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Best Poems From
HERBERT NEHRLICH
(04 October 1943)
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1965.
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Not Looking For A Cure
I have, for you, a theory,
at least a partial answer.
to devastating misery,
the ravages of cancer.
The year was seventeen-fifty-three
James Lind watched seamen die
of a disease in agony
and no one figured why.
This SCURVY eats the body's flesh
and breaks down walls of cells
where collagen serves to enmesh
a trillion different shells.
HYALURONIDASE is made
by most malignant tumours,
it works relentless in the shade
and laughs at all the rumours
spread by the quacks of little brains
who recommend it often.
But, in the end, the only gain
is body cells that soften.
So what, you ask, will strengthen it,
prevent scorbutic change,
when uncontrolled and bit by bit
the healthy tissue range
just crumbles into useless swill,
it is quite unexpected,
the patient is extremely ill,
that's what James Lind detected.
Two hundred years, and to the day
a Scotsman and a Yank
they theorized ascorbate may
be money in the bank.
The battlefield of scurvy's void,
so similar to cancers,
it looks as if it's been destroyed
by drunken Cossack dancers.
And soon they found, ascorbate would
inhibit cancer spread.
Now Cameron and Pauling could
perhaps not raise the dead,
but stop the greatest single scourge
of practising its chilling
and uncontrolled satanic urge
to decimate by killing
the people, often in their prime,
with cruelty and greed.
Could one plain substance stop this crime
and turn this desperate need?
Now almost forty years have passed
and many millions died.
Yet I can feel the icy blast,
they will not save your hide.
Herbert Nehrlich
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1966.
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Not Love
When daisies smile and robins sing
one hears the music of new Spring.
Where are you, apple of my eye
without your velvet touch I cry.
It's love, so true it harbours pain
competing now with time's own cane.
Like windblown, badly balanced darts
no love comes from our longing hearts.
Some day there will be done a thesis
love only works outside the species.
When daisies smile and robins sing
it's music but not love that's king.
Herbert Nehrlich
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1967.
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Not Misogynics
I will, she uttered, read indeed
and sort the cabbage from the weed.
Don't you just love the little fibs?
I think it must be Adam's ribs
that men are better when it comes
to add, subtract and do their sums.
And even more, we tend to do
what we have promised, that is true.
However, if you don't subscribe
to what is now a secret tribe.......
we are not known as misogynics,
no, not at all, we're genuine cynics.
Herbert Nehrlich
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1968.
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Not Peter Pan
Talking is copper
silence is gold.
Tell me a whopper,
do as you're told.
Poets ain't people,
we are insane.
Hands in a steeple
nothing is plain.
Think of a mother
caring and soft.
Kind to each other.
Swing in the loft.
Rabid in temper
dropp of the hat.
Fidelis semper
skins the gray cat.
Do not ask Noah
who built the arc.
Spermatozoa
swim through the dark.
What is the measure
of a good man?
immortal treasure,
not Peter Pan.
Herbert Nehrlich
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