Long Cholera Poems
Long Cholera Poems. Below are the most popular long Cholera by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Cholera poems by poem length and keyword.
Did Robert Browning say it best when he
wrote, “winter takes the old ones”? Possibly.
Bronchitis, pthisis, whooping cough, T.B. –
they ran amock in 1863.
I trust it’s not too jarring if I jump
from modern miseries (ecoli, Trump)
to mid-Victorian London’s social rump,
and John Snow (doctor), and the Broad Street Pump.
The City Hall had never heard of germs.
They dealt with filth and foliage and firms,
and knew that there were parasites called worms.
But cholera? They couldn’t come to terms.
The water pump in Broad Street was infected.
Bacteria, back then, went undetected.
“Miasma” and “air pressure” were suspected:
how could the population be protected?
Oh lucky London! By sheer happenstance,
within the metropolitan expanse
young Doctor Snow was working, and by chance
had learned of recent studies made in France.
“They’re tiny animals, too small to see.
I’ll prove it, if you trust the Pump to me.”
Officials sneered with incredulity:
but, faced with daily deaths, gave him the key.
He knocked on every window in the quarter,
and showed (despite initial mayoral hauteur)
that cholera was carried in the water.
And, single-handed, John Snow stopped the slaughter!
*SON OF NOBODY*
I was born in the Trenches
In the walls and roof with no fences
Drank from the seasonal rivers
Trust me we knew no povereties
We labour to live and not to gather properties
On the water different catch was our only envies
And when father went hunting
Meaty dinner was sure with my aunties
I was a son of nobody
And i lived with no enemy
Aside hunger I had no worry
Simply respect for my elders
My care for my little brothers
Much love and prayers to my ailing mother
And cold fear to my scolding father
That was my life, a son of nobody
Known by nobody aside my clans
We speak less in in the midst of numbers
Contented in my little
I craved nothing much than stomach
Take no candy from a stranger
Just be nice and pleasant
For the good you do to others
And the pain you inflict on the vulnerable
You'll live to reap the reward before you die
The simple life rules mama taught us
I was a son of nobody
Living to wear danshiki
Dancing with the masquerades
Our joy at the new yam festivals
Dusty feet at the market square
Stamping to the rhythm of the ancient drums
Cheering to the women in aso-oke
Wrapped round their bumpy chests
That was my joy a son of nobody
Under the thatched sheds made from raffia
Where mosquitoes bring no fever
But the angers of the gods pollute the streams with cholera
In my beautiful village where snake venom never kills
But the abandoned diety can cripple the children with polio
Tales of our grandfather's told at moonlight
Hero that fell the elephant with his cap
That was how we wrapped our days
Son of nobody had his lullaby
I'm just a son of nobody
Living my life with no worries
Dreamt of a day I'll be somebody
Meet a princess from ivory
Make plenty children of my own
Whom I'll tell my stories
Here I am a child of many glories
As told in the witch doctor's story
All the talks and thoughts feel funny
Because after the story of the big glory
Here I'm still a son of nobody
From their first step
On my tribal lands
The sickness starts
From their poisoned glands
My land they take
They call it home
Our prairie soul
Where my buffalo roam
Degraded with uproot
Barren land to land
Their grass is green
While ours is sand
Strong tribes diminish
Illness rife
Cholera
White mans strife
Their eventual
Was to wipe us out
Brave nations
No longer shout
Many battles and conflicts
Arrows against guns
Their ultimate
Have us on the run
As i look back
At these history rifts
Where would we be
Without those
White Mans Gifts
http://www.thehighlanderspoems.com/native-americans.php
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SOMEONE IN THE WORLD DIES FROM Diarrhea,
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SOMEONE IN THE WORLD DIES FROM Cholera
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15 seconds SOMEONE IN THE WORLD DIES FROM Dysentery
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15 seconds SOMEONE IN THE WORLD IS DEAD FROM Typhoid,
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15 seconds SOMEONE IN THE WORLD DIES FROM Guinea worm
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15 SOMEONE IN THE WORLD DIES FROM Hepatitis
Where is the funding for clean water/ sanitation to stop them?
Form:
Leaving behind the city grime
and angry crowded streets of crime.
The chimneys belching smoke and ash
clinging to the window’s sash.
Filling wagons with prized possessions,
facing our westward journey, like hessians.
“Westward Ho” was the call of the day;
we began our journey without delay.
A caravan of hopeful dreams
driving cattle herds in teams,
facing the harshness of rough terrain
wind, sand storms, and pouring rain.
The journey hard ~ without remorse,
losing lives throughout our course.
Crossing rivers and narrow mountain passes,
where rocky paths where thick with brush and grasses.
Fighting Indians and thieves we managed to survive
through cholera and wounds ~ the lucky stayed alive.
We buried souls in shallow graves ~ as we travelled on our way,
marking stones and crude crosses, we knelt down to pray.
To lessen our burden we made concessions
left behind ~ our family possessions
to arrive where the mountains meet the sky
and nights illuminated with stars up high,
where fertile valleys wave and roll
filling our dreams, filling our souls.
The Oregon Trail brought us here,
building a life, in a new frontier.
