Best Smallpox Poems
A double sonnet in which the great detective and his faithful sidekick, Dr. Watson, alternately deduce the cause of Sherlock’s latest malady…
Part the first
Sherlock could not deduce his source of pain
at first. “Try as I might, I cannot find
the cause – is it contusion, or a sprain?
Perchance a mere psychosis of the mind?
“Yet by deduction, I’ve ruled out the plague,
consumption, smallpox, cholera, and mumps.
My symptoms, although serious, are vague –
this lack of answers has me in the dumps!
“Where’s Watson? He would have a quick prognosis –
I’ve never seen him err in all our years”.
Then! Churn of stomach yields its diagnosis
just as his friend, the good doctor, appears:
“What seems to be the problem, troubled one?”
“It’s alimentary, my dear Watson!”
Part the second
But from the learnéd doctor’s point of view,
there yet were tests and readings still to take.
He’d learnt the ill effects of poor review
and on his friend would not make that mistake.
“Stick out your tongue! Now, turn your head and cough!
Say ‘ah’. Hold this thermometer in place,
and while you’re at it, take your trousers off -
we’d better check your prostate, just in case!"
But Sherlock dashes to the water closet
in dire urgency and grave chagrin
to make a loud and liquidy deposit.
“It’s diarrhea!” Doc yells with a grin.
“How did you know?”, shouts Holmes. “How in tarnation?”
“Why, Holmes, mere process of elimination!”
written 17 Jan 2020
Why, the greatest enemy of man is man
for man has subdued everything else
Fear not the tiger, fear the murderer's plan
Just hearken well to what history yells!
At times twas jingoism, at times a rancorous desire to do harm
Fear just man's malice and his ugly evil
If his dagger blow fails, he'll get you by black magic charm
His heart and mind alone well shelter the devil.
For how many fall prey to lions or snakes
one could even count them on fingers
Man invents a cure for smallpox but missiles too he makes
and he mercilessly kills without harbingers.
Man invented as many things for his destruction and harm
as he did for his benefit and good
He's inventor of bombs as well as tractors on the farm
And doesn't he detest acting as he should?
Man alone is behind the bloodiest of bloodshed
The angels too had foreseen his wars and battles
From the gory battlefield to the humble homestead
with the shrieks of murder our earth forever rattles!
Close your doors and your home secure
not to deter beasts, but to lock out the robber, the thief
For no greater danger than man lurks there for sure
Fear not the fierce bull, that you can turn into beef!
Wild beasts might be known to gobble us up
but isn't man as well found to be a cannibal?
Gosh, humans too on human flesh do sup
Man tis far more fearsome than any poor animal.
The greatest enemy of man thus is man himself
How much blood has he ruthlessly spilt of his own kind
Look out for the bottle of poison on his shelf
Till the deed is done, no knowing what goes on in his mind.
The poor young lady refrains from venturing out at night
How now, what does she so fear?
She fears nothing but assault by man's might
so rarely is she stalked by a grizzly bear!
Fortunately for us, this ain't how it always ends
man can always be the best of friends
So we can still count more on buddies and cronies
instead of focusing on foes and fiends.
For man he can be a hero and saviour
if judicious he is about right and wrong behaviour.
Besides religion as I know, infact does actually foretell
That the end of ALL killers and murderers
is that inferno of divine wrath we all know as hell!
