Perpetual
Intellectual
Mother
Just another
Smother, then cover
“Too weak to recover”
“Be our good maid”
“Just to be betrayed”
“Don’t give her a voice!”
It’s not love if there’s no choice.
To deal with perpetual self-assertion
The old sisterhood of overexertion!
Sarah Baartman
Wu Zetian
Cleopatra
Anne Boleyn
Joan of Arc
Sophie Scholl
Sylvia Plath
Marilyn Monroe
Micaela Bastidas
Yang Guifei
Fate bestowed a bitter gift
A curse more grave than death’s drift
A life where they were lured and torn
Left gasping, alone, forlorn
Once the universe had lost them
Cruel hands never let them astray
Their trials, none atoned
Their weary souls never left alone
Battles fought, voices shorn
Our bodies spent, our spirits worn
No rest, no vindication, no excursion
Just the classic sisterhood of overexertion!
Categories:
overexertion, abuse, appreciation, beautiful, dark,
Form: Free verse
I dig with maniacal gulps in cupped hands
fearful of what I might find.
Yet with furrowed brow I dig further, deeper,
lips moist with perspiration.
Your shadowed visage then emerges clearly
as death on the mortician's agenda,
perceived as innocuous enough
while signaling for death's knell.
My fingernails crust with darkened earth
and my arms weaken with overexertion.
Dark soil keeps falling, covering my efforts
by acknowledging the futility of it all.
And then I find it.
My heart lies still, glaucous and milk-like,
devoid of living blood's flush as my face grays
with the revelation that it, with you, is gone.
Categories:
overexertion, dark, death, heart, loss,
Form: Free verse
Do you yawn more when tired
than when you've just woken up?
This is the gaping gap of yawn's yolk
in 'chasmology', the study of yawning!
Why you do it, when, and what brings it on?
One quirk is that all vertebrates
reptiles, sharks, lions, kittens, and their babies
all yawn and its highly contagious.
It spreads in a room and a zoo.
One yawn can make all others yawn
when seeing a yawn in their face.
It's simply irresistible!
You can't stop it,
even if you wanted to!
Strangely, the stress from overexertion,
pent-up expectation,
and the quiet stagnation of boredom
can all trigger a yawn, even if quashed!
Bored babies even yawn in the womb.
Close friends yawn in unison.
Much more often than strangers jointly gape together!
Interesting stuff. Huh!
Have you yawned yet?
Categories:
overexertion, body, sleep,
Form: Free verse
By Fatmir Terziu
In Victoria I always see fog
In the stubborn glass that always paints me
In Victoria I hardly have time
To even throw a glance at my hair.
I pass my hand very quickly
Over my half-naked-head
And instinctively
Focus on three hairs standing spiked.
Only in Victoria do I have some time
To see myself elegant
Only in Victoria am I deciphered
On the Zeiss sunglasses I expand to an elephant.
There thousands of movements are extinguished into standstill
The glance of my eyes remains frozen
Tiredness, upset and overexertion
Lost, half-asleep amid the clamour!
In Victoria I leave my signs everyday
Mornings, Afternoons, among the routine signals
I leave the space and enter disorder
Like a blade of straw in every season.
Categories:
overexertion, dedication,
Form: Free verse