"boilers" poems
a polar vortex
swirls eastward
on Siberian Tiger paws
bounding over
Appalachian Highlands
gobbling geography
gelling Great Lakes
spawning Erie blizzards
sculpting Wabash ice floes
clogging commerce all
along the Ohio River Valley
this voracious
juggernaut’s wide maw
bears icicle teeth
laughing as it swallows
Pittsburgh, Little Philly,
and a Big Apple, before
gorging itself on
generous portions
ladled into
simmering crocks
of steaming
Boston Baked Beans
growling
blue arctic
air blasts roar
bursts pipes
savages the heat
of blasting furnaces,
bubbling boilers, hot
belly stoves frantically
drinking oil, flaming gas
burning wood and
burping soot
the blistering
jet stream claws
screech a slashing
stratospheric hum
as Frigidaire blasts
swallows breath
brittles limbs
chafes cheeks
gnaws earlobes
crystallizes tears
nibbles nostrils
cubes snot
numbs toes
bites digits
diving sub zero
gradient subdues
batteries to
deaden states
delays buses
derails trains
cuts power
constricts veins
preys on
vagabonds
and animals
get the homeless
off the street!
bring the animals in
check on your
elderly neighbors
don’t get caught outside
and shut the **** door!
do you own stock
in the Public Service?
beware the polar vortex
and next months heating bill
Sonny Boy Williamson
& Otis Spann
Nine Below Zero
Oakland
1/6/14
jbm
Jan 6, 2014
Jan 6, 2014 at 2:43 PM UTC
It takes forty sap gall0ns
to 'still one gallon of maple syrup,
boiled down by the sun stored in firewood.
I remember well, my aunt Florence
feeding the boilers in the hill orchard sugar house,
wearing an old going-to-church dress,
that had, some years back, been handed down to workday chores
and on top covered over by uncle Fred's red and black mackinaw.
"Stand back," she said as she opened the boiler door
first the roar, then a bank of fire that painted
her from kerchief to boots flaming red,
her eyeglasses, two pools of glowing magma,
and everything above was steam and rising vapors.
In my mind's eye then and now when I read Dante
I'll think of her, she was and is, the very vision of a devil tender.
Jan 3, 2011
Jan 3, 2011 at 6:04 AM UTC
CLOWNS DYINGFIVE circus clowns dying this year, morning newspapers told their lives, how each one horizontal in a last gesture of hands arranged by an undertaker, shook thousands into convulsions of laughter from behind rouge-red lips and powder-white face.
STEAMBOAT BILLWhen the boilers of the Robert E. Lee exploded, a steamboat winner of many races on the Mississippi went to the bottom of the river and never again saw the wharves of Natchez and New Orleans.
And a legend lives on that two gamblers were blown toward the sky and during their journey laid bets on which of the two would go higher and which would be first to set foot on the turf of the earth again.
FOOT AND MOUTH PLAGUEWhen the mysterious foot and mouth epidemic ravaged the cattle of Illinois, Mrs. Hector Smith wept bitterly over the government killing forty of her soft-eyed Jersey cows; through the newspapers she wept over her loss for millions of readers in the Great Northwest.
SEVENSThe lady who has had seven lawful husbands has written seven years for a famous newspaper telling how to find love and keep it: seven thousand hungry girls in the Mississippi Valley have read the instructions seven years and found neither illicit loves nor lawful husbands.
PROFITEERI who saw ten strong young men die anonymously, I who saw ten old mothers hand over their sons to the nation anonymously, I who saw ten thousand touch the sunlit silver finalities of undistinguished human glory-why do I sneeze sardonically at a bronze drinking fountain named after one who participated in the war vicariously and bought ten farms?
1.9k
In memoriam Asher and Franklin
Farmers flocked to Blossburg's mines
willing their abandoned plows
to perpetual dust and rain.
Burrowing into the Tioga hills
with Keagle picks and sledges,
they filled their trams with rough cut coal.
Black diamonds - carved for waiting boilers
of New England mills and trains
and Pennsylvania's winter stoves.
Brothers, Frank and Asher swung their picks
in tunnels deep beneath the hills
and brushed away the clouds of soot.
Their coughs at first seemed harmless
enough as from nagging colds or flus -
but deepened as their lungs turned black.
Pain and choking drove them to their beds
where no medic's art could aid them.
Then the coroner came to seal their eyes.
A stonecutter's chisel marks their brevity
on an marble graveyard obelisk
that pays no homage to their sacrifice.