Silver Strands
Platinum it was, not a hint of gold
Silver tiara was grandma’s crown
Brushed over her head, to a bun rolled
She always refused to wear it down
It shone in the sun silvery bright
Her bun boasted a badge of honor
Holocaust survivor fled at night
Now in the free world as a senior
Nazi tattoos, numbers on her arm
Smallpox scars were evident too
But they never filled her with alarm
A lucky lass, she had made it through
A dark-haired teen had boarded a boat
Marrying a man she met at sea
Just their clothes, nothing else to tote
Seeking the Statue of Liberty
Each silver strand was born of worry
For family in Poland left behind
Her escape had been made in a hurry
In a brave quest for freedom to find
*Written for Susan and Andrea’s “Silver Strands” contest and inspired by my maternal grandmother’s escape to freedom
Watching the small crowds of people declaring their rights
Guns on their belts in their hands yelling at Governors and pressing at policemen
Spitting at mask wearers, licking boxes and pointless fights
Indifferent to the sufferings of neighbors, family and friends
Unmoved by the tears and fatigue of nurses and medical teams
Please remember in years gone by the names who have lived and died
Suffering times, cruelty and fears— remember humanity’s most atrocious years
The Holocaust, Ann Frank, attacks on the disabled, the old
Hiding under wallboards and floorboards, in attics, in the woods,
Sent to Concentration camps, Russian work camps, to death in Siberian Ice
Mandela in Pollsmorr Prison, smallpox, the Indian’s Trail of Tears,
Refugee children now during our times from fear of the others its over 3 years
In contagious prisons torn from their families—hardship misery and pain
Yelling for our rights over the attempts to keep us well to help our neighbors and friends
As people drink beer and watch videos and complain and complain
How dare we protect our grandparents from this illness from death
Listening to the anger and threats — its fear I know its money, greed and attempt to blame
Presidential desire for power and pathological indifference to others all back again
But we must remember, we must, the horror on earth when mankind goes insane
Pardon skepticism, but it’s true
There’s too much ado about Swine Flu
Thirty-one deaths by May of ‘09
In 25 nations worldwide
Avoid all public transportation
And forego annual vacations
Protect us from the dreaded Swine Flu
By closing our schools and churches too
The government was slow to react
When HIV first left its tracks
On drug users, gay communities
Thousands died in the 1980s
But when the “pure of soul” met demise
With blood transfusions linked to lost lives
AIDS won interest from politicians
Lightning struck, they sprang into action
Swine Flu can kill, but what’s the fuss?
Other illnesses claim more of us
Look back to the Fourteenth Century
For true epidemiology
Black Death caused widespread annihilation
Nearly half Europe’s population
The Smallpox deadly legacy
Egypt-born, 1350 BC
Fifteen million had this disease
As recent as the 1960s
Eradication finally defined
December 1979
Return to Century Fourteen
To find the world’s first quarantines
Cholera ships confined to ports
But still this plague reached landlubbers’ doors
Regular flu in winter thrives
Each week taking 800 lives
Though common colds seldom spell doom
Thousands flock to emergency rooms
So answer this: Why all the hype
When Swine Flue takes a gentler bite
Newspaper headlines must be filled
Across their banners Swine Flue spills
Or could these reports be diversions
For something more foul in our nation
Are dogs now being wagged by their tails
As health hazards go, the Swine Flu pales
Hire Willie to write a theme song
But don’t expect us to sing along
Don’t blink, or Washington may think
They’ve succeeded in this hoodwink
I went to the mailbox
Much to my dismay
I would've rather had smallpox
Than what I found today
I may sound dramatic
And I guess that is true
But what I found so traumatic
You sounded so blue
Did it cross your mind
As I curled in your womb
That the people I'd find
Couldn't deal with your bloom
Did you find some compassion
When you ran with the wind
Did you dress in high fashion
Or the flower child trend
I hate that my screaming
Got under your skin
One nurse was redeeming
So the doctor dropped in
Now I will tell you
The source of our pain
Was a clavicle fracture
With a nerve induced strain
This poem is of childhood
And all it entails
I won't create falsehood
For truth always sales
Don't put your guilt and pity on me
Or whatever you felt in the latter
You'll never recall the flower I'll be
Came from mental abuse, hate and batter
To vaccinate or not?
What about diseases we forgot?
Like polio, T.B and Smallpox?
Kids can't take peanuts to school, or not,
But they can bring Measles and Whooping Cough.
What other diseases have we forgot?
To vaccinate or not?