God must have spilled stars liquid
on His brooding Gabriel Marquez Garcia…
weaving, crushing and shaping words
lacquered with magical realism. But this
is not his only primal appeal; his Latin veins
spread a scenic collage of life pierced by decades
profound…meaningless then meaningful like
a glue of patience in ‘Love in Time of Cholera’,
the alchemy of serendipity flowing
oh so slowly along eternity’s belt and hanging
angel dreams on a wax, as if his pages bleed with
quivering fingers that speak of growing old when
men stop loving and serenading the moon…and
God spills me with stars climbing inside my bones;
my sacramental eyes collapse on Garcia’s hands
tasting his need for cities to become one family,
transcending more than ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’.
................................
Your Favorite Artist Contest of Anthony Slausen
*A dedication to Nobel Laureate Gabriel M. Garcia
who passed away last April 17, 2014. He wrote
'Love In the Time of Cholera' and 'One Hundred Years of Solitude',
among others.
4/20/14
Didn’t digest my all-dressed pizza
Suffering now from insomnia
A touch of every possible phobia
Mostly of ravenous bacteria
And humongous tarantula
O yes, and the sordid mafia
Did I call my Grandmamma
Did I put away the spatula
Did I book girls’ day at the spa
Did all the bourgeois really die of cholera
I’m drowning under this plethora
Remind me What’s that formula
O yes, Abracadabra
Tra-la-la and La-di-da
And poof now I’m in a gondola
On the way to utopia
Dressed in graceful taffeta
Eating baklava in the basilica
Hanging from the candelabra
Swinging to the tunes of Lady Gaga
Supported by the silliest orchestra
Hey you Pass me the foie gras
I have a cockeyed camera
You’ll see me at the cinema
I love you Etcetera Etcetera
AP: 1st place 2020, 3rd place 2025
I was a middle child,
the middle of three unwanted children
Our mother was English, an actress,
who had the misfortune of
loving our father, who abandoned us
We were all partitioned out to
whoever would take a toddler or an infant
when our mother died. Yes, our mother
had chosen very poorly.
I was a ward of a couple who traded slaves,
a couple who never adopted me,
never called me son.
I was an interloper, spoiled one minute,
mistreated and harshly disciplined the next.
According to my master's whims. His wife
was silent, she did not care, she was not my mother.
My first book of poems was like me.
Nameless. I actually made sure the
by-line did not have a name. I treated it
with contempt, a contempt I understood.
I did not belong to anyone. The book
was like me, un-named, un-claimed, lost.
It did not do well. I continued living on
my five dollars a week salary.
At 27, I laid with my 13-year-old cousin.
We call this child abuse now; in 1836, it
was called marriage. She belonged to me.
I was no longer alone.
My wife passed before she was 30; at least
she lived long enough to see one of my poems
published and positively received. It was
different, interesting, to readers, macabre.
I died at 40; causes unknown.
Possibly because no one cared enough
to find out what finished me. Some said heart
disease, others suicide, some cholera, others
drugs.
What matter? I was dead wasn't I?
Dead, as the raven in my story, dead
and gone, forevermore. It seems
peculiar now that I matter more today
than I did when I was alive.
It's already hard enough to say anything accurately
without further obfuscating and camouflaging the soul.
The faces in the funeral pews are impassive, impatient
and the dead woman cares not what's said, isn't even present.
The poet gets innumerable do-overs, it's one of man's wonders,
revises his vision of his mother and plays her piano, posthumously.
Why not say it simply? Hers was a comity and a tragedy.
As are ours. And perform the history that surrounds us.
Are caskets boats? The ship of death rides Charon's waves
or perhaps on that solitary day you happily kayak to the huckleberries.
Is the deeper sadness incomplete achievement or never to have tried?
Any attempt to decide this question for others is to badly behave.
The pablum of Christianity, esp. the Catholics, re the after life
must be rejected. It's necessary. To be replaced by community,
perfection of the human project, nature's intelligent partner.
Dusty, sadly habitable houses along the funeral route, shapeless
people crossing themselves when ambulances or hearses pass.
I wanted to describe the sweetness of her life, how she was part
of the problem and part of the solution. How love and evolution
are passed like loaves from person to person down the generations.
Find the humor in the cholera. When my father died
he waved like a surfer riding a wave or a clown riding
an elephant out the circus tent. Mom follows the same law.
The many ways a spear can pierce a brave warrior's jawbone or armor.
Gold on ancient atoll?
Gone be prospector's hope!
Gore, doth coat the brazen bull?
Golem, get the rope?
Best for those politest men?
Better think again.
Bone a-broken, dive in den?
Flicker on the fen...
Torn like life tormented?
Break upon, O wave.
How the gods lamented!
O shroud hung on the grave!
Yellow as a predator's eye?
Dun the desert doubt.
Riddles, rivers, thy reply?
Time will sort it out.
Plight of all the human race?
Leaving like a trace.
O defeated, thy disgrace!
Cholera, catch case!
Syllable, O sylvan!
Each to preserve a life!
Dreams once started, thus began!
Razor's edge or knife!
Wail, O watching widows?
We'd really rather not.
Soul a-sold, what doth ye owes?
Death, be but a thought!