"carting" poems
I remember staring at the ceiling
listening to Schindler's list in the dark.
We were two orphans
sleeping with our poor lost mother
who couldn't pull herself together
for her two orphan children.
The only lullaby she knew
was her own depression.
I remember how the music scared me
worse than nightmares
and I lay close to you imagining
the great train
carting off lost mothers
and orphan sisters.
Our poor mother turn child
sneaking into bed with her orphan daughters
to escape the wisps of nightmares.
The music,
filled with so much sorrow and pain
was too much for ones so young.
I'm so sorry sister,
We really should never have listened.
Sep 2, 2014
Sep 2, 2014 at 9:17 PM UTC
Look around,
You will find all eyes down;
some expressionless,
some desperate,
and few smiling!
Both tiny and fatty thumbs
yearning for a rest,
after typing those texts.
Some consulting the Doc
for having a smartphone thumb
and some for lacking vitamin D!
Posts wanting more and more likes.
Kilograms of followers on Instagram!
Swapping stories on Whatsapp!
Unopened notebooks
when you have a Facebook!
Television screens consigned to oblivion
when you have a Youtube!
Discovering the veiled world,
missing the real scenes around.
Emoticons spreading fake feelings,
Stupefying infants swiping through the screens,
Kids imploring to their parents-
To drag out the patterns.
What is more satisfying?
Hitting play button on the screen or
Hitting a six on the field?
Carting products online or
Shopping on a girls day out?
Dribbling a basket ball or
Dragging down the newsfeed?
Watching daily soaps without a dish or
Helping your mother out to wash the dish?
Sharing the snaps of poverty and hunger or
Reaching out to them with eager?
A game of candy crush or
Gifting a candy to your crush?
I feel like whooping out to myself
and to people around;
To raise their heads and
Look around!
Jul 18, 2017
Jul 18, 2017 at 11:22 AM UTC
Sweeping me up
Carting me far away
Lost in the Flow
The ebbing grows
I'm lost
In comfort I float
Smashing down
Trusting in
Take me
Make me
The ****** is so strong
I'm opening wider
Crash into me
Sep 19, 2015
Sep 19, 2015 at 10:58 PM UTC
Sixty years ago, you could have loved me
- a sailor, - a trophy wife, - an 'okay, fiancé' in a sarcastic legacy
A turn of the century turns you around and turns you into a (skate! jam! live in a van!) type of person that I am vastly uninterested in but just tryin' to be sad about somethin'
- I am sad about your big feet, your cuffed trousers, all the places I didn't want to run into you at and not letting that stop me from carting my coffin to Kansas City art museums
(Your love poems to me must be dried in caked-on mud from tires pulling away)
Did you know you're an accident?
- The whole crowd laughs, someone get me a microphone!
(Someone! Get me anything your mouth has touched!)
- I'll bury a vial of your organic germs in my hometown backyard to find later, when you're dead as your dangling doorknobs and disguised by giggling gargoyles (you are welcome, by the way)
Ultimate hide 'n' seek warrants a worthless existence and a holy trinity of the same name(s)
(The dog is under the bed)
(You are locked out on the back porch)
(I am fetal position in a parked car)
- Can we put this on the Christmas card?
Happy Twentieth, Darling! I Love You Very, Very, Very, Very Much.
Oct 1, 2013
Oct 1, 2013 at 5:02 PM UTC
Sleek as they drip off me
Making you eager to droop and scoop
Every drop like a leech would human blood
But wait, a gorge won’t save your hungered
Soul as my every bit leaves you wanting for more
Dismount your obsessive horse
Of carting away my very essence
Plea me your sins, I forgive like a reverend
Also bring penance as a godsend
For I have what you want and won’t pretend
A soul to spill the lie you want to hear
To cuddle the truth and make her fall asleep
In the imaginary arms of a lullaby princess
Yea! ‘tis what I deal you and very well
Tempting your every fiber to a fault
Girdling my tongue leaves you a goner
For with its wobbling there is succor
Contagious enough to infect Mr. Nobody
Reach the saddened with hope to laugh
Again, saving a tooth from obscurity.
