Still. Affects Me.
Just like paint under paint, under boarded up doors.
The leeching doesn’t stop.
When I was young, the paint was already crusting over.
It was done already, no one understood.
I know it does.
Affect Me.
I don’t really know the extent of it.
Like water damage.
Or hurting damage.
It’s just my mind which causes new creases in my actions.
The greasy, bristly Me.
It was done.
I turned 21 and the boarded up doors started creaking.
All the bad things in me that didn’t yet make sense.
It’s all about a diagnosis.
It was just me growing up.
In the quietness which no one tried to understand.
Then they painted over that again.
Splashed paint around ineffectively.
It should make sense!
What Still Affects Me?!?
They say I’m as cured as I’ll ever be.
The diagnosis…
Leeches through.
Is as thorough as…
Paint splattered ineffectively.
Which somehow Still Affects Me.
silhouettes of stray dogs on the horizon
strut about the streets
a cold eastern wind blows
bringing cruel june's heat
as I lay in bed forgotten and alone
my skin rots off, I turn to bone
vermin gather to feast
vultures out the window
maggots leeching out
i have wasted my life
Please don't open the dam,
Violently flood fresh water with salt.
It's been about time this bridge will weather and collapse.
Though my cupped hands ache for brine,
You keep me longing for the glow with a bright smile on my face.
I need to keep smiling, because the glow will never stop.
It could never stop, and that can mean just so much.
Label it the cradle of my hurt, if you would
Though they'd see it was only blue sunset at best.
Back to the days when basking in the blue
Was all I could truly stand to do
Spent twelve months anticipating the end of the world, and it's still yet to face my share.
So cheers to us. Lest we diminish. Let's idle at the enscarpment's edge
As if we'll reduce this tearing of threads.
Leeching about my life the way I do – it's a shame, and to what end?
To what end do I learn that, eventually, every lesson teaches the same.
No, it's not you. No, it never really was.
So drop the dagger, buddy.
You must fix your heart.
How do I compare to thee?
Your intransience knows no bounds
Id gesticulate more often than not
Your red Mantra dress knows no warmth
Your like a mermaid uncaught
You're darndest to know
You're like a Newfoundland
Leeching perilous unreason
Your everyone’s confidante except mine
You turn me into wilderness
I do not know my heart?
I am left speechless
On the morning of your coming
you leave me dumb confounded
It’s a searing, wordless pain to be unsure of my own identity
Lost in the day to day, shackled by the ins and outs of my stoic life
Mirrors look back at me, a hazily dreampt structure of a face without a name
Leeching naivety distorts common sense, never revealing a world of cloaked wicked intentions
I study myself until my eyes crack, in search of a semblance of recognition
Though it seems I am just and idea crafted by a bleeding heart
a carcass is moving
out from the white of the eye it is
so all-consuming
dots form in lines on the absentee spine
dry undefined lumps are soft and infusing
the bruises and rind and the opal contusions
they fire with pus and with derelict mucus that
rises in shape as if living and human
adorned in the fumes as mycelium blooms and pours
wings form from mold stocks that spew from the local pores
leeching the fluids the carcass now wizens forth
reaching the sky with a forest of open sores
sink in the bleak rims of deep skin have peaked
they churn sinkage and reak sin that bleeds from the meat
and it turns as it sings and pulls taught and it dreams
knots drink him and blink in with pinkeye beliefs
Way back a learned man tried to teach his
Students, the treatment of using leeches.
And to those who had doubting defiance,
They were told to, ‘Just trust the science.’
After all what’s wrong with bloodletting,
When good health is what you’ll be getting.
Yet sometimes leeching was overdone,
Which aided the death of George Washington.
Two hundred years ago some Calomel,
Was supposed to make sick patients well.
But some people cried out ‘It has cured me,’
To avoid ingesting more mercury.
And shockingly there’s coffee enemas,
To ease constipation dilemmas.
Yet its cure is just ‘pie-in-the-sky’,
Joining that list of cures, that are sci-fi.
Sci-fi persists with Coronavirus,
Since shots can bring on myocarditis.
Still, people long to be in compliance,
Coz for god’s sake, they trust the sci-fi-ence.
Why be like past sci-fi-ence enablers,
Who believe the paid off ‘expert’ fablers.
Why not take time to learn alternate views,
And debunk myths with good health and good news.
Scum Buckets
(For a contest)
Can American’s be
As a whole, like a tree
With branches far and wide
That is constantly tapped
Collecting green sap
As in taxes from our thin hide
Out of hard working hands
All over our land
From Eugene to Nantucket
That fill’s Washington’s till
Where they convert it to swill
That’s poured into scum buckets
Where in essence, transpires
Is that cash vampires
Sponging conmen, that do suck it
Corruptly disperse
The blood from our purse
Into their sordid scum buckets
And so that scum goes
To places we appose
Were it spreads like a virus
But why should our pay
Be pissed away
To ruses undesirous
It’s time that they stop
Leeching every drop
Of our personal property
By declaring suck it
To their scum buckets
Which en masse we will empty
And without their scum
There will only be some
Left working in DC
And the rest will survive
Like all people alive
To benefit humanity
A Shadowed, Darkened Course
by M. Griswold
10272020
I evoke a tale of a shadowed, darkened course.
