Boils

The child was myself and I still carry the skin scars to this day: not surprisingly, the plague of boils launched against Pharaoh (Exodus 9:8-12) came to mind when writing this poem. Whilst we're on the personal, here's a poem about the early death of my father, "A Memory," written in May 2013 and posted here on 23 December 2014. And "The Self-Condemned," about a marriage breakup, written in August 1983 and posted here on 20 May 2013.

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A child, he suffered from a plague of boils,
The doctor puzzled, parents at a loss;
They ached and hardened to a throbbing eye
Which, squeezed, would puke its pus. To the child’s cry

The mother soothed, dabbing the hot wound dry.
Boils pimped his face – eyebrows and temples, cheeks,
His arms and chest, his shoulders, neck and back:
Each evening bathed till ripe, his mother’s knack

Of mounding the boil was a fear’s cold rack
She’d squeeze and split in pain the pus-taut head
To sick its greeny muck. Those months of boils
Were spent aggrieved, patchworked with ointments, oils –

Like a rashed fellah grubbing Egypt’s soils,
At odds to know why fate had pused his hide.
Well, plagues must pass, and many years have fled,
Though gristled still on brows, his trunk and head,

He bears the scars. Body’s an A to Z:
What if disease has ends? Those boils a prompt;
Like Hebrews desert-trekked for a life’s age,
Seeking the Goading in a sort of rage?

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© November 2019