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Shailendra N Dec 2016
Breathless . . . Heaving . . . Sputtering . . .
Many more steps to go.
Hardened feet.
No longer are my steps maligned by stabs of blood.
Condemnation . . . Damnation . . . Corruption . . .
My seasoned back launches into my perennial burden.
And another step I take.
Into an inevitable future of drudgery.
Hope . . . Exoneration . . . Absolution . . .
Have long been forgotten.
Their burnt ashes adorn my forehead.
My shoulder screams ahead, into the weight it upholds.
Rumble  . . . Rumble . . . Rumble . . .
Each step like the millions before it,
thrusts the stone another foot towards the jagged peak
that towers impressively up ahead.
Dum Da De  . . . Dum Da Doo . . . Dum De Da Dum . . .
And the day goes on.
Dum Da De . . . Dum Da Doo . . . Dum De Da Dum . . .
And the night lives long.
Breathless . . . Heaving . . . Sputtering . . .
My war-torn muscles relax.
And the stone sits.
Stares at the valley below.
Lightning . . . Rain . . . Thunder . . .
The wind caresses and cajoles,
And the stone rolls down below, echoing Thor’s exclamations
And my heart leaps with joy.
After all, there will be another day.
And my feet have hardened anyway.
Ha Ha . . . Ha Ha . . . Ha Ha . . .
Brent Kincaid Dec 2015
I’ve been a busboy, a waiter,
A salesman for road crews
A cook and a soda ****.
The American market is
Not set up that well for
Kids who want to work.
Before I was twenty five
I’d had eighty different jobs
Some of them at the same time.
Some parents think their kids
Are a good source of income.
Others think that is a crime.

I suppose it’s one thing
If the kid picks his own job;
Does what he wants with money.
But robbing his stash
When he is out working
Is not even close to being funny.
And keeping a youngster
Both working and schooling
And no social or playtime is sad.
It robs him of childhood
And rips off all his ambition.
The child has to somehow turn bad.

Maybe it only trusting
That the kid learns not to do.
Maybe that dreams don’t come true.
Maybe the kid learns
His hard work and dedication
Only gets him blisters when he’s through.
That was all true of me;
I did what I was told and
I learned that joy and accomplishment
Earned no praise for the doing
Only produced, if I didn’t work hard
A tremendous amount of admonishment.

So, when I left home
I had no direction in mind;
I looked ahead to sixty more years
Of working and being robbed
By people I wanted to trust
And not even being capable of tears.
This may sound like a whine
Blaming and much worse
A griper that’s totally out of line.
But what it really means
Is your kids aren’t your slaves
To be put to work in some coal mine.
Brent Kincaid Dec 2015
I’m just trying to get through the day
Trying to find the right words to say
To keep my luck from going south
To keep my feet out of my mouth
To find the right games to play.
Nobody to play with anyway.
Hoping for a brighter day,
Just trying to get through today.

Some of the people around me
Sometimes seem to surround me
Even when I don’t call them to me
It can make me a bit gloomy.
It’s not like they’re my college roomy.
So they often even astound me.
I wonder how they found me.
I don’t like them close to me.

I try to keep my nose to the wheel
My **** in my seat, but maybe I feel
A bit under the management’s thumb;
That it’s better to act rather dumb
Than call attention to my non-zeal
And disbelief that this is all real.
I mean, I push the stone uphill daily.
Is it meant that I accomplish it gaily?

After all, I’m not saving lives here.
I’m just packaging a lot of beer,
Or counting busy streams of cases,
Along with others without faces.
Our job is just exactly that kind;
It is meant to be a mindless grind.
It’s not meant to be any fun.
It is just that which must be done.

So tote that barge, lift your weary ****.
I know to keep my big mouth shut.
Don’t compare notes, especially about pay
Or they let you go at the end of the day.
That’s who I am, a regular working slob.
Count my blessings I even have a job.
in the hustle of minutes
cracking underneath the dome of blue-black pressure,

it is in some strange way undiscovered
that our bodies decree the foolishness of hours.

triggered to a stirring, these thrills that seek flounce,
a **** stretch of linear roads that connect to nothing.

the daily commute sings elegiac, pressed against
signs foretelling of destinations that still themselves

know not of a trap of steel when our lives
start to bind madly against us, a rebel.

overtaking us, our lives, in speeds all ruthless
and forceful, like an instantaneous drag of something that persists

to writhe out and refuse to be pinned down.
a roomful of hollow yet nobody to notice equally,

this given purpose, or a deeply stabbing fabulation.
our able bodies give way no longer and break,

reduced to threadbare, this senseless act of worship.
of wasting away hours and mourn the passing of twilights.

we can no longer choose – we catapult into the pith
of these contestations and resign longer than imagined,

our ways are discourses, our life so suddenly
insecure of our remorseless entrails, oh how we have starved

ourselves for long and heed like stone,
the suddenness of our aches when our souls

cease to believe, when our hearts refuse to unfurl
a love christened with silence, when our hands

insurmountable with the mountains deadened
by a plenitude of echoes reaching for a still image -

ourselves, dragged buoyantly and airless –
wearing a face of torment we cannot voice out.
Some Person Nov 2014
Bed
I could stay up like I always do
Browse the web
Read or write a poem or two
Continue with the cycle:
Long for meaning,
Get eaten by pain,
Fail to sleep,
Barely get through work,
Repeat
But tonight, instead,
I'll just go to bed

— The End —