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AP Staunton Jan 2016
Two inches was the measure, of young Stevies blunder,
Digging out concrete, not knowing whats under.
He felt a nugget, that wouldn't yield to the Pick,
So he used the Jack-Hammer, until he got that "kick".
Caught fire on the spot, looked at me, shocked,
Died in flames, got a days pay docked.
Cut the main cable, Fifty millimetres, metric,
I know you hate to ask, but Friends aren't Electric.

Dennis stepped back, pleased with his graft,
Fell two hundred foot, down an unguarded shaft.
Been on the Grinder, cutting out steels,
So the Elevator boys could fix , their cogs and their wheels.
Never said a word, no shout or no fuss,
Dennis died like he lived, just one of us.

Me and Baz on a roof, we knew was asbestos,
Brittle like toffee, temperamental as Kate Moss,
Had no crawling boards, so we tip-toed like burglars,
Clinging on tightly, think Ivy on Pergola's.
I heard the crack, leapt to the hip-tile,
Baz clawed and scraped, resistance was futile.
They spread out the sand, where Baz hit the deck,
To mop up the blood, from a broken neck.
Health and safety, if's and but's,
Shoddy workmanship, taking short-cuts.
We have no say, we try our best,
Hard hats, harder boots and high-visibility vests,
Are all that we leave, not Time-Shares or Merc's,
Just daughters in tears, Dads not home from work.
Frau Doktor,
Mama Brundig,
take out your contacts,
remove your wig.
I write for you.
I entertain.
But frogs come out
of the sky like rain.

Frogs arrive
With an ugly fury.
You are my judge.
You are my jury.

My guilts are what
we catalogue.
I'll take a knife
and chop up frog.

Frog has not nerves.
Frog is as old as a cockroach.
Frog is my father's genitals.
Frog is a malformed doorknob.
Frog is a soft bag of green.

The moon will not have him.
The sun wants to shut off
like a light bulb.
At the sight of him
the stone washes itself in a tub.
The crow thinks he's an apple
and drops a worm in.
At the feel of frog
the touch-me-nots explode
like electric slugs.
Slime will have him.
Slime has made him a house.

Mr. Poison
is at my bed.
He wants my sausage.
He wants my bread.

Mama Brundig,
he wants my beer.
He wants my Christ
for a souvenir.

Frog has boil disease
and a bellyful of parasites.
He says: Kiss me. Kiss me.
And the ground soils itself.

Why
should a certain
quite adorable princess
be walking in her garden
at such a time
and toss her golden ball
up like a bubble
and drop it into the well?
It was ordained.
Just as the fates deal out
the plague with a tarot card.
Just as the Supreme Being drills
holes in our skulls to let
the Boston Symphony through.

But I digress.
A loss has taken place.
The ball has sunk like a cast-iron ***
into the bottom of the well.

Lost, she said,
my moon, my butter calf,
my yellow moth, my Hindu hare.
Obviously it was more than a ball.
***** such as these are not
for sale in Au Bon Marche.
I took the moon, she said,
between my teeth
and now it is gone
and I am lost forever.
A thief had robbed by day.

Suddenly the well grew
thick and boiling
and a frog appeared.
His eyes bulged like two peas
and his body was trussed into place.
Do not be afraid, Princess,
he said, I am not a vagabond,
a cattle farmer, a shepherd,
a doorkeeper, a postman
or a laborer.
I come to you as a tradesman.
I have something to sell.
Your ball, he said,
for just three things.
Let me eat from your plate.
Let me drink from your cup.
Let me sleep in your bed.
She thought, Old Waddler,
those three you will never do,
but she made the promises
with hopes for her ball once more.
He brought it up in his mouth
like a tricky old dog
and she ran back to the castle
leaving the frog quite alone.

That evening at dinner time
a knock was heard on the castle door
and a voice demanded:
King's youngest daughter,
let me in. You promised;
now open to me.
I have left the skunk cabbage
and the eels to live with you.
The kind then heard her promise
and forced her to comply.

The frog first sat on her lap.
He was as awful as an undertaker.
Next he was at her plate
looking over her bacon
and calves' liver.
We will eat in tandem,
he said gleefully.
Her fork trembled
as if a small machine
had entered her.
He sat upon the liver
and partook like a gourmet.
The princess choked
as if she were eating a puppy.
From her cup he drank.
It wasn't exactly hygienic.
From her cup she drank
as if it were Socrates' hemlock.

