#dementia poems on Hello Poetry

Firefly Sep 2014

The old fool whispers:
“The wind always lies”
His mouth frothing with spit,
Tongue attracting flies.
He pranced around,
As if in a play,
Arms growing towards the ground,
He groped his *****, mottled dress shirt,
Lifting it up to show,
His smirk suggesting a flirt.
In his cloudy gray mind,
He was in an oasis,
Looking on intricate desert, talking to the wind.
The wind,
Wild thief of old,
Wanted to steal the man’s heart of gold,
He wore many faces,
The dancer-prancer, the merchant, the *****.
He danced with the old man,
Tying his brain with laces,
The old man was twirling,
Humming a tune,
Laughing as into the water he went.
-**Firefly

Copyrighted September 15 2014
All rights reserved.

#loss #firefly #wind #dementia #oldman

CC Sep 2014

Mail

Need silence
Within this car
I need your embrace
within your arms
Don’t even know what hands are anymore
I’m finding it hard to explain what they are for
Boy I just want to know you
I just want to see you
Boy
I want to steal you
and your time
from this place
I need silence
within this car
i need your embrace
within your arms
i don’t even know what hands are anymore
finding it hard to explain what they are for
Keep still
So we can touch
be real
will we keep in touch
I just want to hold you
In my touch
It’s not so hard
aren’t we enough?
Don’t even know what hands are anymore
Hard to explain what they are for
Boy I just want to know you
I just want to see you
Just want to steal you

#youth #dementia #long-distance #young-love

Christopher K Bayliss Aug 2014

Dear Old Dad

He stares all day out into space,
looking for she whom does not show.
A frightened look adorns his face,
Is something missing, he should know?

He is not sure, why or who
these strangers are who do converse.
He doesn't know quite what to do,
why is he here? Why have a nurse?

They look at him with loving eyes.
Smiling glances flow across.
What do they seek and what's more, Why?
He does not know, he's at a loss.

These souls have so much love to share,
why are they pointing it his way?
He only wants his Mother around
and she should be here any day.

He feels sorry for such woes.
So lets them smile and talk away.
Secretly he does wish they would go,
he wants to go outside and play.

They say to him “Well bye then Dad.”
It sends such shudders down his spine.
He thinks that they must all be mad.
Call me Dad, I'm only nine.

They wave their hands as off they go
and he waves back, too be polite.
Though memories will never show
and he will not live through the night.

At his grave side his family mourn,
so sorry that he went this way.
It's hard forgeting children born,
and showing them no love display.

But as they pray they should look above
and as the sun lights, sullen day.
They might see looking down with love
the personage for whom they pray.

Disease all gone, with clear mind,
the one that earlier thought them mad.
With caring heart and thoughts so kind,
the spirit of there “Dear Old Dad”.

The loss of a parent is bad but multiplied immensely when the parent has no knowledge who you are.
2012

#love #friends #lost #mom #dad #family #old #alzheimers #play #dementia

Francie Lynch Jul 2014

Oafie

Oafie lingers before his mirror
Pointing at the slinger Dillinger,
In his black suit,
******* his loot,
He won't go in there.

Then Oafie puts an old coat on,
Posing before his cheval,
Sharing jokes with Robert Duvall,
Who lights a smoke for Lauren Bacall,
Who say his coat fits well.

I know this seems humorous,
But Oafie isn't left too much;
His acuity is out of touch.
But he played guitar like a harp,
Which sadly isn't that far off.

For now the famous visit often.
He shuffled stepts to classic Sinatra,
With Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
I'll visit Oafie one last time,
And slip a mirror in his coffin.

#friends #alzheimers #dementia

kimberley Jun 2014

dementia

6.02 a.m.

sunlight pries your eyes open and i
meet you for the ****** time again and again

nothing mends and breaks my heart more than watching
you fall in love with a novel fragment of me every day

9.35 a.m.

i toast bread with both eyes closed
and i let them char like the edges of my heart

you tell me last thursday's joke
but i erupt into hilarity, anyway

3.17 p.m.

nostalgia is a side-effect of forgetting
you reminisce about knitting parties we never threw

between giggles, i wonder how your words are needles
that pick all of the right places

7.43 p.m.

this world is a stygian dystopia
but you, you are my sole scintilla of colour

i feed you blatant lies for dinner
only to let you sleep with a peace of mind

11.59 p.m.

i watch you fall asleep to the rhythm of my silence
there are all types of silences and distances
but this
this is the worst kind

please, don't forget
to remember
me.

hey guys, I'd really, really appreciate some feedback on this one! Constructive criticism is more than welcome. Thank you x

#love #pain #forgetting #forget #old #alzheimers #spilledink #dementia

Marigold May 2014

Fading

She's journeying they say;
Journeying.
They're too scared of the word
To simply say 'dying'
But it is all too clear.
I'm sure she knows,
Just us well as they,
Even though her mind is such a muddle.
She doesn't eat
Or leave her bed
And a machine outside her door
pumps air into her lungs for her.
When you try to talk to her
You get lifeless eyes,
As if she's already died
But her body kept on breathing.
Everyone can see it.
They stop what they are doing
To look into her room,
But they never stay for long
Even with all the curiosity in the world
It's not something you really want to witness.
The terribly slow
fading of a life.

