Consumptive Poems | Examples

List of Member Poems

Premium Member Zephyr

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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Love Casts a Shadow

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 stench 
of sulfates that have ruinously risen…
All I seek is you, my love, for you have gone,
and thus I’m trapped in tangled thoughts…
Where rivers of tears sing a sad song, 
my lachrymal love tied by katabolic knots…
My hidden heart lays to rest, confined and consumptive, 
for many other hearts here weep…
My eyes of devotion become blind, 
and Symphony of Sorrows rampageously reap.





April.28.2020
Shadows Poetry
Sponsored by: Chantelle Anne Cooke 

Placed 5'th...Thank You


Turtle By the Door

The bears and wolves are few;
one threadbare widow mourning,
two grays as consumptive as smoke.
The large dwindle,
their bodies grow more awkward,
more at odds.
The heavier beasts sway
like drunks in the scant woods.
Under a pelting dark they come.
Beneath a stabbing ice, one by one-
the animals.

I listen to their shuffling,
the scrape of a delving nail.
They are stealing, they are burrowing
led by the visceral prod
of a shriveling wind.

Hesitant paws withdraw as they near,
a restlessness keeps them gnawing 
a middle ground.
I crane my neck from its ribcage;
they fall back and return,
wanting, always wanting.
The small creatures enter
where cracks fill with moonlight
they scuttle and hesitate,
a little way,
a little.

I am Turtle,
a makeshift thing,
cloud-splashed and sullied.
I sing back the needy shadows,
sing back the devouring light
in its little glass suns
least both meet and both fail.

Sit Transit Gloria Mundi

Sit Transit Gloria Mundi
Rick Folker

Our current consumptive culture
Salivates over
"Tech" and "Cell" and "Screen"
That transmits the lurid, pornographic
Apocalyptic scenes.

We long for the end
Of the endless 24/7 hollow info
Hoping, even praying that 
The Moral Arc would start to bend.

The dreadful, the destitute in their death throes
Are caught by our ever-present lens;
The Schadenfreude tourist 
Documenting the world's worsening
woes.

We check off the trauma 
As part of our Holy Bucket List
And tune in and tune out of another
Kardashian/Jerry Springer blitz.

All along we lurch from crisis to crisis
Bankers scot free, Blacks burned in worship
While blaming the ever-elusive Isis

White supremacy in the land of the free?
The clown in the White house doesn't get it ....

Or does he

One Night Late In Autumn

For the chrysanthemums in the back yard
Are overly dignified,
For the cosmos in the front yard
Are simply too tall…

When I alone looking at the troubled world outside
through the window, the Cyrano’s bluffing fades out
but, instead, the brownish smell of the dead leaves
fill the mouth.

For the loneliness unbearable, on this very night,
even a cricket behind the sent of brownish leaves
does not chirp because his wings were torn to pieces
from last night’s hoarfrost.

At dawn, the consumptive maiden, the moon,
sits by the window of the white ward sickbed,
hiding her face with the curtain, weeps 
because Roxanne cried twice for her one and only 
true love.  Sobs because she had to be blown away 
like a last leaf on the wall in this autumnal chilling wind.


Veni Creator

In traverse of the cave of my desire,               
the next is fashioned from an ember
keeping faith within, silent, simply there
as called upon to glow between my palms—
to sing with borrowed voice
a song not heard before.

The next is that which calls
when there is life in unknown packages,
a little hill beyond plateau, and suddenly
for us to know, to leap upon,
proclaiming, "It is good."

Stay fast upon the embers warming
that vast interchange of spirit enterprise
upon us—manifesting where it will,
testing a reality that only sings within.

It is a mystery to covet, that rare fire
that flashes only on consent,
on love's conjunction with desire,
on restlessness preceding
holy intercourse when soul
may enter universal mind
and next is born.

A birth alone, no welcome answer 
from the churning black outside.
The question burning:
"Muss es sein?"
The sole reply in its consumptive fire:
Es muss sein."
            ~

Coffee House

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 glass door
The electronic winter humming, the Coffee House.

Not soda fountains, nor hot or cold brewing, the languid tongue
Desires a purer drought, a drink in heaven's fair clouds wrought; restoring
Vital urge, the passion of surging life, water simply sweet.