Where death rides atop his ghostly gray horse.
He's astraddle his saddle with searching evil eye.
Scanning far then wide to spy who's next to die.
For no man nor woman that's ever been born.
Will escape this pale rider’s stare for the forlorn.
And upon each and all of us his gaze will rest.
Then withdraw our lives from hearts in breast.
Leeching, death latches upon our sorry bones.
Then drags us to where no good thing roams.
A place where shadows dwell and spirit’s groan.
A space of dank, darkened walls of a hellish tone.
Oh yes, I tell you a tale of all men's fearsome foe.
Of death and his dark place bare filled with woe.
I tell you this tale of death without any remorse.
Because it's all men's shadowed, darkened course.
How do I compare to thee
Your intransience knows no bounds
Id gesticulate more often than not
Your red pattern dress
Your Yes is a No
You're darndest to know
You're like a Newfoundland
leeching unreson
Your everyones bosom except mine
You turn me into wilderness
I do not know my heart ?
I am left speechless
On the morning of your coming
you leave me dumb confounded
Washed by tides, tangle inevitable,
Lurking licking tongues, tiger whisker weed
Undercurrent gritty slippery tendrils -
Barb trusting toes with camouflaged cat creed
Wet predator paws apply pressure
Leeching life from faithful feet, farcical
Undulating grass, salty claws sever
Blades gash slices, cut soles grow barnacles
February silk ribbon Valentine
Loch Ness of Labrador's fatal lagoon
Spiralled willing limbs in sanguine brown twine
Infatuated padlocked throat caused swoon
Hapless lass captured by Amoretto
Dapper lethal lech Don Juan Otto
Second of February
- Seaweed Secures -
Female entities that prey on emotional weak men,
stealing their souls by lust, claiming semen.
Using collected soul fragments to enslave,
leeching and take everything to the grave.
They will cheat, lie and fake all indulgence,
creating a mental sensation emulgent.
Providing gratification to senses by extreme beauty,
remaining forever attractive in effective duty.
Appearing in dreams and illusions of victim,
slow drain with each encounter inflicting.
Making sure of tempting images appealing forms,
giving men access to those fantasy norms.
Succubus appear to please the ego,
where selfish attraction needs to bestow.
Compelling psychic abilities to seduce,
deadly love that only can consume.
Wet dreams and its erotic phenomena,
poor ethical desires and its arena.
Shadow shifting spirits temptation,
easy eye seductive sensation.
Alluring females playful force,
changing directions and its course.
Emotional intelligence is the quest,
and the end of the rope as test.
Where bumbles bounce and witches fly
Faeries and jet streams in yesterday’s sky
I glance up and see an eagle so high
And I laugh at the juiciness of yesterday’s sky
They are hop skipping and flitting and fluttering too
The brownies and what-knots playing in diggery-doo.
My brain is on full delight energy mode kilter now
As I watch them spring forth with a kiss and a bow.
They give me that wink, the one I know well.
Mutter through supper, demanding yesterday’s bell.
I had forgotten the excitement of just sitting and watching.
The swish of the dragon’s tail, the water and sloshing.
It’s the dance of the bumbles, the rumbles, and more.
Dr. Seuss enters my head, running toward an old cottage door.
Library book smells come to me in drivels and drips.
It’s so much fun in the garden, with bumbles and bips.
Memories come fast, they land in my brain, screeching.
Remember the horror of reading about sucking and leeching?
Childhood gone, but the feelings are still right in there.
They come suddenly and hard, in this summer’s day air.
Written: 9-13-2019
Contest: Where Bumbles Bounce
Sponsor: Craig Cornish
That active song won't let me forget.
It's lyrics spin like dancing wet ink,
and for four solid minutes I think
I am sixteen, playing Juliet.
That painted song won't let me forget.
Like strobe lights pulsing our skating rink,
when I absorb that chorus I think
we're hand in hand in your red Corvette.
That scented song won't let me forget.
Your Old Spice cologne can dance, I think.
With whiff of the rhythm, my teeth sink
into our fresh, shared, loaded baguette.
That Springsteen song won't let me forget.
I sip it's lyrics like a warm drink.
In this reflective moment I think
you're tracing my angel silhouette.
That taunting song won't let me forget.
It's lyrics tease like your flirty wink.
I still laugh. I still cry. I still blink.
I still hear the rev of your Corvette.
That leeching song won't let me forget
and it won't let me otherwise think.
Like a leaky faucet fills a sink,
you keep rewinding that old cassette.
2-21-19
Discarded shoes are mysterious things.
More so than a deer, an old tire, or a deep-forest yeti.
They come out of nowhere.
One day they're here; the next day they're not.
Some stay for just a day or two.
Some hang around for months.
Like a wayward uncle leeching
a warm bed and a cold brew.
Who owned them?
Why do they clog the roadside?
Some look like newborns- others like death.
Were they victims of a prank or just lost evidence?
I once saw two red sneakers on the shoulder of a road.
Just inches apart, looking shiny and new.
Like Dorothy's ruby-studded shoes.
They must have tapped their heels together.
click-click-click.
Because by the next morning they vanished.
There's no place like home. I suppose.
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.