Archives: Poetry Submissions

By Anonymous

I can’t escape this body
it fills me up with death
Like my cells, they – are not working
and so it is, I guess

Mitochondria are failing
the flame will not ignite
No ATP created
my body can not fight

The cells are hibernating
I am a sleeping bear
The brain is filled with fogginess
my conscious is not clear

My body is a prison
my mind is running free
I’m dreaming of tomorrow
when I will dance, you see?

The hunter is a virus
or some immune deficiency
The doctors haven’t figured
their cure is not for M.E.

But years have passed
and maybe, coincidence set free?
Some oncologists from Norway
they found a long lost key

I have lost a decade
and others maybe more
We reach out to the public
Our lives are worth much more!

Raise the funds for research
to find the final key
The puzzle will be finished
and that will set us free!

By Carol Hale

As sleep eludes me my mind flips and flops around like a fish out of water.

I swim again through the troubled waters of my life

Looking at snippets and snags of problems over which I worry.

So many could have beens, should have beens and would have beens

Want to be, must try harder to be, will I ever be again?

Where did I go?

I sank alone and unwillingly down so deep, so slow, so long – long years I cannot remember all.

Why can’t I find me now?

I had known my name, how hard the game and exactly how to play it

But the rules have changed, remaining hidden

Only to surface suddenly and swiftly pull me under without warning again and again.

This seaweed of illness in which I have become entangled

Makes meaningful life almost impossible.

i’ve lost myself. Who am I now?

Am I nothing more than an insignificant speck floating in the endless rippling oceans of the cosmos?

By Jen Cooke

At the summit, the peak I dreamed about
Though it is nothing like I imagined
I am at the top
Suspended
From this place I know the suffering of the world
From top to bottom, east to west, I have seen it all
I have conquered it, and it has conquered me
Equal opposites – this life and me
I have lingered here…now, here I remain
Perched on the mountain’s top
No one to sound my name
It is time to go, to leave this place
Depart from whence I came?
My heart rings desperate
The mighty warrior who has conquered all
Yet the road back down, it is too much to bear
Can I rest my head here and wait for my angel?

By Daphne Pottle Coley

One Room, four walls, two windows, one door and one bed.
The Alone
Minimal
Silent

To survive in The Alone acceptance is mandatory
No choice
Letting go
Floating, untethered
Existing in a void rather than a place

Dry and suffocating
The world gradually recedes
The Alone becomes comfortable
Necessity

Intermittent contact
Friends slip away
Family lives outside The Alone
None can see or feel The Alone
Real recedes
Everyone is beyond the wall
Mourn and accept
Always accept
Too many tears
Too many silent screams
Too much sobbing in the closet

The Bed is the companion, always there, always steady
The bed comforts and accepts
Doesn’t understand that it can’t replace The Human
Voice
Touch
Contact
Overwhelming
The moaning silence of the void swells
The tethers hold fast

The windows tempt and taunt
People walk, talk, work, hug, drive, join, meet, exercise, volunteer, vacation, bathe, get hair cuts, buy stamps,
The Outside is not possible in The Alone
Inside looking out folds the body into a sore, intolerable nausea
Throat closes and chest tightens
Closing the blinds in The Alone blocks what might have been

The Door mocks the bed
The bed is too big to fit through the doorframe
The frame blocks emotion and feeling
Squeezing out self
Exhaustion and pain are the sentinels
Silence and tears the barbed wire of its fence

The walls are ever seeing, ever present
Their weight is oppressive and blank
They never recede
The Alone has walls of invisibility
Always there, always inanimate
Hard, uncaring and disinterested
Vacuous
Only there

Fear hides tucked away into the corners of the room
When ready its long tentacles slide unseen down the painted surfaces
Piercing the dull routine of The Alone it glides across the bed
Sucking out the spirit of the prey
Replacing it with the venomous ooze of dread
Paralysis sets in and fear annihilates
Nothingness looms