Short Gouged Poems

gouged construction site
drought replaced by flood ~
emerges the red sea...

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Clipped are my wings
Gouged and feasted upon by inners sins
Once pure now diluted
once diluted now corrupted
Lostwrapped in the chaos of my hardened blood....

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Statue of Eros, beheaded. 
Genitals gouged by offended Christians.
Gaze raptly at the dimensions of the cavity. 
Imagine the marbled masterpiece
Of his more sexual face....

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The body

Johan on the strand
The sun shone on his belly
Gulls had gouged his eyes
Crabs crawled into his nose
came out of his mouth
A shroud of sea tar
A man strummed a guitar
A girl laughed
A summer in 1954.
...

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Limerick: Once a born blind man was promised full sight

Once a born blind man was promised full sight
By an ophthalmologist fully tight
     Two slits and dabs all told
     Saw in wonderful world –
Beauty Contest: gouged his own eyes outright.

© T. Wignesan – Paris,  2015...

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Blood drips on the ground beneath my feet
But not from my eyes you gouged out 
Or from the tongue you cut off 
Nor my eyes you left to listen 
And not my insides where it crawls.

Unkown makes me afraid
More than my blood pooling on the snow
I knew it always bleeds
But I don't know where the scar is
...

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The world order has finally arrived
Australia probably the last bastion,
workplace reform to taint the purity of decency
indelible profits gouged out of misery
under the pretence of corporate ideals.
More wars to be fought
more senators to be bought,
when greed disguised by competition
leads to privatization of all that stood
for the common good and welfare,
and the populous become subjects of the
‘Lowest common denominator’.

© Harry J Horsman 2012...

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Sixteen years difference, 
a good friend's daughter to boot; 
this woman gouged deep with her husky tones,  
her easy laughter 
and comfortable manner.  

I was … am trapped 
between the trite taboos 
and her taut thighs; must meditate 
when all are there to wrench my eyes 
from her generous chest l
est I become some sort of pervert.  

Yet she is a woman, 
I a man - 
my friend, her father, a decade and more 
beyond my age - 
and my hormones rage....

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Education doctrine
Is racked on test scores
Measuring up the most valuable.
Receptive impressions gouged 
By a lionizing of form and procedure
Severing umbilical 
With state branded protocol
Mass harvesting, mass manipulation

Come a time when
Teachers, legislators, parents
Can embrace possibilities
and give up defining.
What is already known
Is not worth repeating
So fill your own head
With miscellaneous garbage
And leaving budding youth
To their natural instincts...

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A broken vase
is mendable
with a bit of glue.

Silver solder
repairs a rip in metal.

New parts often
keep the car running.

A doctor plasters
a broken bone.

New shingles replace
a worn-out roof.

Road crews pour asphalt
into dangerous pot holes.

Planks of wood
restore barn doors.

No substance on earth
can mend a broken heart.

Time is the only cure;
 healing is slower than molasses.

Sometimes, grief-gouged wounds
leave shadows
reaching into eternity....

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Held real in moments, 
I see your hand, 
Between the pillow and the bed; 
I feel your arm, 
Warm under my neck, 
Your breath soft on my back, 
But turning, 
I shift 
Awake 
Without you.

And for a minute, 
I sit blindly on bed’s edge, 
Defining borders of reality ... 
Imagination ... 
Sleep’s sand-eyes gouged out 
To perceive wrinkled sheets, 
That were your fingers 
(Or my desires), 
In their proper light 
(And shadows). 

           -- James Ph. Kotsybar...

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