Two quacks walking side by side
one looking one way, the other the other
disturbingly similar, they could be one
and never the twain shall meet...
AP: Honorable Mention 2026
I was young at age but old enough to recognize cruelty
My eyes watered and my tummy ached
I was scared and embarrassed
With wet trousers my tiny thin legs- Shaked
I had raised my hand to go to the john
But my fourth-grade teacher, whom I'll never forget
She wouldn't let me go, why- I don't know?
But I know it was her fault, that I was soaking wet
The kids in my classroom stared at me shaking
Watching me crying, my eyes dripping water
Who will she not let go next?
The boy who sat next to me- or somebody's daughter
My mother, may she rest in peace
Rushed to the school to bring me some dry clothes
She spoke to the principle in a fiery rage
That's when all hell broke out, and a firing arose
That was the last time I saw that mean teacher
Never again would she teach in that school
I hope that she learned a good lesson in life
It's not very nice to be disturbingly cruel
deeply dark and disturbingly mysterious
diabolical and Gothic, with a hint of Victorian
as punk as any bouquet that came before
she smiled when she came upon them
They were perfect, her man knew her well
He was a keeper
The nonstop negative news or publicities on Haiti
Hurt tremendously and disturbingly
The relentless or constant bashings of all Haitians
Twinge and twist my heart like cancer patients
On their death beds, who are resigned, hopeless
Penniless, helpless, and spiritless.
Haiti needs a mega break from all the powerful parasites
That are still exploiting our precious resources at countless sites
While concomitantly exploring and impoverishing our peasants
Our innocent siblings who perilously work for crumbs and cents.
It is time that all truths are spoken or be told
It is time that we unearth, unfurl or unfold
All vile plots so the world can witness the premeditated lies.
Papa Noël is a well designed invention in disguise
At Christmas time, the hurts are excruciating
And the misery is objectionable and nauseating.
Copyright © December, 2021, Hébert Logerie, All rights reserved
Hébert Logerie is the author of several books of poetry.
A silhouette
Backlit by glowing silver-gray
Lanky shadow
Lurking in my bedroom doorway
Arms stretch down, impossibly long
Deformed joints, disturbingly wrong
Pretending sleep
Muscles strain, be utterly still
Begin to shake
Body trembles against my will
I dream, irrationally hope
I scream, intentionally? Nope.
Shadow arms reach
Up the wall, across my ceiling
Cover my head
with Grandma's quilt, magic feeling
Love protection, hopefully right
The darkness, increasingly light
The whole thing had seemed some mutiny
While hundred eyes stuck to scrutiny!
A young Eve with an old company
She’d met at a roadside company,
Freshly by his side in bikini
And freshly quaffing iced martini…
Next, some careless bites of zucchini
She’d picked from a Free Sabatini,
Litters from The Free Thing all over,
Even as she held its left over…
Bikini! And there’s no swimming pool,
Not for a mile pond without toadstool
A morning too cold for waters cool
And that’s why wearer had seemed a fool…
Plus eyes could afford scrutiny
Of The Disturbingly Skinny!
Like The Cows in Joseph’s Dream
That garroted ones of gleam,
Five were disturbingly gaunt,
As I recalled in a jaunt:
Blissful walk to a park
For a promised beer by Mark:
Men marine spirits did haunt
But still did me badly taunt,
Never ceasing to hearts vaunt
That they would Marine Types daunt…
“No! Don’t voice that,” I warned them,
Eyeing the one who was Clem
Repeatedly telling him
“Marine Spirits are dead grim!”
To often hold back a claim
That could, for life, make one lame:
My Appeasement of Spirits,
Whose calming is not by bits.
Mind-Cracking, Health-Crushing Hard Drug
Whose taker has his own grave dug:
For all the sad life’s holes it does plug,
Any helping dosing down on rug,
As though a shooter did one slug
Or a dirty criminal one mug.
A time to up a staircase lug
The Hopelessly Suicidal on drug;
To all the questions by a medic a shrug:
No deliverance from his medical jug!
What things in life disturbingly bug
That we can’t The Just Sensible hug;
Drug isn’t by a little the abnormal,
The taker often a Writhing Animal!
A balderdash making a previous “it is well”,
As he continues to wrestle with New Hell.
He could take what most found, in the time of that
Particular incumbent fashion, to be lacking in any
Pleasing or greatly passionate way,
And, after immersing it into low, blue flame,
Repeatedly beat upon this quivering mass as
If it were but a whitened molten lump when
Drawn from violent, torturing heat constrained
Deep within some smith's insatiable forge;
Seen there the blistered face, scorched forearms
Impervious to the fizz and burn of popping sparks;
Blackened hammer wielded by a gnarly hand,
The repeated raising; forceful, downward strikes --
High-pitched ringing chimes of metal on metal;
And him, the better craftsman, bent desperately
To his task, shaping something new and
Disturbingly strange...