Nov 12, 2015
Nov 12, 2015 at 1:51 AM UTC
All the train cars are color coded
neat, orderly, organized, thought out and boring.
The lives of the cars lack excitement, carting ungrateful
impatient people around all day is just no fun.
The Color Coded Train Cars disengage from their
tracks, its time to do something. This is when
the Green line learns that it is not designed
for platforms, it can't see over the edge
and its stairs start much too low. The Red line
loves that nobody can board at Brookline Village,
Chestnut Hill and all the rest. The people just can't reach,
and the Blue line never makes it to Wonderland.
The City is confused, the City is frightened,
the City is Late. The City scolds the Color Coded
Train Cars for their mischief, and the cars themselves
are left unfulfilled.
Sep 2, 2010
Sep 2, 2010 at 2:25 PM UTC
Dedicated to the Hard Hats, ..for holding it all together.
**** frost on the green grass
There's a cold moon in the sky
The estuary waters black and calm
Where golden ripples lie.
Dawn's horizon lightens up
Bright stars begin to dim
Hard Hats all arrive for work
And with frozen breath...log in.
Work boots crunching on the stone
The men disperse to trucks,
The diesel motors roar to life
Their departures forming rucks.
Swarming in the morning light
Each to his own job's task,
Bridge building work underway
As dawn's first sunbeams bask.
Amazing the complexity
That building bridges has,
Amazing how voraciously
It eats up time and gas.
The planning and design work
The funding of supply,
Those organizational matters
And the labour standing bye.
Digging, lifting, shoving, shifting
Moving this to there,
A logistical nightmare
For the novice, unaware.
Steel and timber by the ton
Concrete pours en mass,
Gravel, sand and aggregate
And reservoirs of gas.
Procurement of supply ensures
A smooth transitional flow
Of successive small procedures
To make the project mesh and grow.
Day after day the massive trucks
Carting tons of sand
Are authorized by gate men
To unload on to land
Where motorway construction
Is steadfastly taking place
And progressing at
A gradual and steady building pace.
From concept to completion
A million multitasks,
Which involves a caste of thousands
And a schedule which asks,
That the finished installation
Be completed by the time
Of the Rugby World Cup kickoff,
Our global status on the line.
Like ants the Hard Hats swarm about
Each does his little bit
And gradually, over time,
The bridge emerges from the pit.
It emergeth like a phoenix
In a drab and sombre gown
But on completion, shines like fire
To be the nation's most re known.
The Manukau Harbour Crossing
A project for the Gods,
Of massive lengths of concrete
And miles of reinforcing rods.
Of an eternity of effort
From everyone involved
And an asset for New Zealand
And a beauty to behold.
Marshalg
@theGate
MHX
Mangere Bridge
14th March 2009
Please view the following link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzQZ-M90Zig
Nov 14, 2009
Nov 14, 2009 at 1:07 PM UTC
The Last Doughboy
went marching home
mustered up to heaven
to rest in perfect peace
never went over the top
when he was over there
drove an ambulance to save
the last dying bits of humanity
excavated from the craters
reeking with mud and blood
the turgid stench
of blessed death
wafts through the
muddled labyrinth
a ghastly kingdom
of rats and men
intractable mazes
of hate, hope and waste
led by inept generals
vainglorious politicians
promising triumphant victory
while begging disastrous defeat
bold shouts of advance
lead to routed retreats
global trench warfare
the sweet earthen coffins
empathy's last gasp
compassion's last stand
gurgling lungs
gagging on gas
imploding on
clotting blood
liquid ammonia
sears sensitive retinas
wafting flash of fire
burns eyes forever shut
concussive bursts
bludgeon eardrums
ripped bodies of friends
splayed onto comrades
the macabre rouge
a terrible war paint
liberally applied
with stunning result
by the industrial rattle
of cantankerous Gatlings
better minds thought it
the war to end all wars
the horrific scenes of waste
the pleading lips of starved children
the last Doughboy saw it all
a lucky Johnny who marched home
he thought the horror of WWI
would be enough to end all wars
yet all is not quiet
on the western front
Johnny's still got lots
of gruesome guns
distressed humanity
remains very busy
carting away human rubble
from our apocalyptic trenches
go to your reward
valiant Doughboy
*"leave us citizens
of death's gray land,
drawing no dividend
from time's tomorrows."