The Man from Darwen
Came there a man from Darwen,
In the heart of the Lancashire Hills,
A Town of industrial landscape,
Coal Mines and large Cotton Mills.
These times of hardship and struggle,
Left its scars upon the folk,
Working class agents of Victoria,
Amidst black chimney stack smoke.
Luke dear Luke, please tell me,
Of your life and how you’ve been.
Speak to me beyond the Gravestone,
Narrator paint the scene.
Born and raised impoverished,
Education for you not required.
Straight down the Pit at fourteen,
There till your lungs expired.
If it wasn’t the work that got you,
Beware of Smallpox epidemic,
Thirty-two years was no life at all,
Short lives, Victorian age systemic.
Luke dear Luke, please tell me,
Of your life and how you’ve been.
Speak to me beyond the Gravestone,
Narrator paint the scene.
Processional Cobbled Street terrace,
Mill Lords housing their forces.
Fourteen people in a two-bed house,
Sparse luxury, but Workhouse far worse.
Lancashire was built on Cotton
and its Heritage stands the test of time.
My ancestors were gritty and grafter,
Working through hardship and grime.
Luke dear Luke, please tell me,
Of your life and how you’ve been.
Speak to me beyond the Gravestone,
Narrator paint the scene.
(Prov. 22: 6 / Heb. 5: 14 / Deut. 6: 6-9 / 2 Tim. 3: 13-15, 16 / Matt. 19: 13, 14)
(Part One of Two)
If A Child Wants To Eat Candy
All Day Long …
When You Tell Them ‘No!’ - -
Is It Wrong?
If A Child Wants To Stay Up On School Nights
And Not Go To Bed …
Will You Leave The Matter At That
And Do What They Said?
If A Child Wants To Run The Streets
At All Hours of The Night …
Would You Allow It
And Say ‘It’s Alright’?
If A Child Fell Into Hanging Out
With The Wrong Crowd …
Would You Do Nothing
Thereby Showing It’s Allowed?
If A Child Gets Some Silly Notion
And Is Being Misled …
Will You Not Try To Talk
Some Sense Into Their Head?
And When Your Child Makes A Mistake
(‘Cause All Of Us Make Life’s Errors)
Are You Going To Be Loving & Forgiving
Or Come Off Like Some Holy-Terror?
If You See That Your Child’s Life
Is In Imminent Danger …
Would You Leave His Soul’s Wellbeing
To Some Ulterior-Motive Stranger?
All Children Need Education
That’s Why We Send Them To School
But Isn’t Home Training
The Best Place For Understanding Life’s Rules?
Before Your Child Gets Polio or Smallpox
Or Some Other Life Threatening Situation
Would You Not Seek Out Preventative
Medicine or Cures Thru Vaccinations?
If A Child Just Wants To Play
And Not Do Chores or Homework …
Would You Not Try To Find Out
Why A Lazy Streak Is Starting To Lurk?
If Your Child Is Depressed
Unmanageable or Confused …
Would You Not Put Extreme Effort
Into Finding Just What You Could Do?
If A Child Needs To Be Shown Love
and We Withhold Our Kisses & Hugs
Are We Guilty When They Grow Up
Into ‘Crypts & Bloods’?
If Your Child Doesn’t Want To Talk
and Retreat In Hiding From The World
Wouldn’t You Do Everything In Your Power
To Help Your Precious Boy or Baby-Girl?
If Your Child Has Low Self Esteem
Or Shows A Lack of Character …
Wouldn’t You Want To Be
Their Value & Virtue Narrator?
If Your Child Just Really Needs
Someone To Listen & To Talk To …
Would You Not Prefer
that That Someone Be You?
I Once Knew A Police Officer
Who Had Said of His Beat …
A Child Can Get Discipline At Home
Or They’ll Get Their Beatings In The Streets
And The Same Can Be Said
Of A Young Child’s Impressionable Mind
It Needs To Be Nurtured At Home
Or It Will Eat Every Junk & Stuff They Find
(Part One of Two)
Written & © : 7/16/2013
By: The MoonBee
Yo, let me down this shot of whiskey before I give these soupers something to talk
about.
