The experience came fast
As streams flooded my soul
I had thought of an encounter coming
But slowly slowly it walked away from my worldview
Time is such a tiny vehicle
Driving life away from plan
I least expected streams to vomit water like a sinking body
The experience came prepared
Forming river links in my soul
Even in my dream
Rivers keep running after me
I could see ornaments coming along too
I lost fishes to the running splash
Fishes i had feed with the sand of life
Life is so vegetative in the pond
And fishes are interspersed among grasses
The experience came wild
Along with rain to share a particular relationship with time
Today
A beautiful sun is set above us
Giving us a flourishing light
As cassava stems
Stand looking gracious
I believe the last face of the sky
Gives hope in abundance
Today is faithful with us
And it's close to the end of everything
i was imagining the lighthouse
on our East Coast. remembering it
through clouds, past the shady thicket,
above the cliff defaced by the dissident Atlantic;
out of the vegetative sprawl—
cooling mosses & menacing colossi
of agave plants—was your cold ivory
marred by weathering,
unconstrained saline breezes
chewing & bleeding your iron.
i pondered a rebuke.
where are the carers
for this lost gem of hope,
to repay former kindnesses
as time races away with the picture
of your boast, vessels
& vagabonds who'd have fallen
over inauspicious tides
without your sleepless eye?
ALTERED CONSCIOUSNESS
Consciousness is a curious thing.
Is it real or just a scam.
An alien simulation,
or "I think therefore I am."
Does it live unto eternity,
or switch off upon one's death.
The rub is one can't know, or not,
at least while one draws breath.
Where does it go when you're comatose,
or in a vegetative state?
Painful memories get tucked away,
and there's mirages it creates.
Is one more conscious than another,
if so, has one then faltered?
Consciousness can't be quantified
I'm just glad it can be Altered.
“magna cum laude”
i am a graduate
of Vegetative
State
My muse is on fire, she burns at the stake
guilty of poetasting, and glaring mistakes
Inferior rhymes with old Monoku outtakes
blaze all around her, as embers are raked
Badly blistered syllables, spark and flake
Whilst lacklustre stories, continually bake
A bard fans the flames, but he too’s a fake
for mincing his own words, with juicy steak
Making ado about nothing, soliloquy spake
Glory to the Efilist god, ha! give me a break
A dedication of respect
for rendering down a bard
# # #
However unpalatable
and repugnant the suet tastes
# # #
From March madness to April fool’s
digesting copious amounts of insipid tofu
# # #
Only to wipe it off
in an all encompassing
persistent vegetative state
By
David Kavanagh IV
Faint flame emergent from neurotransmitters.
The brain, a torch arranging patterns of awareness,
patterns of recall, encounters, adventures, and ordeals.
Covert consciousness realized in coma patients,
detected in vegetative invalids by the analyzers
of EEGs, the probers of the mind.
Bedridden with no signs of life,
These sufferers were long thought braindead.
The only question; when to withdraw life support.
But our deepest traces do often linger with immobility.
Our hardly perceptible scintillas send measurable signals.
They offer no bodily changes, no responses to cues.
They never give themselves away in behaviors.
Yet, science now knows them as genuine.
Are these the souls and ghosts felt by our ancestors?
Are these the wraiths and apparitions feared
by so many?
Created from the temporal, assembled from
life, is their structure entirely in the mind?
Maybe part of their energy resides in other realms,
places in and out of which they drift at our death.
Accepted for publication: The Opiate Journal, spring 2023
As Rumple in blankets,
I vegetate in unfilled torpor,
Blind enervation adrift among
Extinguished stars, among dark
Torpid galaxies where I am a stranger.
I find only dead planets, windswept and barren,
Where molecules of a distant living past
Are vaguely recalled,
And where conceptions,
Convictions all collapse.
Exhaustion is an avalanche
Making no distinction between
vacuity and repletness.
Sleep believes nothing,
Not even the animated chatter of
My dreams.
Every now and then
The cold blooded floor cements her dream.
Every now and then
She wakes up to the livid voice of her baby sinking into cupid rain.
The mercury of things on her chest is open as the cloud
Every now and then
She thinks of the diary of a teenage mother with baby sitter.
All these rotten times
She found no triangle in love.
All these rotten times
She saw no handwriting of her soldier on military wall.
Only the rose on his grave had kissed her thousand times in hazy vision.
Sometimes it seems as if the cloud over her head is drinking beer.
How will she find love in these rotten times.
Every now and then
She smiles at vegetative hands in the house of commerce.