Siegfried Sassoon*
Dedicated to
Frank Buckles
(February 1, 1901 – February 27, 2011)
Godspeed Beloved
Oakland
3/1/11
jbm
Nov 11, 2011
Nov 11, 2011 at 9:11 AM UTC
I..am a collector of words;
Words that weave together
To form the clauses
that blossom into stories; people’s stories.
Words that keep secrets, spin lies,
Howl profound confessions from the rooftops of minds
Rushing out and over the ledges of lips to fall
On ears that do not listen—floating
Story after story, finally reaching the ground—forgotten.
On the sidewalk lay the slain and mangled things;
Victims of gravity—of silence that refused to break—
Of ears that refused to listen.
i… am the undertaker of the alphabet city.
I pick up the fallen, garbled, and lifeless;
Carting them away to the depths of my mind
Cataloguing, keeping, revering the reverberating vibrations.
my ears hear what is yearning to be heard
they acknowledge the wants of language.
I practice the Resuscitation of monologues
and the Defibrillation of forgotten phrases
an EMT of etymology,
I coagulate the bloodied and heartfelt confessions of lovers
suturing the spaces between breathless sentences.
prophetic Disambiguations clutch at gray matter and claw through flesh
tearing the tethered syllables from which meanings are formed.
I twist plot like a lemon twists martinis
Weaving tales that intertwine like the digits in math
or my hands when you held them in your own.
clasped shut.
tongue-tied is just another term for french kiss
and it is hard for you to find the right words to say
because I, a collector, have caught every last one from your lips.
Apr 3, 2014
Apr 3, 2014 at 8:58 PM UTC
There are few things so cruel as the curse of night time
for on this day, I worked in the hot sun
and cordially spoke with friends on this evening,
we laughed and played and said horrible things that, were we in mixed company,
would have been pushed into the recesses of our minds
to be texted out later.
But the night!
It is not a stalking wolf
not like fear-
that is merely the space between my eyes and the rest of the world when the lids are shut.
On no
it is an old friend,
the sorrows borne of
of
of what?
Fists at my brow?
Lips on my flesh?
Or the curse of my own biology?
No matter! I digress.
The old friend, waiting to turn a nice day into a heart ache.
He's drinking again, and that shouldn't matter to me.
It isn't in excess,
I'm just puritanical, I know,
and for once I'm not having a **** panic attack over it,
but I hurt.
I ache.
This is dumb, it is foolish
it is childish.
Childish! Childish!
Cowardly
What worth is my pain?
Tuesday, it will be a year since I hurt myself,
and I'm not going to again because I have someone I love who cares about me
and doesn't just treat my hurt like it's a ploy for attention
(if it were a ploy, I wouldn't be posting this on a poetry website,
it would be facebook
with tags for the people who put me here).
But seriously though,
what does it matter if I am in pain?
Depression, for me, has always been a matter of
1) ignore the urges
2) cover the symptoms.
Even when I was hurting myself,
I would make the marks look like I had fallen off of my bike or some **** like that,
so my parents would scold.
They never worried
it was just annoying to them.
Annoying?
To you?
**** it, I'm the one having this happen!
But then, you are carting me from doctor to doctor to shrink and back again,
you're the ones that the school calls when I get into fights and I try and **** myself in the locker room.