Joy had it bottled like desire, some fizzed, mine drizzled cold
Amidst the smiles of rejuvinated lives, a dew in every eye
Rain in our desert dawned camaradie and Coffee House

Water like a morning kiss, dripping to the tongue in bliss
Passion sperming life again, cold glass on fingers flesh, the caress
Of hope deep, deep beyond spine and brain, the Coffee House praise.

A Day and a Night At the Lake

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 to die. 

The gilded glitter mixed in sand, 
Will sparkle through late afternoon, 
When new dawn wakes another land 
And evening breezes greet our moon. 

The darkness calls eternal stars, 
As old and bold Orion sighs, 
We drink our tea from half-quart jars 
And plaintive loons cry their goodbyes. 

The moon is blue and cold-bone white, 
Illuminated lunacy; 
It steals your mind away at night 
Transforming your identity. 

A fairy tale we know untrue 
But children love to hear it told 
Though even they don't misconstrue 
What is the truth as lies unfold. 

We huddle round a heated pit 
With sleeping angel progeny - 
The product of a perfect fit 
When eros was reality. 

The measure of this treasured day, 
Now dimmed by night's consumptive cloak, 
Is cherished children as they played 
With us the shell around the yoke.

Helix Glint

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 obsessions collide
Nebulous in consumptive carousing
Electrified to blaze purpose inside
Slickened hope both divine and arousing:
Isometric ripples welling with glee
Sustaining the spark that breathes into me.

A Slowing River Still Runs Deep

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 face
and spirits you off for poppy naps,
the flickering star-light  fades, 
I watch your mouth turn down 
In that soft dreamtime curve
and my heart cries the river
that floats you on eddies
of timeless sleep 


I know a day will come
our connection will be broken
your star gaze will not return 
and I’ll cry a new empty ocean. 


But until then,
in sleep’s folded caress 
a slow river runs calm,
its watery fingers polish 
the unforgettable shine
on the touchstone
of my love, 


hoping its undying spark
reawakens you.

A Creature of the Canopies

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 limousine.
Always caged, the smile is frozen
beneath a botoxed brow.
And the point of it all?
Well, for this life ...
there isn't one.

Huxley's Synthesis

Battlefields littered with energies spent
erode the code that once held all firm
as spies disguise to resurrect consent
under malformed skies pacing out a term
transcendent in treacherous manifests
insidious to stave osmosis pure
from organic elements as protests
isolate issue from health to ensure
commonality malfunctions as cells
atomically unravel from function
towards black science sigils unleashing spells
infertile to force our grim injunction
oblong in consumptive revelation
nefarious to plot such stagnation.

Evidenced

Evidenced
FIFTYFOUR
CharlaXFabels
The Church Parsonage on Church Street the old Methodist Church where eye 
used to go to church it Burned down.
My mother died a horrible murder death.
My brother died in a car wreck.
We used to fight each other though eye was elder he was bigger.
Eye was a weak and sickly child of GOD.
My Father died and eye do not knoe what of.
Eye was not always allowed to live at home.
My room was taken and the things in it like my toy box and the comics and the 
yearbooks were all destroyed. 
Eye was given a hardship discharge from the ARMY.
My home at Morrilton was burned down by a natural gas line leak which then 
exploded. My family always hated me and wanted me to die alone. Eye stopped 
my consumptive habits and was in a real fight in Arizona only was beaten into 
Jesus and left to die half dead eye still try to live and love and write this is mye bio 
mye evidenced.

Hang 'Em High

Stamped against the lightening sky, defiant gallows 
Beckon, and I, hooked toward the glamour of death 
Where consumptive dawn draws bloody breath, 
Heaving her scarlet bones aloft serrated peaks 
That bite into a day of judgement rising bleak. 

Of this crime to which I fell, the gibbet end 
Understood, and quell down the throat with fraying fist 
That, words strangled, Satanically hissed; 
Feet kicking a jig through a void in the air, 
Scuffed flailing boots flying nowhere. 

How in Hell can it be that I was so wrong? 
Clueless and mindless, my own constitution 
Springing the trap at my own execution, 
Arranged and played out by my own tarot touch; 
When you love something, how can you love too much?

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