Ceaseless painful twists and turns,
Dying marrow aches and burns;
Suffer tougher case of bones
Wasting credits in help phones,
Doctors handling of ailment,
Tablets, capsules of treatment,
Patients dumping ornaments,
Seeking Foreign Liniments,
Osteopathy from movements,
Guessing patient's improvements...
Trouble wilder than Fracture,
Lessened focus on structure;
Deeply bothered Osteopath
Orthopaedic walks soft path;
Body trusted to heal self
Making challenge hurt oneself.
A rock salted field hard-by a thwacking sea,
a shore of time-crushed boulders
that form the twisted shadow-shapes
of long-forgotten histories,
margins where the scored etchings
of red raw faiths and wind carved countenances
are submerged signs only visible
through the long-eroded lens of doom.
Here were once groups and troops
that have died around their young bones
while laying exhausted in open camps.
At low-tide, among such eroded liniments,
a time-crushed human landscape is revealed.
We see the swift rise and fall of the long buried,
and recognize a towering significance: -
that it is we that will leave watermarks
for others to discover. A featureless ocean
will whittle new features upon our own
barbaric innocence.
The look of youth has passed my eyes
Come furrowed brow and withered skin
Hair thin, bright eyes gone dim
What will become of me now?
Swaddled in warm linen
Drive the chill from feeble bones
Teas, hot oils and liniments
These aromas fill my home
The shell I wore is no more
With deafened ear and eye so blind
Brittle bones and muscles sore
Prompting life to pass the time
Pace unsteady, twisted spine
These hands of mine will work no more
Fatigued and spent, take to my bed
My youth to find me never more
All so precious to me now
Things cast aside in early hours
What a waste! Relive this taste
A second chapter to devour
Heart now lonely, cold and stalled
House so silent, ever still
Hear the clock~tick tock tick tock
Gaze out from the windowsill
No more visits, no more calls
My wife long gone and buried deep
Now welcome death with open arms
My soul shall seek eternal sleep
Blotches and splotches,
Pink and red
Don't dare scratch:
It'll spread
Treat with loathsome liniments
And soporific pills,
But there's not a real cure:
Must suffer the ills
Watch out for pointy leaves
Grouped together, numbering three
Do your best to avoid it:
Poison ivy—the devil's weed
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