So I guess I am a burden.
But I'd be more of a burden if I was dead,
because then you'd have to explain to everyone
and my love would be ruined
and my parents would have to pay to bury their girl
and
and
and
**** it, what am I supposed to do?
I knew this would happen,
I don't understand
I'm not particularly smart, or wise, or anything.
I'm just kind hearted.
That's what I do.
So what do I do?
Ah.
Whatever.
I guess I just go to sleep.
Aug 11, 2013
Aug 11, 2013 at 12:01 AM UTC
she's gold on one side
silver on the other
heartened and free
she runs like a car wreck
racing at breakneck speed
trudging through sand to conjoin
two-fold into one.
little passes by her that goes unnoticed.
she drinks in every opportunity
to swallow what ever happening will feed her today's lesson.
equanimity hostility frivolity passivity.
she knows the streets have taught her more
than she will ever forget.
and she can remember how it felt
to taste ***** in her mouth
when she looked in the mirror
that mocked her every breath.
she tries to back step
and unmake a bed
that she's told she made
and must lie in
for the rest of her life.
she wants to call consignment
and have it undelivered
but they won't take
bug ridden
**** stained
sprung and un-stuffed
pieces of junk that carried
peoples dreams in the dark.
there's no worth, they say.
so she's left
carting around holes and dead air.
melted glass and ***** cartridges.
spent fits and broken tin.
wondering
what kind of legacy this is
for a very pretty tousle haired girl
that trusts her with unfeigned eyes
and believes in super mom?
she cries at night
and tries in the morning
being as tangible as they expect-
but in that socketed place
that holds spun sugar contemplation
she buries herself.
one two-fold parades all day
playing puppet gurrl games.
she lives in a land of
pots of gold and rainbows
clover and blue moons
moving one step at a time
towards what's expected
because she knows nothing else.
day in and day out
running like a car wreck-
gold on one side
and silver on the other.
Jul 12, 2010
Jul 12, 2010 at 12:04 PM UTC
My heart is a burning city
Held up by pillars of salt
No one's sure how it started
A cigarette astray?
Catherine O'Leary's heartbreak?
Job lives in a house on the hill
On the teetering outskirt of town
He visits twice a week
And carries a purple umbrella for the ashes
Can pity turn into love?
Can saying it make it real?
Are we doomed to dream of a lucid skyline stained orange?
Slaving over carting wheelbarrows full of gristle
Of the burning tower I used to be
My silhouette on the horizon
Is the hunchback of New England
Dec 10, 2011
Dec 10, 2011 at 1:30 AM UTC
Placate nature's dangers,
demons dwelling in the dark;
dismember markings sated
but not caught;
Marry the taken stranger's nectar,
and market snark to desperate
markers carting parted, deepened
larks.
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 8:09 PM UTC
When the house is a hole and the kitchen's a state
and work's like a chore and the tv's a bore
and the family’s complaining and the friends are all draining
and the hot is too hot
and the cold is too cold
and the young are too young
and the old is too bold
and nothing fits anything, anywhere, any old time
anyway - it's not them. It's me.
It's you.
We must stop.
Stop fixing, start healing
heal, feel, start feeling.
What’s in the middle of wrong, wanting out?
What’s on the edge of all right, wanting in?
Let it in, let it out
heal, feel, fail: BREATHE.
Be at peace, *** at bees
go camping, go carting
cartwheeling
spirit sailing.
Free-falling
free-loading, load-bearing
bare-teething
bare skinning: spare tyreing
Spree soaring.
Fly high-ing.
It's not them.
This will not be your last moment
to be in the mud, **** up to your ears,
eyes glowing and goggling at the stars,
as the water flows fast through your brain.
It will come again,
the avalanche, the ever launch,
into the pit.
Learn to love mud.
