Tag: disease

Numbered Days

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

There is no science in daily tariffs
of death-by-country – our morbid
fascination pulls such in to dinnle
& talk [still kids die of preventable
pneumonia – that remedy’s rate is
is set too high] & auld statistics sit
in our yet-raged throats/ We’ll not
give a fuck until it is us – or closer
relatives – then we’ll read degrees
of temperature & sweat it out – no
herd immunity talk will suffice for
us – not with infected lungs to lug
from our bed & back in lost hours
& then we won’t care for numbers
of others read out in PM briefings

 

After Covid

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

An aspen curse & other malices
grew among our fearful Easters
& sod all alters – we live effraide
since a plague is [again] among
us [under lockdown’s new rules]

Inserted tubes keep some alive –
ministers sit apart & upright – all
that distance between them & us
is to Save Our NHS [they claim it
as prized] but post-C19 it divides

into smaller bounties [& insurable
quotas] After such zilch is cushty
[there’ll be a hike in future prices –
because our pound is weaker – but
our fighting leader has won a war!]

Bring Attlee back [fuck Churcillian]
& find better ways – no feudal sale
of state & society – no Tory boys in
suits of Armani to praise/Fill each
bare shelf/Veto war-won dividends

Tear up plans for Austerity Again –
it will be our pain [assuming Covid
hasn’t taken everyone]/ We will eat
our words [Only flu virus] – it will be
our last meal – they’ll serve it to us

The Few

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Shall we embrace military ways
of fighting & furloughs – of a war
vying unknowns? Rhetoric wins
when we have battles to be won

[& rulers plump before their gilt
mirrors & spun doctors – Should
I sport khakis today? Honey! Do I
look grand in green?] As leaders

preen & try to mask their smiles
from us as our medics sudate &
have their dripped brows wiped
by twice-gloved hands [we’ll not

see a shortage of any politicos!]
They put padlocks on our doors
to save us from ourselves [such
Maoist thoughts surely reserved

for communists – not dear Boris
who bends to scientific advisors
for seismic shifts of old canons]
His Tory party is stuck at prayer

as funeral homes see profits up
What’d Mrs Thatcher have done?
He wonders – Shown some balls?
This phoney war will bloom unto

bodies in bags [of which we don’t
have enough] Honey! Do I look OK
in grey – a single zipper – done up?
It’s a trendy thing in NY & Lon-don

When emptied high streets return
to trades – to lattes – to crowds of
grazers – when our herd re-settles
what will we have learnt from our

months of one tiny pandemic? Will
we regress to pack mentalities – a
need to fly & travel at any cost – to
tarry & forget? In war there is less

[but more is embraced once those
words of speechmakers & priests
have been fired off & we look at all
their echoed shells] & few are sure

Also on Medium

One More Named Illness

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

I do not want
one more named illness
that would be a sublime act of greed –
a selfish huzzah –

more drowning in remorse
as others swim carefree
in lakes – in ponds and in seas
without fear of sinking

Suddenly – an unexpected recall
of a place – almost lost – Coxes Lock –
that maleficent flour mill
stood above a hand-dug waterway

Exclusive apartments –
says Google –
still with brick-skinned faces
over that ever-dangerous depth

A near-redundancy
was obvious to all
forty years before
as a slow decay took hold

Above stuck sluices
hammered signs
denied access by trespass laws
and for all to Be Aware – Deep Water 

With its old labour came cuts
to flow – they filled reserves
to increase their grinding speeds
so reducing depths downstream

We were three boys
adrift in a rope-tied boat
pulled by our father
at his towpath distance

Coxes Lock and its dark pond
were not an option –
even for him
an old submariner

so we were towed
through shallower water
below those
high seeping gates

Now I have no anchor
in this floatation tank –
drifting in thought
and easing my set of pains

from a day’s equation
of hour-paid time
I cannot afford
one more named illness

Fraxinus Excelsior

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Here – I have been orange-dotted
as if another fungal-blighted tree
Spotted on for obvious lesions