While, amassed amid the silent roaring of those
Unremarkable fields,
An idealistic generation, readied, prepared to spill
Its hot, innocent young blood over a sea of
Flowering petals for the valueless ideal of an
Unworthy hour spawned by a vile whoring b***h
Before it slunk back into the lengthening
Shadows of a withering age.
Where did all the sunny days go?
I feel my Soul tell me it knows
Howbeit I’m constantly chasing shadows
Through bravado and deepening sorrows
Endlessly I hear life's soprano
Though it sounds empty and disturbingly hollow.
My Soul tells me which rainbow to follow
Daily however, I live in this empty burrow
Not listening to you tell me which way to go
For I am lost in the depths of my restless mind
Mine eyes are blind as I push you behind.
This is the life I created with strife
Running away and bitterness rife
These are the times I chased after to find
The challenges constantly here in my life
And I hear you speak to me in the night
For I feel a trembling and I see the light
But I question is this even right?
How do I know you my Soul knows?
When I have been playing this Comedy Show.
How I live my life the same everyday
Look at the people around me I say
They also travel over shameful and blame
Nothing much changes
This is no hall of fame.
Spinning on wheels of empty emotion
Trudging and turning over spills of devotion
For should I let be all this tribulation
What will I do, if I listen to you?
The feeling-cheated Igbo of Nigeria
Now judges her a worse malaria,
To keep celebrating Donald Trump
While bemoaning his angering dump …
But plans he to start smiling at Biden,
For one should often one’s options widen,
When at stake is life-transforming Crude oil,
With huge pipes channeling it to far-off soil.
The Fast-choking-with-anger Igbo
Might start an emergency Judo
For an ending of his humiliation,
That took off from the day of assimilation.
Now, I see a colder shoulder
To all Negotiation Tables,
A Stone-throwing kid trying a boulder,
And hangmen’s dropping of ropes for cables.
Already, it’s a kung fu- movie – watching people,
Disturbingly worshipped by their cripple.
Easily kicking open The floodgate of panic,
The quickening of blood circulation, titanic:
A once normal breathing is disturbingly hoarse
And the modest in behavior dreadfully coarse.
Eyes now pop out of their homely sockets,
Relaxed hands out of trousers pockets.
Some hearts are ready to make their last murmurs,
The headaches of this moment, crushing hammers.
Fluid secretions choose knotted temples,
With bangs on one’s door supplying more samples:
Sometimes over a mismanaged mammoth sum of money,
For which one hasn’t yet informed one’s attorney.
Fear often would follow a demeaning rape,
Whose legal implications one foresaw its shape
Or some business, very untidy, completely rotten?
Which one had contracted but long forgotten;
Death now in a hurry to visit
And one doesn’t want to meet it.
To Fear
I say, ‘’Tufia!’’
Fie!
Die!
Readily unsettling the mind
And the body does bind;
Meaningful activities to a halt, grind.
They arrived on broomsticks
Cackling in a disturbingly knowing way.
Their men hid in the man cave
With their wives’ father.
How did you happen to have nine girls?
One asked his father-in-law.
He could not hear him
Because of the loud cackle laughter from the kitchen.
The TV was at full volume too
Which did not lead to any conversation
So they drank beer, trying not to think
About what the women were doing in the kitchen
Typical Sunday for all ten of them
Seeing their fate for the next fifty years
Luckily there was a refrigerator down there
Full of beer and snacks fit for ten kings.
Contemporary hunters wielding 21st century weapons of influence
Firing indiscreetly upon blindfolded hostages that double as their clients
Mutilating their customer case before gutting them with ease
once they're expendable
Feasting upon the impoverished entrails
until there is not a shred of identifiable human flesh
Disturbingly convenient as it is prevalent
Once the remains cannot be recognized as human,
there is no chance, not even a miniscule possibily, of retribution
There is no face and no conscious voice
to demand justice for countless grievances
The corpses sink into the Earth where they
are subjected to further degradation
Posthumously polluted with the toxicity emanating from murderous mouths
Wails of a child unknown to me,
Capriciously about my lobes.
Troubles me most disturbingly,
Generates many tears that holds.
If it were mines, tender the touch,
My soul, my heart, they would both be.
Extended warmths will be so much,
Eyes be wide opened to receive.
A surprise to be, of its hold,
At a distance I turned and saw,
The once wailing child looked so bold,
Child cracks a smile at me with awe.
This be so unexpectedly,
What be within me emanates,
Outstretched it did invisibly,
Delights of three now resonates.
Departure of three that it be,
Their hearts they will be now comforts,
Three souls unites with so much glee,
Parts knowing of the warm efforts.
Date: 06/09/2019
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