I see a little love dripping out of her baby's feeding bottle.
I see a church of diapers becoming rare.
She's just 15 and mama is just a little girl.
Oh, Bee!
How can it be?
With your lifestyle so vegetative...
How can you be highly creative?
While the nectar that you collect is so wonderful...
How can your sting be extremely painful?
It's your artistic work that makes you so illustrious...
We find you always supremely industrious?
For humans, there is much to learn from you...
Like you, in this world we find very few!
Bee Creative Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Matt Caliri
Date: 30-05-2022
What if
Matter whether or not
You think you choose to digest the
Red Pill
Or
Blue Pill
1 and only 1
Constant common thread
remains in tact
Somewhere hidden flowing
deep inside the main frame
An encrypted Code does exist
Beyond the many Firewalls
protecting it
Supplementing the Matrix
That could bring it to it's knee's
And so expose the endless litany
of lie's used to subjugate the masses
into willing servitude
And we're to awaken enlightened
to so much fresh new information
racing through your brain
You we're barely able to recollect
something as trivial as the simple
necessity of how important it is
to breathe
And that all this information your
brain is now trying to process
May possibly even kill you or turn
your brain to mush
And leave you in a vegetative
incapacitated state
Like you we're initially before
Only difference is that this may
be a far bitter pill to swallow
Being it's a toxic deadly mix of
1 part Red and other half Blue
And the side effects leave you in
a permanent comatose state
of mind
To suffer the consequences of
whilst in purgatory
Puzzled eyes they keep feeding,
A crowd bigger than a political rally breeding
A dozen times a friend's had assaulted a kid
By him lifted up for a welcoming kiss
And now his jaw he has of them rid,
Punctually bestriding salons to never this miss@
Space-grabbing beards aren't a pleasure,
A vegetative chin, far from a treasure.
Man should 'farewell' bid to a losing practice
Like war wisely liquidated with Armistice.
A habitual afforestation of one's jaw
Is a transgression of some Uncomplaining Law
walking into
the lobby of
my doctor's
office
wearing a t
shirt that reads
Vegetative State
Athletic Dept.
becoming one
with the crowd
realizing how
i'm just one
of the crowd
magna cum laude
world traveler now
postal worker of
course what else
could i be other
than just another
nut that has
rolled far from
the family tree
The familiar face looked grotesque.
Indelible imprints of blood stains,
scarred the contour of his body.
His skull had crushed on the windshield..
A rampage had ripped his nerves naked...
Kinetic ardour of the car, exiled him to static rust
in a vegetative state... bereft of cognition.
But his mind still addled... in lucid ambition.
His skin could still touch rain..
His eyes could still see lightning..
His ears could still hear thunder..
His heart could still feel pain.
Glint of two black marbles looked at the window..
Is it dusk or dawn?..
Searching for cognitive crutches....
Interim thoughts grope his head.....
Is he alive or dead?
29th December,2018
PLACED FIRST IN Brian Strand Jan Wk 2 contest
Originally submitted to the Brainy Brevity Poetry Contest of Maureen McGreavy
The theme of contest : "BRAIN INJURY"
SONG OF THE SPIRIT
Ridden on a bed
Barely able to moan
Can't move a finger
Or let out a groan
I sense some footsteps
Inching towards me
Must be the doc bless him
To relieve my agony
Lying on my sore back
For almost an eternity
Each muscle stiff
Crying for relief
Debilitated devastated
Wrapped up in grief
Yet, this spirit
Deep inside me
Just a speck
A tiny fleck
Wilful stubborn
Refuses to succumb
Irrepressible incandescent
Yearns for a joyous outcome
Listen carefully
Hear it cry
'Fear not adversity
Never say die'
Resubmitted for Julie Rodeheavers
Contest: I am a survivor
Date Aug 22 2017
This poem attempts to explore the spirit of the terminally ill patients many of them lying in a vegetative state and for whom passive euthanasia is advocated by a sizeable section of society as the only remedy.
My darling daughter know I love you so,
And though I know I say it less than should,
(Though don’t I know it’s true of how you glow)
You brighten life more than your daddy could;
Think of the mountaintops near where you live,
That roll enchantment through a desert state,
Where sand should be instead’s vegetative -
Just like the light you shine when time is late;
Because although I know you know I lack,
And please believe I know you owe me zip,
When awful lies were said behind my back,
You stood for truth and helped me keep a grip;
So to my Lily Belle that heaven sent –
I hope you know how much your picture meant.
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.