Cold

cold
is not warm
and I
am cold
and thus
not warm
and you
are cold
and thus
not warm
and the world
is cold
and thus
not warm
and the cold
will never end
and the people
will never rejoice
and the cold
will never be warm
except
on Tuesdays

Hotness

Hotness
is not coldness
unless
the heat hots coldly
or the cold hots heatedly
but coldness
is not hotness
even
with extra heatedness
even
in the face of warmness
not hotness
or coldness

Do Not Be a Cold

Do not be a cold
O Probable Cold
for I need not to have a headache tomorrow
and am quite upset
you are not a chocolate doughnut
and thus inherently better
than a cold

No Cold

Oh come on
I had a sore throat
and now I don’t
and I was all prepared to be sick
and I would have complained so much
and felt sorry for myself
and consumed a lot of ginger ale
even though I would have known it didn’t really help
and no
I don’t want to be sick
but stop teasing me like this
body
seriously

Cold?

You had better
not be the harbinger
of a cold
suspicious feeling in throat

If you do
herald the coming
of illness
I shall be displeased

What fun
that you’re here
just in time
for marking

Silly

How silly you are being
O weather
unable to decide
whether to be really freaking cold
or just sort of pretty cold
and popping back and forth between the two
with blowing snow everywhere the whole time
though maybe it will be rain later
who knows?
You certainly don’t

Because I Like Waking Up Eleven Times in the Middle of the Night

I have heard
that some people are capable
of getting “mild colds”
that are over in a day and a half
and cause nothing but a few sniffles
and a throat tingle or two

They are generally
the sort of people
who see you huddled
red-nosed and constantly sneezing
in the middle of an enormous drift of used tissues
and cheerfully assure you
that they know how you feel
because they had a cough once
though it went away an hour later

I would like a way
to give these people my headache
as well as my sore throat
my constant coughing fits
and quite a lot of my mucus

Also
the next time I hear the words
“It’s just a cold”
there is definitely going to be blood

Misery

Misery
is a Thanksgiving Sunday
taken over by the kind of cold
that clogs everything
and makes you cough every time you laugh
and stands on top of the mountains of work you should be doing
and laughs at you
because the cold is a jerk
and it does not approve
of long weekends

Rule #1

The first rule of summer
is that you will catch an awful cold in the middle of it
and the cold will involve a headache
and the headache will stop you from doing the things
you would normally do while having an awful cold
and at one point
you will attempt to listen to Stephen Fry’s audiobook version
of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on YouTube
and you will get a chapter in and find it very funny
but then someone will take it down because you’re actually supposed to be paying for it
and then you will be sad because you didn’t even get to the bit about the closet
and your head still hurts and you want to be drawing comics
and maybe writing a book or something but there’s a cold in the way
and you keep wondering about Harry Potter and all the people in cloaks
and you probably have a fever
which is terrible

Toothache

The art
of coming down with a cold
on the day
you should be
having a tooth pulled
is a delicate one
and can probably
be blamed
on ferrets