Next came the bed.
The silky royal bed.
Ah! The penultimate hour!
There was the pillow
with the princess breathing
and there was the sinuous frog
riding up and down beside her.
I have been lost in a river
of shut doors, he said,
and I have made my way over
the wet stones to live with you.
She woke up aghast.
I suffer for birds and fireflies
but not frogs, she said,
and threw him across the room.
Kaboom!

Like a genie coming out of a samovar,
a handsome prince arose in the
corner of her bedroom.
He had kind eyes and hands
and was a friend of sorrow.
Thus they were married.
After all he had compromised her.

He hired a night watchman
so that no one could enter the chamber
and he had the well
boarded over so that
never again would she lose her ball,
that moon, that Krishna hair,
that blind poppy, that innocent globe,
that madonna womb.
Hermann Hesse  Jun 2009
The Poet
Only on me, the lonely one,
The unending stars of the night shine,
The stone fountain whispers its magic song,
To me alone, to me the lonely one
The colorful shadows of the wandering clouds
Move like dreams over the open countryside.
Neither house nor farmland,
Neither forest nor hunting privilege is given to me,
What is mine belongs to no one,
The plunging brook behind the veil of the woods,
The frightening sea,
The bird whir of children at play,
The weeping and singing, lonely in the evening, of a man secretly in love.
The temples of the gods are mine also, and mine
the aristocratic groves of the past.
And no less, the luminous
Vault of heaven in the future is my home:
Often in full flight of longing my soul storms upward,
To gaze on the future of blessed men,
Love, overcoming the law, love from people to people.
I find them all again, nobly transformed:
Farmer, king, tradesman, busy sailors,
Shepherd and gardener, all of them
Gratefully celebrate the festival of the future world.
Only the poet is missing,
The lonely one who looks on,
The bearer of human longing, the pale image
Of whom the future, the fulfillment of the world
Has no further need. Many garlands
Wilt on his grave,
But no one remembers him.
Insufficient Oct 2014
The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man, — present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state, these functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his. The fable implies, that the individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But unfortunately, this original unit, this fountain of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes a form; the attorney, a statute-book; the mechanic, a machine; the sailor, a rope of a ship.
Excerpt from an Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837 by Emerson
The quotient of blue in marriage with shimmering green , jasper plow land surrounded in eastern pine motifs and whitewashed barrier
The morning clang of 'smith , cooper and farrier
Days of black pig iron  , cured oak and strap leather
Messages that forever ride the backcountry Autumn zephyrs
Copyright October 8 , 2016 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
Ryan P Kinney  Apr 2015
Who Am I?
Ryan P Kinney Apr 2015
Who Am I?

I am a boy and a man.
I am a son, a brother, a cousin, a nephew, and a grand child.
I was a boyfriend, a fiancé, a husband, and an in-law.
I am a bachelor.
I am surrounded and abandoned.
I am a family man and a loner.

I am a homemaker and a handyman.
I wear the apron and the tool belt.
I am a neat freak and a slob.
I am an amateur contractor and a contracted amateur.
I am a dumpster diver, a recycler, and a decadent waste.
I am a glutton, a scavenger, and a scrapper.

I am a friend and an enemy.
I am fun and an annoyance.
I am a lover and a hater.
I am creepy, cruel, and harsh.
I am tender, loving, and inviting.
I have a foul mouth and tender lips,
Drenched in jagged, soft-serve words.

I am a painter, sculptor, draftsman, sketcher, character designer, photographer, graphic designer, fashion designer, kitbasher, customizer, and crafter.
I am a reader, a writer, and a poet.
I am the Jail Baby, Ryan & Lisa, The Phoenix, The AntiFather, and The HEYMAN!
I compose symphonies of visual and intangible imagery.
I bring form to thought.
I destroy,
I create.
I am an artist.

I am a geek, nerd, freak, and otaku.
I have been punk, goth, prep, white trash, and metrosexual.
I wear glasses,
But only as a sick joke.
I am beautiful and ugly,
Clean and *****.
I am unique.
I am predictable.
I have changed, but am still the same.

I am a techie,
An electronic ******.
I am cutting edge and old school.
Digitally signed and sealed.
I am analog and obsolete.

