Eratosphere Forums - Metrical Poetry, Free Verse, Fiction, Art, Critique, Discussions Able Muse - a review of poetry, prose and art

Forum Left Top

Notices

Reply
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #111  
Unread 07-25-2017, 08:27 AM
Jan D. Hodge Jan D. Hodge is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Sioux City, IA
Posts: 905
Default

Or Byron's epitaph for Castlereagh:

Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveller, and piss.
Reply With Quote
  #112  
Unread 07-25-2017, 07:20 PM
RCL's Avatar
RCL RCL is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 6,761
Default

You think you're depressed?

This one's off to the funny papers!
__________________
Ralph

Last edited by RCL; 08-02-2017 at 07:45 PM.
Reply With Quote
  #113  
Unread 01-12-2021, 10:11 PM
Aaron Novick Aaron Novick is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2016
Location: Seattle
Posts: 2,626
Default

Poem on reading an old thread

So many Posters who once Posted
are vanished—permabanned or ghosted;
the small remainder—once such friends—
Post now with heads lodged in their ends.
Reply With Quote
  #114  
Unread 01-13-2021, 11:54 PM
Quincy Lehr's Avatar
Quincy Lehr Quincy Lehr is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Posts: 5,478
Default

The poem at the top is lots of fun,
considering that the good guys won.
Reply With Quote
  #115  
Unread 01-14-2021, 03:07 PM
Sarah-Jane Crowson's Avatar
Sarah-Jane Crowson Sarah-Jane Crowson is offline
Moderator
 
Join Date: Oct 2018
Location: UK
Posts: 1,687
Default

I have just realised that this thread is really old (sorry). But it felt like an evening for making quickfire images without worrying about quality, so here's my depressing poem anyway:
Reply With Quote
  #116  
Unread 01-15-2021, 07:28 AM
Jim Moonan Jim Moonan is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2016
Location: Boston, MA
Posts: 4,197
Default

.
Sarah Jane, works for me : ) Gazing down and out at the sea at night from the railing of a boat always sinks me... (Sometimes I ride the night ferry from Nantucket to Cape Cod.)

This thread is back on the radar screen so I quickly wrote this:


Died again today. Twice.
Yesterday too. Black ice
hole comes to get you.
No tomorrow never comes.

.
.
Reply With Quote
  #117  
Unread 01-25-2021, 02:15 PM
Mario Pita's Avatar
Mario Pita Mario Pita is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Arlington, MA
Posts: 415
Default

Mind Chasm


When life looks drained of meaning it once had
and emptied of the joys that filled it once
and hollowed of its good to leave just bad,
and I who felt so wise turned out a dunce;
When flesh feels stripped of soul and left a shell,
and memories are scraped as residue
of back when life felt scrumptious for a spell,
I wonder, feeling barren, what to do.
Like aging eyes see less well, so my brain’s
a culprit as its vision has turned blurred,
so lofty feelings that had poured like rains
dried up, and I feel like a flightless bird.
It seems to be a punishment for sin.
The doctor, though, says, “Take your medicine.”
Reply With Quote
  #118  
Unread 01-25-2021, 09:56 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Posts: 8,307
Default

Marfan Syndrome Blues

“With careful management,” the pamphlet cheers,
“most Marfanoids now live past forty years.”
I’m forty-five. Just lucky, it appears.

One blissful hour ago, I had no clue
my death was half a decade overdue.
And now I know I’ve cursed my children, too.

A verse of Larkin’s writhes within my head,
throwing sparks, the way my wayward thread
of DNA will zap my daughters dead.

Lightning-strikes of stretch-marks brand them mine.
They’ve both received my thunderbolt of spine
(a back-and-forth-and-sideways serpentine),

the jaw I can dislocate like a snake,
and limbs so hyper-flexible, they make
the double-jointed do a double take.

I gave my girls my maloccluded grin;
my skeletal demeanor, long and thin;
arachnodactyly; transparent skin;

and now, I’ve learned, perhaps a fatal flaw
in the aorta. Even with my jaw
unhinged, the news is sticking in my craw.

Why has no one spotted this before?
Among the three of us, we’ve seen a score
of specialists. Today’s was just one more,

who’s broken what our camelbacks entail,
and said the woes we’d thought were weasel-scale
amount to something very like a whale.

~~~~~

When I throw a self-pity party, I do a thorough job, don't I?

Turns out we don't have Marfan Syndrome. It's Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Hooray for easily-disjointed limbs and for chronic, debilitating pain, rather than our aortas ripping at an inopportune moment and killing us within about four minutes. But I didn't know that when I wrote this seven years ago, shortly after my elder daughter's heart transplant (for a different set of genetic defects), when I finally had time to focus on my younger daughter's somewhat less catastrophic medical weirdnesses, some of which I seem to have given to both of them.

The poem alludes to Philip Larkin’s “This Be the Verse” (which begins, “They fuck you up, your mom and dad. / They do not mean to, but they do.”), and also to this passage of William Shakespeare’s
Hamlet:

HAMLET: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
POLONIUS: By the mass, and ’tis like a camel.
HAMLET: Methinks it is like a weasel.
POLONIUS: It is backed like a weasel.
HAMLET: Or like a whale?
POLONIUS: Very like a whale.

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 01-26-2021 at 09:00 AM.
Reply With Quote
  #119  
Unread 01-26-2021, 10:01 AM
Mario Pita's Avatar
Mario Pita Mario Pita is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Arlington, MA
Posts: 415
Default

I'm sorry your family is going through this and hope that you will all leave the doctors with jaws agape in awe at how you all avoid all but the mildest symptoms throughout your lengthy, healthy lives.
Reply With Quote
  #120  
Unread 01-26-2021, 10:33 AM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Posts: 8,307
Default

I WIN! I WIN!

I mean, thanks, Mario! Your good wishes are much appreciated.

Update: Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome in the news.

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 04-04-2021 at 07:43 PM.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump



Forum Right Top
Forum Left Bottom Forum Right Bottom
 
Right Left
Member Login
Forgot password?
Forum LeftForum Right


Forum Statistics:
Forum Members: 8,399
Total Threads: 21,840
Total Posts: 270,797
There are 849 users
currently browsing forums.
Forum LeftForum Right


Forum Sponsor:
Donate & Support Able Muse / Eratosphere
Forum LeftForum Right
Right Right
Right Bottom Left Right Bottom Right

Hosted by ApplauZ Online