September, 2007
Aug 22, 2013
Aug 22, 2013 at 3:57 PM UTC
a 2nd reiteration
listening to
dropkick murphys'
song
*i'm shipping off to
Boston*...
you ******* quasi-paddies
and Iraqi Aladdins
have ****** up "my"...
******* jukebox!
no music video ever came
with a ******* news channel
recommendation!
wankers!
sprat boilers!
brat spanking fetishists!
give me my ******* jukebox
back... you *******
toddler's little pinky
wankers off!
it's not enough that
the blood starts to boil...
my thinking becomes
all scrambled!
i turn into a Danzig hunger-strike
when i don't get
to listen to new music!
wankie ***** wankie *****
sure...
but when i **** off while
taking a **** and taking a ****
i don't make a *******
video out of it, do i?!
juggernaut... juggernaut...
juggernaut...
say it thrice like Beetlejuice...
and... well... shazam!
a rhino appears!
i'm taking prisoners...
the ones attached to the charge,
as they scream...
pretending to... "tag along".
give my jukebox back you
******* invertebrates!
Oct 25, 2018
Oct 25, 2018 at 8:14 PM UTC
The Cormorant was the darkest ship,
As dark as a ship could be,
Not only the paint was pitted black
From the funnels to the sea,
But deep inside in its rusted gloom
In the echoes from its shell,
It was like a monster roamed abroad
Released from the depths of hell.
It roared and echoed by day and night
As the boilers turned the *****
Lurching across every wave that might
Try to break its hull in two,
It was laden down with a thousand tons
Of a cargo that made it groan,
While breakers slapped its quivering sides
As it made its way back home.
The Captain stood on the shuddering bridge,
A man with a heart of steel,
He tried to control this raging beast
As he lashed himself to the wheel,
He gave no quarter to any man
Who would shirk, avoid his task,
But called the crew to witness his due
As the man was soundly lashed.
Down in the depths of the engine room
The firemen shovelled coal,
Each shovel sprayed like a black dismay
In the light of that glowing hole,
And steam built up on the pressure gauge
Of each boiler, one and two,
As men would fret, while running in sweat,
To do what they had to do.
The seas built up and the rain came down
As the Cormorant rolled and swayed,
Then lightning flashed and it ran to ground
Like an imp in a masquerade,
It left three dead on the afterdeck,
They hurried to help them there,
But the captain roared, ‘Throw them overboard,
We’ve more than enough to spare.’
A mutter grew up among the crew
As dark as the bosun’s hat,
I never knew what the crew would do
So I wasn’t in on that.
But the Captain disappeared from the bridge
And the wheel was swinging free,
With the Cormorant broadside to the waves
At mercy of wind and sea.
They said it must be a miracle
When we finally entered port,
The bilge half full of water, they said,
And the Captain fell overboard.
But the ship was done, had made its last run
As the fires went out in the hull,
Then raking through the mountain of ash
I found the late Captain’s skull.
David Lewis Paget
Apr 3, 2017
Apr 3, 2017 at 3:18 AM UTC
How I loved those harbour lights,
as shipwrights, we worked through those long and lonely nights and laid keels for Queens that rode the sea.
She was one,
The S.S mv Lexicon, a giant of a lady she. would leave her lipstick marks upon the sea and we just loved her, built her dream in funnels square and clean and launched her late one Monday Eve and when steam had scorched the boilers, we've seen our Queen go sailing far away.
That day has gone now, steam no more, a passing fancy but I adored the smoke and grit, the wit of Bosuns as they spat at this and that and harried cabin boys who touched their caps out of respect, I expect it's for the best.
And tomorrow what will be is a lack of joi de vivre and the sea will look so flat.
Oct 5, 2013
Oct 5, 2013 at 2:13 PM UTC
Acne covered confidence,
Lanky limbs with titanium teeth.
The bus to a childish nowhere
With bunk beds and broken boilers.
Eyes caught mid-gaze.
Stained cheeks at relentless hopes
For Venus’ First Blossoms
through drab and dreary.
Midnight, Midday
Midclass Messages.
Monday morning discussions
Of missed moments.
Friday evening’s unwatched films,
White cotton on carpet,
Midnight’s kisses stain a pure canvas.
Transparent lies to Auld Lang Onlookers.
Four months of fading.
New experiences become shameful secrets,
Salted cheeks replace antique shrieks,
Misplaced passion posseses green eyes.
Never the last.
Sparks may cause forest fires,
But nothing compares
To the first burn.