I am an adrenaline addict.
I can chill, maybe slow,
But never relax.

I am blue collar, tradesman, and service industry.
I am peon and ****** on.
Oh, but I have done the ******* too!
I have been hired and fired,
Bought and sold.
I have worn the uniform,
I have said, “**** the man!”
I am the proletariat,
I am in charge.

I am a student, dropout, and teacher.
I am class clown and teacher’s pet.
I have learned, forgotten, and taught,
But never learned my lesson.
I don’t listen to what I’m told,
But always do what I tell.

I am a genius,
I am an idiot.
I have intelligence, but often lack the intel.
I am naïve, but wise.
I am right and wrong.

I have philosophies and ideas,
But no religion.
I have desecrated and blasphemed,
Prayed and praised.
I have lusted, envied, and coveted.
I am guilty and innocent,
Pure and soiled,
Good and bad.

I am a driver and a passenger.
I am an explorer and a shut-in.
I am wild and free,
Caged and stifled.
I was warmly wrapped in my blanket,
But burned through it.

I have rode, climbed, and conquered.
I  stood still.
I jumped in.
I have fallen and been defeated.

I have been abroad,
I have been nowhere.
I have drifted.
I have settled.
I have led and been led.
I have been in and out,
Here and there,
Around and AWOL,
On the run and trapped.
But, not everywhere.

I have applied,
I have procrastinated.
I have worked my fingers to the bone,
I have slept it off.

I have fought and fled.
I have quit.
I have endured.
I am a winner and a loser,
A champ and a chump.

I am fake,
I am real.
I have lied, cheated, and stole.
I have been honest, fair, and generous.

I am selfish and selfless.
I am a gift giver, gift wrapper, and gift taker.
I am a thief and a philanthropist.

I am insecure and confident,
Confused and absolutely sure.
I am proud and ashamed.
I am complicated and convoluted,
But simple to please.

I have blind faith and guarded suspicion
I have secrets,
But lie rarely.
I accept everyone,
I trust nothing.

I have pointed the finger,
Only to turn it on myself.
I have held grudges and forgiven.
I have trusted and misguided.
I have been Judas and Jesus.

I am a maniac,
I am sane.
I have been strong and weak.
I can keep it together,
But prefer to break it apart.

I have bled.
I have healed.
I have been abused and neglected,
Coddled and protected.

I have been kissed and punched;
Hunted, wanted, and arrested,
Ignored, overlooked, and invisible.

I have loved and lost,
Lived and learned.
I am a soldier of misfortune and opportunity.

I have blended in.
I have stood out.
I have stood up.
I have backed down.
I have been backed into a corner.
I have all the space in the world.

I have seen, interpreted, and perceived,
I have ignored, dismissed, and been blind.
I hunger, want, and need…
I am satiated and content,
But never at peace.

I have been misunderstood and underestimated.
I have been put down, put up, pushed away, and let in.
I have been known,
But never entirely.

I have raged, cried, smiled, trembled, and laughed.
I have been depressed.
I have been happy.
I have been suicidal. I have felt death.
I have been lost and found.
I have been broken, then fixed,
Stitched, yet glitched,
Scarred, but whole.
I am alive.


I took the chance,
I let the moment slip.
I walked the straight and narrow,
I ran down the road not taken.
I dream; some whole, some shattered.
I go with the flow, but don’t let the waves take me.

I am shards and reflections,
Machinations and reactions.
I am translucent pieces and parts,
Assembled and disheveled.
I am the big picture still focused on the details.

I am the sum total of heredity and experience.
I am not,
I am more.
I am everything and nothing.
I am a walking contradiction.
I am human.

I tried to be you,
But didn’t know what that meant.
I am me,
It’s all I know.

Who are you?
Marshal Gebbie Jan 2010
In toasting Mike I recollect
His steady watching gaze,
I recollect his calm
On a thousand stormy days.
I recall his jaunty humour
In his funny cockney style,
And the rationale behind it
And the pleasure of his smile.

And the quiet determination
In the steeliness within
And the love that emanated
When his Jules laughed loud with him.
When he held her hand and strolled
In the life they shared as one,
In the racket of the grand kids
As they shout and leap and run.

Through the years of hardy seamanship
From England's chalky reach,
Across the ocean's vastness
To far antipodean beach,
To the soft greens of New Zealand
And the promise of this land
And the shining eyes of Jules
When he offered her his hand.