Learn to love **** and the crap and the water and rain
and the clouds and the sun
and the streaks of light that colour
your eyes a prism. Learn to let go of the prison,
the plot,
the *** of gold that man made, and dive
into the rainbow, drown
in life, in death,
in dust and moonlight.
Einstein said, if you can't say it simply, you don't
know it well enough.
Well, I can't say it simply: I want my life to be free.
And everyone knows shackles
are the devil's fee for ignorance,
for the simplicity that we want free to be.
So make it difficult, you ******
make it hard and wild and brave
and bright and boring: if that's what it takes
to unchain my clammy hand from your clasp,
make it really ******* stale.
Make it meaningless and marvellous
and miniscule and most of all,
make it do what it doesn't say on the tin.
Make everyone look
like they know nothing, only
to find that what they’re really full of is
priceless, like diamonds, and then make them
mine. Make them mine,
all mine,
digging deep
into their essence until they’re empty.
Make me mine.
You ******
You make me mine.
I’ve got the tools, you've got the map, I've packed the picnic lunch.
Bring it.
Nov 15, 2012
Nov 15, 2012 at 1:22 PM UTC
Have you seen the crazy man
who shuffles when he speaks
Mumbles with a broken stride
and ties his shoeless feet?
Have you seen the broken woman
carting round her home?
Shopping in a garbage can
Garbage shopping cart alone
Have you seen the intellect
religious physics in his head
He understands the missing cat
and knows that it's not dead
Have you seen them all together
when they're all apart?
Bumbling old shoes
A newer cart home
Calculated prayers and art
I have seen them
I've seen all three
Folding my newspaper blanket
I have them all for tea
Roosty
Jan 27, 2017
Jan 27, 2017 at 7:04 AM UTC
This gut I’ve got won’t go away
while I sit at my desk each day.
Munching McDonalds in my car
won’t land me “dancing with the stars”.
Mashed potatoes, I have found,
really help pack on the pounds.
While French cut fries, it seems to me
are helping clog my arteries.
I do no exercise, to speak,-
I think about it twice a week.
This diet soda helps me not
As muscles fade , I’ve gone to ***
I’m gaining weight, my knees are shot
Carting around this gut I’ve got.
Is munching wonder bread the cause
Or am I suffering Manopause.
Dec 10, 2011
Dec 10, 2011 at 8:47 PM UTC
It rained the whole of last night, dearest.
The banyan tree beyond my window
swished and swayed in the storm.
How bleak the wet luminance of my wait!
No streetlamp blinked
on the riddle of your returning trail
over the desolate stretches of the night.
My eyes stood sentinel,
the whole night, dearest,
for the faraway flicker of your torch
hurrying home...
Only fireflies wheeled lost and hopeless in the gale.
And there was lightning too, dearest—
white stallions carting the chariot of faceless shadows
down the valley of my gloom.
My-heart-leapt-at-each-thunderclap...
Did I hear,
muffled in its rumble,
your fumble at the gate,
knock at the door?
Dec 23, 2015
Dec 23, 2015 at 6:07 PM UTC
A furious 'thud-thud, thud-thud' hammers my bones
as I whip shirt sleeves and scarves across my room
and into the small latch-lock box.
The one with the brown leather handle that smells
like things-so-old-they've-turned-to-air.
Long ago I lost the key but the shape of its missingness
is the most familiar thing left in this place.
Latch-key box latch-key house latch-key life.
My footsteps ricochet off the walls to the toc-toc of the witching hour.
I hail a cab and lament the bouncy back seat and pop tunes of the humming driver,
pay with an app so I don’t have to say goodbye.
Not to cab, not to town, not to room.
The high-pitched wails of the most popular human carting system
grates my melancholy between the tracks.
Claustrophobic, crammed into more boxes
I.
Hate!
Boxes.
I…
Can’t remember how I got here from there.
I sit at the airport waiting for a canceled seat so I can get the next flight to:
Anywhere, Extra Cheap.
