Ten million people
killed by machete
The Congo a hemorrhage
of human despair
Ten million people
whose carcasses rotting
In jungles of torment
— and life’s disrepair
(The New Room: September, 2025)
For twelve years, she suffered from incurable bloodletting.
All her wealth, like water, before physicians she had poured
She went near Jesus the incarnate out of fear, sweating.
To touch his garment, the convulsing crowed; she had ignored
Jesus knew her heart. He felt her feelings. He heard her hum.
Her pain-filled existence touched the inner core of his soul.
When grace from his psyche like streams flew, he couldn't be dumb.
Who touched me? He asked. They thought that he'd lost his self-control.
I am caught, the woman thought. What will happen to me now?
Her faith, she felt, was collapsing like a castle on sand.
Her physique and psyche, as though bent trees out of fear, bow.
She felt, amidst these feelings, the healing touch of his hand.
Jesus said this to Veronica: Your faith has healed you.
Like blossoms at the peak of the spring, her life bloomed anew.
Do you think Pharts are Phunny
Do you shake hands, hug or play bongos
If a fellow employee pukes in their cubicle
Do you…puke also
…run away
…gag until useless
…get a waste basket in case they go again
…summon the Janitor/custodian
…ask what they had for lunch
…measure the splatter radius
…Quit – because that stink will always be there
When you sneeze
Do you…sneeze into your hand
…wipe it on your pants
…restrain it and cause possible brain hemorrhage
Have you ever
…eaten an oyster
…in the wading pool of an Aquarium
Essay Question
…What do you do if you find half a worm in your apple
Blood upon the keyboards
harmonicas in flight
Chasing notes across the score
horns that greet the night
Eighty eight’s to hemorrhage
reeds that bend and break
Music dying then reborn
—trumpeting our fate
(Dreamsleep: August, 2022)
My poems are ghost-written.
I scarcely identify the visitants
Mingling with heedless shadows.
Poltergeists outfit my words.
Though we converse,
I hardly know them,
And seldom fathom
Their prophecies.
My poems hemorrhage
In convulsive madness
Like the speaker in tongues,
Unleashing foreboding fragments,
That I might discern some divination.
But my autonomous hands move on
Planchettes over enigmatic spirit boards
For which I act only as outlet.
My poems are ghost-written.
My stanzas are tent revivals arrayed
Down the page with ritual dance.
Faith healers shout and wail,
bending my lines
wending a trail of travail,
They conjure all specters to avail.
My poems are ghost-written.
My words breathe and writhe.
They live as cells squirming for life.
Yet, inflections within them always
Mutter from another,
A propulsion between impression and
Arousal.
Like a gift unoffered, you've snatched my sweetheart!
Lifeless, aimless, like her ghost I drag on here!
Body cold! Bleached as washer-man thump!
Hair still growing! Nails getting sharpened!
White burial shroud; No wedding gown!
Flower dumped; Ruby necklace covered up!
Unknown smile! Farewell? Joyous to part?
Or already gained a glimpse of paradise?
Your hands seem to resist the mud fall!
As though not ready to be buried!
Yes, dear Death! You’ve determined to take her away!
Here she is; at your command; submissive; Silent!
You had tried this many times! Saved by money and science?
What all names you gave! Cancer! Hemorrhage! Cardiac arrest!
I think at the time of your impulse of calling someone,
You do not listen to God, leave alone the heavenly angels!
I have been praying for your death, but you have none!
Today she might be; tomorrow me; then sons and daughters...!
Or all before me, leaving me double-dead and none to care!
Bon, voyage to you, dear Death, till we meet again soon!
26 October, 2021
Let's Mix It Up Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Constance La France
Disastrous free-fall
Into consuming ashes of heartbreak,
He landed with deafening thud.
Wounded, spirits deflated
Rivulets of tears, shed.
He soon rose like the Phoenix
To dizzying heights after
Misfortune mercilessly clipped
His mighty wings mid-air.
Down, down, down to earth
He plummeted, though
Spared Icarus' fate.
Then came his transformation,
For love worked its glorious magic.
Hemorrhage within him, stemmed.
Now he soars the open sky
With new wings sturdier
Than before; right as rain again.
Date written: 09/28/2021
Cinnamon- the scent of autumn
Candles drown- wax puddle bottom
Stormy clouds- shrouds of confinement
Tattered jeans- trendy consignment
Younger days- the color of green
Falling leaves- brush off what they mean
Windy skies- snapping of branches
Tourniquet- hemorrhage stanches
Crescent moon- gloaming afternoon
Letting go- lost grip on balloon
Shadows fade- each shade of grey blends
December- the calendar ends
2-23-2021
List With A Twist Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Charles Messina
a knee, a neck, a symbol, a tool
the segregationist would be proud
fighting to breathe is a fight where
Vegas is covering all odds
let's lay our money and him down
the spittle, the pool on the ground
does not need to be explained, cleaned or vilified
this is America dammit where change
is not always the objective
where the unwritten far outweighs
the written rule of law
families bleed albeit slowly
that merciful hemorrhage
some swear isn't normal
let's riot shall we
let's set ablaze the constitution
that Letter from a Birmingham Jail
our Holy Bible
Raping the sky of its luster,
a new darkness began to imbue
Draining the ocean—taking its salt,
a pillar for Edith renewed
Shearing the top off the mountain,
its crater to hemorrhage and bleed
Stealing the promise from every hope
all faith left to weather—unfreed
(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2020)
A sword slices through empty space,
the air bleeding as sutures trace
To pierce not once but pierce again,
your breath scarlet, its stain portends
A breeze sharpens—all time erupts,
seasons hemorrhage and flow corrupt
The wind incited—torn by pain,
truth the loser, impaled again
(Villanova Pennsylvania: September, 2019)
Falsehood masks your brittle pride
from sight, distant yet once
the dust is settled anew
upon your shoes and empty heart,
as sunset bleeds away to follow me,
you will wonder if
the crimson streaks
across the sky are mine
and those black intentions
grip a male's vein to hemorrhage
on your double-face.
I tell you that love happened first,
In order
In that order— which is to be opened,
Flayed the heart that at first flinched
When the soul would blench at the sound of your voice
That once was love, turned destroyer,
You ask me if it was the chicken or the egg?
I can’t say, I know my heart quivering beating jelly pulpy thing
Would bet on the egg.
I know that heart then liquefies and pours itself out in a massive
torrential hemorrhage
Painting the pathway crimson
Congeals reconstitutes and reassembles into bricks,
That creates a wall that I place neatly back in my chest.
Memories of your soft skin haunt me
Tracing the dimples of your body
used to set my fairy tale so free
I now hemorrhage at my love core,
a rupture of your affair before
My life trenched in a living cold war
I bleed red waves of relentless pain,
throbbing tracks of a cold diesel train
My lost mind an abyss of black rain
light escapes my present closed sight
I am not able to see the right
I can only see a vengeful smite
My blood runs out as the lonely night
a Cut now brings forth the dying light
In 5 Lines Or Less Picture This Contest
Sponsor: SKAT A
Break the chains you fiend, the beast who intoxicates,
Drain my luscious blood with your violent excoriation,
Find utmost drunkenness killing my acute psyche,
Hemorrhage my destituted soul into fornication,
My savage brut, devour me for your consecration.
Written: October 31, 2015
Laura Urbaniak
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