Short Scabby Poems

Cat Needs a Workout

Flabby 
Tabby

Chat Cat

Gabby
Tabby

Grumpy Cat’s Relative

Crabby
Tabby

Cat with 9 Violent Lives

Scabby
Tabby

Cat with Raggedy Coat

Shabby
Tabby

Cat of the Convent

Abbey 
Tabby

July 13, 2022...

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Bygone days

Climbing trees 
Paper boats
Scabby knees
Duffle coats
Pick n mix
Runny nose
Thrupenny bits
Scruffy clothes 
Flying kites
Desperate Dan 
Conquer fights
Tins of spam
Spots n pimples
Teachers cane
Hunting thimbles
Bronco lane
Skimming stones
Hopscotch
Nit combs
Chicken pox
Kicking cans
Running wild
Building dams
Fifties child...

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For my little boy

Wild eyes, damp forehead
one chase then broken
my vase - not your limbs.

Wheels flash, height, open, 
one blink - you have taken
a plunge in the pool.

Legs scabby, undaunted
galloping, stomping
our dog is your horse. 

Heros, villains,  world's conquered
exploring,  advancing
you're the king of your land.

Hands sticky with wonder
jumping over the oceans
you pause just to tell me - I am still your 
queen....

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he wears a leather jacket
with buttons lost their shine
and rolling stones, jimi hendrix
kool and the gang
but he can't sing them
no more
oh, baby
no more.

scabby fingers
chipped away
by taut chords
now slack
no longer
quick
or 
any rythme
to 
them.

and he can't
make music like he used to
any more nor
thrust his hips
so throws his guitar
around his neck
kicks the stool
and waits
for the notes
to 
spring
oh, baby, how he sings....

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Proof in Lock of Hair and Baby Tooth

‘Love you mama’
Shouts a fairy’s
baby tooth
set long before
in a violet velvet box.

‘Miss you lots’
whispers mama,
eyes fixed as she
fondles the
pearly bit.

This kind of love
so fast, no force
of wind can pry
from a mother’s
heart hammered to pieces

clumsily restored
with loving epoxy
and homemade patches
of friends and
family.

Time’s stitches transform
the gaping wound in
scabby healing
and finally the
scar – another proof.


©Kathryn McL. Collins...

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Sometimes
it feels like 
a mauling
these bits and pieces
you extract from me
like a parasite feeding 
sucking from my being
my life force without
permission or qualm-
this is my life,
my precious life
if you must feed from me
consume all of me
please, don't leave me 
grossly deformed
skinless, raw
pinked fleshed,
wet, sore and bleeding
open to infection
where yellow pus ooze
the scabby scabs scabbed over
and over and over again.
let me live whole
or let me die whole....

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