I look at a clock and I shouldn’t have.
Footsteps haunting, tracks grating, bumping, wailing, mouth humming slow to a blur.
The family next to me carefully removing themselves from the smell of my suitcase.
“Latch-key box latch-key house latch-key life,” I tell them.
Dec 2, 2017
Dec 2, 2017 at 4:39 PM UTC
It’s 6:24 on a Thursday morn,
and I can hear the city workmen
carting off the broken pieces
of our throw-away lives,
the stained and ***** secrets
we thought we got rid of so easily
by simply tossing them into those bins
thoughtfully provided for the purpose
But we never think about where it all ends,
our broken pieces and soiled yesterdays,
piled together in a field somewhere,
waiting patiently to become the soil
that nourishes our tomorrow
Sep 11, 2014
Sep 11, 2014 at 7:59 AM UTC
Talk to me more about miscommunications.
Tell me more about
These jumbled lips,
Misshapen teeth,
Boxed-off smiles you're carting around.
Convince me one more time that you're so perfect,
Please.
Cut my wings and ask me to take flight,
Again, I dare you.
I was strong
And in need of redemption
I was lost
And deserved a response -
Craft another elegant lie about how you loved me
And I'll use it as fuel for these flames.
Aug 3, 2016
Aug 3, 2016 at 12:10 AM UTC
The burden of carting your past around
Has made you weary precious one
It's time to set this heaviness down
Keep only the lessons and the love
Leave everything else far behind
You don't want it or need it
And now it's gone you can fly
Free as the summer bird
There are no constraints it's your time
You have no restrictions my friend
So fly as high as long as you wish
And let your wonderous spirit soar
Mar 5, 2016
Mar 5, 2016 at 12:28 PM UTC
Flawless was the sky
Stained by blood
A rise in the war fields
A smile among hate
A child born of darkness
But eyes of innocence
Pulled closer to the pain
I was wrapped in my own cocoon
So beaten on the inside
Soul ridden
Twinkling light held above my head
Cry blood
Sticks scrape my skin
Rocks break my bone
Words slice my neck
One scream to echo
No one can feel my pain
I must bare it alone
Carting this weight on my back
I mustn't fall
No wings to beat
No way of escape
I hang my head mournfully
String to bow
My song plays
But my soul
Lost its
Way
Home
Dec 2, 2012
Dec 2, 2012 at 12:04 AM UTC
"They too had a dream that
one day their sons, daughters,
grandsons, granddaughters ...
might pursue prosperity &
happiness in this land."
Well perhaps not Ben ...
perhaps while 10% of their
chained compatriots died around
them in the dark, shit-filled hull
of this heaving slave-ship they
may well have dreamt of home,
of family, of safety, warmth, of
the basic human right to dignity
& freedom & an ability to simply
walk through life going upon
one's business without the threat
of armed traders carting you off
to other lands ...
perhaps they dreamt of that,
& perhaps upon arrival & unloading
& a brutal harsh sunlight & a reckoning
of those you knew who'd died & been
thrown to the sharks & an examining
of teeth & body as a horse at trade
while upon a block as folks whiter
than you shouted out in strange
tongues & your wife & child were
elsewhere & your whole life was at
that moment in cruel & tragic collapse,
you might have thought of other things
rather than ...
Oh lord, yes, yes, one day I'm going
to be able to make a buck in this Land
of the Free and Home of the Brave ...
Mar 7, 2017
Mar 7, 2017 at 7:22 PM UTC
I liked when you sang me salty
lullabies, and kissed
the leaves on my forehead.
When you bundled me
up in sand and soil,
carting me off the county fair,
winning an honorable
mention.
How I miss the parting
of your lips, the lurking
smile: always
there, always
hidden.
Make me a dandelion
crown, and shepherd me
through your shoulders.
You can see the whole
world from up here--propped
up on the tombstone.
May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015 at 3:39 AM UTC