#sad #dying #life #illness #death #fading #woman #old #sick #gentle #dementia #deathbed #lifesupport

Mitul Yadav Apr 2014

When The Mind Plays "Forevermore"

I lie awake in the bed
Awaiting a dormant state, a state so elusive so far,
In the cold black room I lay
As expectant eyes burn and water at the witching hour.

I feel something in the gut.
I try to remember people, happy faces, in hopes to sedate.
But something is horribly wrong,
For eerie moonlight does enter the window, but does not illuminate.

The scathing silence gives way
To the horrid sounds of unearthed graves.
The hollow feeling gives way
For doors to open of where death is only a slave.

I am not alone in the room now,
For I feel a presence so vile,
Personification of decay with a blackening aura
Itself smiled a black toothed smile.

I clench with sweaty fingers, my sheets,
My mind conflicted between terror and utter denial.
Every day, I only watch helplessly
As my own mind devours its sanity.

#ghost #darkness #black #awake #paranoia #dementia #poe #forevermore #paranoid

Sian Carrington Apr 2014

Remember Me

The light is flickering, and then it is gone.
The world is plunged into shadow,
Like a wave,
Washing over an already finished canvas.

I tremble as an infantile stranger,
Passes me a weak cup of tea,
Made just the way I like it, they say.

Words are uttered in a foreign tongue,
Faces are distorted.
Thoughts are hazy,
and memory a blur.

I am a shadow of my former self.
Blind in the darkness. Unseeing.
Searching alone,
Swallowed by the deafening buzz of foreign noise.

The light is flickering, and then it is on,
The world is bright and I am safe,
I smile as my granddaughter passes me my tea,
Made just the way I like it.

Love is what drives me towards the light,
When I lie in bed and think at night.
Although I drift away for a while,
I am always there.
Remember child.

Dedicated to my grandma who died of vascular dementia,
and my family who retained their strength throughout.

#love #strength #remember #family #light #memory #dementia

louis rams Apr 2014

dementia or old age

If I could keep my thoughts together, life would be so much better!
Thoughts must flow like a river or stream
With no obstacles in between.
They say dementia starts very slow, with certain
Patterns that we should know.
However, is it dementia that we go through? That we forget
What we are supposed to do!
Or is it that we close our minds to the things we are afraid to find?
So many questions can stop this flow
And by seeing these obstacles, the decisions we will know.
I feel the flow of thoughts on its way!
(I just forgot what I was going to say) ha ha dementia!
Once the obstacle is found, you either remove it or go around.
Your chain of thought is starting to get momentum
Like a train on its track – now look forward, do not look back!
(Ooops forgot what I was going to say)
Oh, yes! Is it old age ramblings or dementia?
I guess you will have to answer that! I did not look forward – I looked back!
Ha ha – enjoy your mind – because we will lose it with time!

#dementia

Talarah Shepherd Apr 2014

Memory for Medicine

Caught lying down
The violet kiss
The twilight's wisp
At April's end
Resonates in lungs
Here is to calling emotions
Here in the green grass and the wind
Here is to culling memories
It's no lake, though,
It's too late, now
Chest pull, brain float
Alone in the motionless ocean, so cold
We turn black, earth and I, partners of stars caught staring up
What man made slow bleeds from the world as I sing
Wary, weightless, spinning in white flecked purple, in orbit or free fall
Orbiting free fall

I found elation, but can't find connection
I could have grown mushrooms on touchdown
I traded memory for medicine

Twilight, violet, orbit, all words I've used before and always, tightly, weave into the living picture painted years and years on all alone on reset honing torment to the self as if as if perpetuating involuntary EVA will translate to a skill that will well elevate me from the cave, the only connection, that I've built by locking up all my insides in taking pills that I fell back on for happiness and to get a rattled head settled to the ground rather stripped me of what history I lived and put my weary body in the open for all the universe's bitter energies to infinitely catch me floating lying down.

#broken #loss #lost #space #if #what #memory #childhood #orbit #dementia #derealization #eva