarre setting...
As the wolves howl at the night’s mystical descend...
And as my heart cries a disheartening reverie...
The river turns venomous at the cheerless call...
The wolves pursue the divine call...
The eerie wind deceives their ears...
Far ahead I see a shadow of the pure...
But as I approach...the shadow is razed by the prevalent obscurity...
The winter birds seem to be early...
Nesting in the putrefied tree...
The venomous river appears frozen...
As a chilling breeze stings the heart...
A prodigious night...
Procreating melancholy...
A deceiver at command...
Portraying images of the divine...
The last few hopes seem to deaden...
As a cloud seems to darken the elegant moon...
And the heart craves for her warmth...
As the flowers anticipate the monsoon...
Why is it that her radiant shadows appear?
When illumination ceases to exist...
A bird rests on my shoulder...
And sings mantras of eternal hope...
An assurance of support...
And guidance...as the melancholic night descends...
The wolves howl to the infinite sky...
...And the lamentation of a lost soul...
Overpowered by their howls...
As the melancholic fire burns on...
The lamentation of a lost soul...
Forever lost...
...And as I close my eyes...
The setting transforms to “heaven”
Where flowers are vivacious...
...And nature rejoicing the start of spring...
...As I lay in her arms...
The panorama vivid as ever...
A panorama...
That subsists within the broken heart...
And a last few dead branches...
The winter bird collects to complete its nest...
And now all is at rest...
Silence is what subsists eternally...
The lamentation of a torn heart
Ever so callous...
...As he putrefies eternally...
...In a Melancholic Blaze...
Roaming around the mysterious domain of oblivion
I crept into the caves of pleasure
The crimson joy enveloped me in utter passion
I tried to stand up, but
The lustful hug of the darkness
Prevented me; I prevented myself
From getting an ordained release
Swarms of gothic darkness covered me from tip to toe
They were thirsty; they sucked the present out of me
Myriad ancient tales of kings of emperors of their concubines
Steadily peeled me out, the ecstasy I felt in the pain…
I ran towards the dense and dark woods
With outstretched arms
Because I wanted to hug darkness
To drown in darkness
To elicit darkness from the trees from the herbs
The mythical herbs
That often provided immortality to mystic lovers
The treetops lapped me up in their bosoms
I smiled like a child wept like a child crept
In the wombs of myth of darkness
I know not where to bury my corpse of present
My putrefied me
Here we are trapped and bound
By evil forces difficult to fathom
Here we are naturally endowed
With all of God’s blessings
While 133 million of our children
Wail nightly on empty bowels
Confused and traumatized
Where the next meal will
Come from
Our eyes are wet with tears
Tears of pains and frustration from a nation
So blessed and so cursed
Tears of National disillusionment of
Living daily the consequences of our wrong choices
And like the Ostrich relishing in denial
Of self imposed existential tragedy
Here we are suffering and smiling
And cuddling our oppressors
As heroes and urging them on
To another season of looting in exchange
For a mere pot of putrefied porridge
Now is the call to action
We need to free ourselves
From this army of political occupation
After a lifetime
(pronounced like millennium),
where tenacity futilely braced
psyche deeply purpled,
hellishly, and lethally
traced resulting scars -
jackknifed, emasculated
cruelly chaste
sexuality expired, lapsed,
and petered out testosterone
begone to waste,
and how this abased
bereft of eroded optimism,
nee faith no more - erased,
solitary carbon based animal
coalesced into countless
foreborn generations
(glommed *****sapiens
salient survival skills)
mortified, putrefied, and
stagnated toxic brew
quaffing poisonous
score peon - composite gin,
barley distilled, exiled,
and fragmented
human encased
faculties doggedly
catapulted, with haste
squandered genetic inheritance
kamikaze potential
apathetically plundered, akin
how Hindenburg plummeted
like led zeppelin,
(scare way to craven)
his foghorn emitting distinctive
Semitic bulbous
shofar shaped schnozzle traced
analogous to decrepit son -
dialed helpline to late
promising lad once vaunted
lauded, and
deemed hereditarily, -
he busted great expectations
quintessentially, psycho
socially, and opportunistically
lineage noble storied
standing déclassé debased
forced to take stock at aging
non-thrilled man
in the mirror
haggard heavily creased
doughy paste poker face
(born that way)
blankly stare ring back, spaced
out, no longer boyish,
but gray bearly grizzled,
flecked, and etched stubble,
scraggly unkempt whiskers
discombobulated
straggly matted hair
limply drape stupefied noggin
utterly disc graced
countenance eye spy
crows feet laced
blotchy complexion re: placed
once smooth skin
donned dawning senescence
amplification trumped
"NON FAKE" crudely
aping scrim age lost
fight of his life.
SHOOTING DOPE WITH PUDDLE WATER
I was walking through puddles of oatmeal
As other folks drove behind a steering wheel
I was stuck in a park putrefied by puke
With no apologies nor lies I wished to rebuke
I was floating in a lake filled with dog s**t
Lucky there were no dogs present who bit
However there was this tiger running loose
As I watched that tiger consume a goose
at this time I really don’t want to haggle
But it could have been one goose or a gaggle
I was trying to ignore the ignorance all around
While more oatmeal headed for holy ground
Someone stole the soapbox I preached upon yesterday
But it’s difficult to stand on a soapbox with feet of clay
For I am a man who feels that every man’s death is mine
And instead of oatmeal I wished it would rain some vintage wine
Oatmeal, dog s**t, a tiger and some geese
While psychotic psychics profess there will never be any peace
After my soapbox was stolen I would just going around asking anyone
Will this be the kind of land and legacy I want to leave for my grandson?
(2001)… ….free cee (this poem is dedicated to a little boy whose whole journey through
adolescence I am missing, because 4,000 miles of tar, brick and the sea separate the proudest
grandfather and Mr. T.I. (I am required to use initials so as not to give away a son’s concern)
as cute a kid that ever was aloud to be little, happy and have a father as his best friend, and his
mom as a “dedicated mother rather than a regimented wife.” May he grow up in a world
wherein everyone finds comfort in every one and courtesy with respect from everyone alive)