White light, shining through a window
in a nursing home ...
(A plethora of people, screaming,
shouting, scrimmaging, angling for advantage)
A quadraplegic lies there in
quiet desperation ...
forced into this place.
(A city is a cornucopia of inveigling inhabitants,
pondering (mostly) the pursuit of pleasure
while wending through their workaday world ...)
He shares a room with a dispeptic old man
Lord, the odors ...
who screams obscenities and strikes at him
with a cane.
(Reproducing like rabbits, they pollute their living spaces
and drown their world in piles of pink protoplasm.)
One day the old man is gone
and the empty bed screams loneliness
which weighs far more heavily than the irritation.
(A catastrophe of Malthusian misery
towers like a titanic termagant
of anguished avarice.)
His hair begins to fall out and turns
snow white -- overnight.
(Micro or Macro?)
Armageddon.
A contest entry
- Chimera poetry by cricketjeff.
1250 points, ended June 22, 11 entries
Silver trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
What did you think?
Comments
1 - 9 of 9
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Searing in its perceptions
Oh geez Jim - This is just stunning in its clarity and description, of the common conditions of aging in the obscurity of some of our most dehumanizing institutions. -
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Thanks for stopping by ...
unfortunately, I'm not feeling at all well just now and am not here much. I hope all is well in your world.
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I've witnessed the sadness, the complexities of life in a nursing home and have seen those I've cared about slowly, seemingly unknowingly, drift towards death and eventually die.
Your poem evokes all of this and more which, for me makes it a bittersweet read... that of knowing of which you speak and appreciating your compassionate words.
And congratulations on the Silver
A well deserved trophy.
Dee
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Thanks for stopping by ...
and yes, I watched a friend of mine, injured in an automobile accident, become a quadraplegic and age many years in about nine, and die very young. It was a really depressing thing to watch, and I know it was even more depressing for him to live through.
Unfortunately, unless you've been through it, you don't really understand it.
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Evocatively confusing, the disordered order of this drives it home very well, I'm not sure "enjoyed" would be the right word but I am glad I read it.
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Considering that ...
I didn't expect a trophy at all, that's nice to hear.
Thanks.
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Very interesting, more in that than i origonaly thought. Very good.
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Good juxtaposition
Two different threads weaving well together, forming the whole. But the line that says, "Lord, the orders" was that a misspell? Anyway, well done.
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Yikes ...
you're right. Whenever I type a poem directly into the box, I seem to always have a typo.
Thanks for the heads-up and the kind words.
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