And the life they shared together
Through the joy, the strain the tears
The utter joy of baby Kristin
And her beauty through the years.
The seamlessness of craftmanship
In tradesman's art supreme
And the pride of his achievement
In a sweet successful dream.

A chasm has appeared in life
Where old Mike used to be.
Dreadfull death has exercised
It's right to set him free.
But I can't feel bad for Micheal
For the brilliance of it all
Is celebration of his life well lived
And my toast to judgement's call.

Marshalg
@theBach
Mangere Bridge
10 January 2010.
In March of 2010 a 46 year old white male was brought to this hospital after a severe 'episode'. He was placed in the Mental Health Intensive Care Unit .  He was diagnosed with " Major Depression ". This is considered Slow Death , a treatable disorder by the AMA currently . Artist and Architect will lay out Hallucinations and conceptual designs , Engineers , Mathematicians and Surveyors will coordinate more pills at higher doses because minute details to within fractions of an inch followed by schizophrenia by Earth moving equipment , graders , bulldozers , psychotic episodes , dump trucks , Carpenters and Concrete ,  bi-polar disorder and  Bricklayer will labor different Help treatment methods because the drugs are having absolutely no piece by piece constructing form , pylon , shoring embankments for Steel Worker and Welder ,Pipefitter and Increased risk of suicide was reported for Plumber and all manner of tradesman , supplier and Pharmacist ........
            Psychiatrist and Psychologist will formulate a treatment plan which will include drug therapy and counseling sessions with Electrician and patient and Spouse plus other family members if needed in order to reach the island Drowning which will be a difficult task . Emory Hospital is conducting new research because they finally admit to depression drugs  not working in Freak more than half the patients today , like every other building bridges in hopes of getting to the island that is depression .
Created confusion purposefully ! I  blended the two topics together so that the plight of the mentally ill could be read by some that are more worried about our infrastructure right now. Cry for help blended in a topic that is receiving far more attention these days !

Copyright September 25 , 2015 by Randolph Wilson * All  Rights Reserved
Anne Sexton  Feb 2010
Bat
Bat
His awful skin
stretched out by some tradesman
is like my skin, here between my fingers,
a kind of webbing, a kind of frog.
Surely when first born my face was this tiny
and before I was born surely I could fly.
Not well, mind you, only a veil of skin
from my arms to my waist.
I flew at night, too. Not to be seen
for if I were I'd be taken down.
In August perhaps as the trees rose to the stars
I have flown from leaf to leaf in the thick dark.
If you had caught me with your flashlight
you would have seen a pink corpse with wings,
out, out, from her mother's belly, all furry
and hoarse skimming over the houses, the armies.
That's why the dogs of your house sniff me.
They know I'm something to be caught
somewhere in the cemetery hanging upside down
like a misshapen udder.
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2013
Spanish Guitars

A few years ago, in 2011, I went to a concert of young classical guitarists.  Just before or after, I don't recall, I saw an exhibition of Picasso's guitars at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC (http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1101).
This poem ensued.  This is one of the lost poems I mentioned, recently rediscovered on an archaeological dig.


Spanish Guitars

two weeks pass.

I have seen
two guitars
one of wood,
one of sheet metal.

both were alive,
both were inanimate
both birthed for display,
useful for granting pleasure and
heating up le jus d'creation

products of a tradesman's craft,
animated to pierce my brain and
pleasure me with the realization
that when you see
what I see
When you,
you hear,
What I see
we all perforce speak but one language,
an alphabet of music, art and love

A young,
oh so most beautiful
Croat guitarist girl,
Ana, coaxes an urgency
from her love, the blonde wood,
she takes Piazzola's notes,
as if they were Picasso's thoughts
and set them within so
days later, the resonance plucks
at my temples

Picasso, like a little boy,
collects collaged bits and pieces of
life's stuff most ordinary,
postage stamps, playing cards,
wallpaper, pieces of cardboard,
cutouts from Le Journal,

and with fingers delicate
sticks and glues discrete notes,
individually nothing
but pieces of this and that,
bits and bobs
superimposed on faux woodwork,
presenting an instrument tooled to

conjures up a milonga^,
the sounds of angels dying,
a fandango of trembling tones
a sonnet of sounds,
celebrating human touch
upon animal, strings taut,

feasts both, a banquet,
a  triomphe of sounds
that tutors my senses
to hear sheet metal guitars
imprisoned in museum glass
gush sounds of parallel lines
and delicate contrasts,
A duet of animate, inanimate
Virtuosity

All is clarified.
One language.
Many dialects.
Both, Spanish guitars.