I'm begging a poet to challenge me, if their pens stamina can last a 12 round bout!
There was a time on this site, poets came from all around looking to battle.
Some couldn't withstand the fight, while others ran to admin to tattle!
Like some elementary school kid, they said, "Jimmy stole my writing pen!"
Poets remember what I did to their heads and "slamming " they never tried again!
So here I stand on this stage in a rage looking for another poets soul to steal.
Madison released me from my cage, only to discover me shoving her in my
pimpmobile!
Oops I'm not suppose to say a poets name, geez I'm terribly sorry, did not mean to
offend.
Let me metamorphose into a burning flame, and consume her skin for her sin of
being a fake friend!
Whatever happened to the sly fox? I guess that fox was frightened of this latin
snake!
I heard she injected herself with smallpox, then her hubby was slain, and she died
of heartache!
Too bad she cancelled her silly contest, but every souper knows why.
Just know my pen will not rest, till the day you challenge this poetic samurai!
Again, I ask, where are all the "slammers?"
Everything the power does it does in a circle
It's just like when the amphibian carried the arthropod across the river,
the scorpion couldn't help himself when he stung brother frog,
and I can't help myself when I go to the ATM and push two asians out of the way to get to
my meager wages because
by god it just feels so good to win no matter how many people I have to sting to do it.
The elders say that when raven took the sun into the sky he ended eternal night,
replacing it with cycles of sol and luna smiling on the people.
Well now the people have better lights,
pulsing and flashing in epilleptic ecstasy while noises sound from the speakers.
It often seems that I am being counted coup upon,
mocked in the eleventh hour,
And I don't even have a smallpox blanket on my person.
This bumbling hub of a casino is not where I die, where I am defeated.
But for now I will retreat,
leaving a trail of tears to my car.
-For the Chehalis indians
A NATION IN CRISIS…FALLING APART
It has been said that America
is an experiment in democracy.
If that is so—and it seems to be—
this country is in deep septic trouble.
Today, the mad dog political moniker
can no longer be looked upon as a joke;
for America, in its political experiment
in democracy, has truly gone made and
is now falling apart from its rabid agents
of abject bigotry, hate, and racism.
It appears that the pre-experimental exercise
of attempting to make slaver as common
as shackling pets today, has forced
modern-day mad dog political power mongers
to readjust their corruptive variables
to ensure desired collateral damage outcomes.
Indeed, the demonizing of the innocent
to rationalize ethnic-based murder,
has become a Hitler-like tactic
that has proven its “negative-good” desire
that has arisen from this Frankenstein-styled
political experimentation—sick exploitation.
Though most of the rabid “hit men” of the racist
power-mongers are dead, others and their backers,
due to the allowed irregularities of justice, will and do,
remain alive to pontificate their demeaning rhetoric
of coded domestic terrorism, painfully canvassing
a bloody mosaic of a grieving nation in a bloody crisis.
How long America…how long shall it be…before
this nation becomes inoculated against the viral infection
of apathy that seems to have taken on a rabid smallpox-like
endurance, that continues to mesmerize us to simply watching
the newsy dramatization of the falling apart of a nation in crisis?
Pray tell—God’s will done—the answer will be…not long!
Wake up, people! This is no damn nightmare; it’s today’s reality.
It was quite a surprise to us
when monsters came out of the night,
the beasts and bad guys of legends
who for so long gave us a fright.
We thought they lived on movie screens,
pulpy books, and local folklore,
until they came to prey on us,
and we all learned that they were much more.
The panic, at first, was intense,
folks were dying, it seemed surreal,
vampires, zombies, werewolves, ghosts,
and other such beasties were real.