Jan 16, 2019
Jan 16, 2019 at 3:09 PM UTC
Underneath a duplex in it's basement a wide assortment of pipes and appliances are mounted everywhere. Some pipes hang from the ceiling disconnected. Holes stuffed with insulation in the concrete foundation. The musician may sit and listen to the sounds of rushing water, boilers and furnaces kicking on and find music in it. The poet may find beauty in the mystery of it all and mention it as a metaphorical line in an upcoming piece
But when the plumber walks down
he sees it for what it truly is. He understands the sounds, the disconnections, the holes left behind by absent appliances, what goes where and why. Inside his mind he sees every movement of every machine, can pick any problem out of sounds and gauges. Imagine having an acute understanding of the world around you and how to work with it. I'm starting to think being a dreamer is more of a coping mechanism than anything.
I'd say I aspire to be a plumber
But I'd just be another poet making another stupid analogy.
Jan 17, 2018
Jan 17, 2018 at 2:21 PM UTC
II.
the boy at the coffee shop
is, in fact, a barista
he whiles away his time
at odds with metal monoliths
coaxing honeyed shots of espresso
from the scalding machines
and honing his delicate craft
his language is one of
valves, gaskets, filters
copper boilers and pressure
his artistry
in the turning of steam knobs
folding froth into rich milk
the pulling of levers
the milling of fragrant beans
the pouring of flowers
he learnt his calling
when he first sipped that
viscous indian coffee
cut with bitter chicory
softened with caramelized cream
and dark brown sugar
this is what he understood, coffee:
input/output, give/take
ratios and recipes
detailed tasting notes
he spoke to the machines
and they answered eagerly
and the barista thought the world
to work the same way...
till he saw the girl at the coffee shop
questions glimmered in her eyes
and sweet mocha laced her lips
she was nothing like his machines
all hopeful uncertainty and "what next?"
she wears her hair in braided crowns
concealing her mica-freckled skin
behind oversized cable-knit sweaters
scribbling in sketchbooks for hours
she too, honing her craft
he is a
chipped porcelain cup
gilded with gold
letting others sip their fill
till the cup is empty
and nothing remains
someday he will
go up and talk
to the girl
at the coffee shop
but for now
he is just
a stranger
longing from afar
forever people watching
and forever watched by people
-wren
Dec 18, 2021
Dec 18, 2021 at 6:33 PM UTC
There are gladiolas,
black-eyed Susan
growing in wooden barrels
behind the chain-link, below the razor-wire.
The Powerhouse
they call it,
the building that houses
the generators, the boilers,
whatever else it takes to keep
these cinder-block cell-houses
warm, cool, or otherwise
habitable.
As I make my way up toward
the building I work in,
I pause to look at these blooms.
I must.
For it is in seeing them
that I may be seeing the
only beauty offered that day.
There is so little here
that is beautiful,
one might say.
The floors are scuffed,
the walls,
the paint, chipped away
or graffitied with pen-caps
or makeshift knives,
not looking for that space between a cell-mate's ribs
just then.
There is rust on the window sills,
on the bedposts bolted together,
bunkbeds for the bruiser or the bruised.
Still,
the gladiolas, those black-eyed Susan's
persistence in palpable,
as is the potential of every single
human being housed inside.
The perspective shifts.
There's beauty in that potential,
presented in the form of actualized,
engaged participation in today's classwork
or
small-group discussion.
'What's this?
A breakthrough?
Sir, is that a teardrop?'
Real,
not tattooed.
Beautiful.
More so than any gladiola
or
black-eyed Susan here
could hope for.
***
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2020
Aug 7, 2020
Aug 7, 2020 at 1:25 PM UTC
The only flowers that don't die are fake ones,
People are flawed,
It's just the truth.
But you still expect perfection,
Even though it always rains where you live,
And there's a leak from your roof.
Now I know it would be hypocritical of me to point out your wrongs.
When where I live the boilers broken,
And I know you hate one of my favourite songs,
But it screams the words that cannot be spoken.
The only flowers that don't die are fake ones,
people are flawed,
It's just the truth,
But you still expect perfection.
You must have been ruined in your youth.
Nov 26, 2017
Nov 26, 2017 at 4:23 PM UTC
FULL CIRCLE
Grey smoke from chimneys
staining the brick work
of back to back houses
where washing hangs limply
on string over alleys.
Grubby faced children
skipping on cobbles
sitting on doorsteps
waiting for fathers
in pits down below.
Fathers emerging
black faced and weary
straight to the bath tub
as coals in the boilers
send grey smoke from chimneys.
Aug 11, 2019
Aug 11, 2019 at 2:08 AM UTC