^ a milonga has many meanings, but here, refers to a Argentine tango dance party
katewinslet Nov 2015
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Frau Doktor,
Mama Brundig,
take out your contacts,
remove your wig.
I write for you.
I entertain.
But frogs come out
of the sky like rain.

Frogs arrive
With an ugly fury.
You are my judge.
You are my jury.

My guilts are what
we catalogue.
I’ll take a knife
and chop up frog.

Frog has not nerves.
Frog is as old as a cockroach.
Frog is my father’s genitals.
Frog is a malformed doorknob.
Frog is a soft bag of green.

The moon will not have him.
The sun wants to shut off
like a light bulb.
At the sight of him
the stone washes itself in a tub.
The crow thinks he’s an apple
and drops a worm in.
At the feel of frog
the touch-me-nots explode
like electric slugs.
Slime will have him.
Slime has made him a house.

Mr. Poison
is at my bed.
He wants my sausage.
He wants my bread.

Mama Brundig,
he wants my beer.
He wants my Christ
for a souvenir.

Frog has boil disease
and a bellyful of parasites.
He says: Kiss me. Kiss me.
And the ground soils itself.

Why
should a certain
quite adorable princess
be walking in her garden
at such a time
and toss her golden ball
up like a bubble
and drop it into the well?
It was ordained.
Just as the fates deal out
the plague with a tarot card.
Just as the Supreme Being drills
holes in our skulls to let
the Boston Symphony through.

But I digress.
A loss has taken place.
The ball has sunk like a cast-iron ***
into the bottom of the well.

Lost, she said,
my moon, my butter calf,
my yellow moth, my Hindu hare.
Obviously it was more than a ball.
***** such as these are not
for sale in Au Bon Marché.
I took the moon, she said,
between my teeth
and now it is gone
and I am lost forever.
A thief had robbed by day.

Suddenly the well grew
thick and boiling
and a frog appeared.
His eyes bulged like two peas
and his body was trussed into place.
Do not be afraid, Princess,
he said, I am not a vagabond,
a cattle farmer, a shepherd,
a doorkeeper, a postman
or a laborer.
I come to you as a tradesman.
I have something to sell.
Your ball, he said,
for just three things.
Let me eat from your plate.
Let me drink from your cup.
Let me sleep in your bed.
She thought, Old Waddler,
those three you will never do,
but she made the promises
with hopes for her ball once more.
He brought it up in his mouth
like a tricky old dog
and she ran back to the castle
leaving the frog quite alone.

That evening at dinner time
a knock was heard on the castle door
and a voice demanded:
King’s youngest daughter,
let me in. You promised;
now open to me.
I have left the skunk cabbage
and the eels to live with you.
The kind then heard her promise
and forced her to comply.

The frog first sat on her lap.
He was as awful as an undertaker.
Next he was at her plate
looking over her bacon
and calves’ liver.
We will eat in tandem,
he said gleefully.
Her fork trembled
as if a small machine
had entered her.
He sat upon the liver
and partook like a gourmet.
The princess choked
as if she were eating a puppy.
From her cup he drank.
It wasn’t exactly hygienic.
From her cup she drank
as if it were Socrates’ hemlock.

Next came the bed.
The silky royal bed.
Ah! The penultimate hour!
There was the pillow
with the princess breathing
and there was the sinuous frog
riding up and down beside her.
I have been lost in a river
of shut doors, he said,
and I have made my way over
the wet stones to live with you.
She woke up aghast.
I suffer for birds and fireflies
but not frogs, she said,
and threw him across the room.
Kaboom!

Like a genie coming out of a samovar,
a handsome prince arose in the
corner of her bedroom.
He had kind eyes and hands
and was a friend of sorrow.
Thus they were married.
After all he had compromised her.

He hired a night watchman
so that no one could enter the chamber
and he had the well
boarded over so that
never again would she lose her ball,
that moon, that Krishna hair,
that blind poppy, that innocent globe,
that madonna womb.

— The End —