They were as bad as legend said,
but we soon figured out one truth,
the ways to kill them in legend
really worked—we knew what to do.
The werewolves were the easiest,
you just bought some silver-tip rounds,
given all this country’s hunters
it took two years to gun them down.
As for ghosts, if you do not know,
ectoplasm is diffuse matter,
floating in air, it is easy prey
for the common vacuum cleaner.
Then dump it into a furnace,
and watch the ghostie burn away,
old houses everywhere were safe,
no more hauntings came into play.
Vampires could blend in the best,
of the monsters they killed the most,
UV flashlights or smeared garlic
was all it took to make them toast.
The zombies, good lord, they were slow,
and not all that hard to destroy,
army snipers would take head shots,
and attack choppers were deployed.
They’d shoot down with their miniguns,
guaranteed they’d catch zombie head,
since the undead liked to cluster,
an easy target for sprayed lead.
We even had a kaiju-type
dragged its lumbering form onshore,
just as big as a skyscraper,
a three-hundred foot carnivore.
We fired antiship missiles,
half-dozen of them did the trick,
set up some coastal air patrols
to take care of the beasts right quick.
In retrospect, it all makes sense,
after all, we are humankind,
we’ve been waring since we could walk,
countless weapons came from our mind.
We’ve killed sabertooths and smallpox,
run down real threats without pity,
killed tens of thousands in battle,
even nuked two of our cities.
What’s a werewolf compared to that?
What threat’s a vampire these days?
Those beasts should be afraid of us,
since we always find ways to slay.
Maybe we need better monsters,
a challenge for our evolved state,
something that can inspire fear,
the kind we can appreciate—
CONCLUDES IN PART II.
Although I was born and raised among German aristocracy,
I feel I have blended rather well with Russian nobility.
My name changed when I converted to Russian Orthodoxy.
I am now called Catherine. I was once known as Sophie.
Despite my mother being banished from the country,
Tsarina Elizabeth looks quite favorably upon me.
However, one major item exists where I must disagree.
Duke Peter of Holstein-Gottorp is matched up with me.
Since his aunt Tsarina Elizabeth called him to court,
he has been consistent with each unwitting retort.
This buffoon has alienated many as we have few friends.
Unfortunately, he will become tsar when Elizabeth’s life ends.
He is obnoxious, overbearing, and possesses the dullest mind.
Peter can only become a tsar of the worst kind.
Besides, he is ugly with all those scars from smallpox.
He has them on his face, arms, legs, and even his buttocks.
Peter is supposed to be the sovereign of the Russians.
However, he surrounds himself with Holsteins and Prussians.
I should dispose of this menace. There has to be a way.
I must rule Russia alone as a tsarina one day.
Catherine II (aka Catherine the Great) ruled Russia from 1762 to 1796.
It will take time
to phase out oil-based
technology people from
the oil industry
Could also be used
creating, pipelines
building desalination
plants o get water
Into the mountains
means plenty of work
for people
Imagine all the pipelines
you would have to create
Granted if we started today
with rich people buying electric cars
it would take time for that technology
To filter down to the poor
granted you all want jobs
you all want healthy economies
take time to change
Take time to adapt to change
create plans that include the needs
of all people God created
a balanced world
where nature had the ability
to clean the air
and create a stable environment
in reclaiming arad lad
spreading plants into places
they couldn't reach
in growing trees on mountains
that where arad before
you would be giving nature
the chance to heal the world
at one time the human race
through faeces into the street
urine and faeces in the street
created the breeding ground
for the plagues smallpox
and many more
The world looked at God and blame him
but in truth, it was their fault
they changed, they build toilets
they build sewage systems
They learned about viruses
they built hospitals
they started scrubbing hands
they overcame their pollution problem
now we face another pollution problem
one man's problem
is another man's challenge
working together
We can overcome
these problems
accepting climate change
is the first step
building plans
taking time to effect change
helping people in a job transition
there is plenty of work for people
if we use our brains
to make effective plans