(i)
The stench of rotting flesh behind the curtain
hangs.
Poised to penetrate the languid hospital ward, and
almost as certain as the death that will ensue;
the unrestrained cries for help, mere mordant yelps resound
and drown and drown
until, like a secret betrayal the silence descends
as another wave laps painfully against her waterlined body
and she sleeps.
Her moribund shores spawn familial wails,
while with sombre sobriety medical angels
sluice away each barnacle of life,
expunging her memory with clean cotton coverlets upon her sea bed.
(ii)
Beyond the deep in my perennial border;
Cadaverous, brittle, gasping for water
shed leaves of sanguinity as pesticides creep
along veins while each follicle freezes; tumbling onto the ground beneath.
Twenty years have I nurtured this morbid formation.
Cultivated with adept facility,
My rampant mate as he grows, explodes, and nestles heartily amongst my
innermost being and propagates once more.
My mind berates its feeble counterpart.
Yet; what malady can ever be wholly somatic?
All my virtues anaesthetized by pain.
These binding weeds, where canker breeds, must never be allowed
to suffocate my passion.
Elizabeth Wychbury
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-flotsam-and-jetsam-ii-raking-over-the-past/