My fate sprayed – eyed – to-be-cut
and then left to rot – an alienation
for the good of these woods

My body bears an odd contagion
as does our less common ash –
as does our elm – both under threat

as am I – stuck – until my balding crown
is tipped to unstable and then falls
to leave me without my honest Cordelia

A Lepers Squint

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Our pew is set for untouchables
We watch through a hewn leper squint
That tunnelled sightline was gouged
by your dust-bitten youth and old men

to ensure that we filthy sufferers
are kept out of your hallowed house
of slung beams – of struck stones –
of holy words – we cannot speak out

My prayers rip up before they finish
I dribble red spit from my curled lip
I implore for my ill disfigurement
to plague your stonemason’s next kiss

Traveling Through

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

For DS

Soft disturbances by a welcome breeze
have woken me – along with crept daylight –
as my room’s weighted curtains dance

Rise – like Stafford – and write before
another day has been sucked of words
No slow verse
will earn me enough to labour to such

But on my back – my normality is a rush
of common complaints – not that difference
shown by my drags and drunken-ish ways

What would Mr. Sangster do in my position?
He would be up and rolling with his kids –
but then Mr. Sangster has secret superpowers

And another daybreak in my hand – as this device
brightens – clever sensors inside meet sunrise –
Another call to get up from my sloth’s slept pit

This ragged imagination of mine has risen
before my body – that is where errors are made –
too much thinking – William E. will expand

Fluxus

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

My heated tears contain stomach acid –
piteous shit – feeling sorry for myself
having thrown my empty gut’s content
into the piss-plated Made in Italy bowl

They will not scar my face – we only fear
such long-term effects on our throats –
heightened instances of – that is enough
for now –

Sit with me as I pop my evening’s dose
of slowers and helpers – shaped as pills –
and pray they stay long enough to kick in
and get me through a night I need

I am still sucker-punched – struck as such
through this day – but needs must
so let me sleep and find a brief peace –
I am sorry Son for saying I want to end it now
It comes and goes

The Stick

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

There are re-tightened circles
within my bind – my condition
of well-rounded concentric ripples
Feel them grip – feel with me

He laughs at my stick and walk
because he’s so very drunk
before an unequal fill of booze
ferments inside my empty gut

thickly – as if a dreadful influenza
but none of those highbrow fevers
Like when your own infected body
had been rammed flat by it

Now you expect me
to lift myself up from this floor –
out of spilt beer – for inspections
and more qualified interventions

all the while our state and yourself
still owe me back payments
for every too-long worked day –
which weigh on me as tired eye tolls

For those – and your destructive love –
put down a deposit to secure my loss
Pay out against my final demand
for a resilient stick to abet my steps

A Calling

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

It was a pile of bare facts
offered on thumbed A4 papers
She searched it whilst
suffering from acute self-diagnosis

but could only uncover Diverticulitis
there typed out and slid between
other printed sheets
filed in black dust-lined trays

whilst an old boy too-loudly
then too-brightly – grutched
far too-noisily about
his own complaint to a nurse

Consultants’ rooms
are time-flawed monasteries
of waiting – of slow duties – with prayer
and others’ voices bound to

callings to blind-pulled cells
in which our tired priests sit
But this is my wife’s summoning
to another saint-named place

And – again – an absolution follows
That necessary shrift to solve
discomforts set under our skin
and over our lives

and we are lucky – we leave
without having to see higher gods
for a second opinion
This referral is her small miracle

A Pathogen at Work

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

This year’s olive crop
is failing across Apulia
as older-than-Christ
groves are uprooted

to break the spread
of the end of the world
for sun-dried farmers
who bear the dark look

of bereaved parents
at their child’s funeral –
as their questions to God
are waved away at mass –

Their pontiff no longer visits
because Rome is burning
with rumours of disease
promulgated by priests