"hammers" poems
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.
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He fumbles at your Soul
As Players at the Keys
Before they drop full Music on—
He stuns you by degrees—
Prepares your brittle Nature
For the Ethereal Blow
By fainter Hammers—further heard—
Then nearer—Then so slow
Your Breath has time to straighten—
Your Brain—to bubble Cool—
Deals—One—imperial—Thunderbolt—
That scalps your naked Soul—
When Winds take Forests in the Paws—
The Universe—is still—
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Awesome power is it natures wrath
To devastate all in its path
Twisters, winds driving rain
Leaves no place to look the same
In a way as it gathers pace
Never in a human place
Hidden killer out at sea
Land urge where it wants to be
Building strength, gathers speed
To destroy any breeds
The one i recall in this worlds arena
This phenomenon called Hurricane Katrina
Louisiana, New Orleans
Was subject by one so mean
Her awesome might hammers home
We are not on this world alone
The sights viewed all around the world
Natures torture from her living swirl
To consternate these Southern Lands
The rains and winds spew from her glands
The aftermath and splatter view
Killed so many, survivors few
City blocks submerged and broken
A legacy of natures token
New Orleans Jazz continues to play
Although nature won this day
Resilient folks, awesome place
Human nature won this race
Undercover we will rise
But in mother nature we will not despise
She gives us life, we share her hope
To view her strength, we can not gloat
Mar 24, 2010
Mar 24, 2010 at 4:46 PM UTC
Raw energy.
Despite the stiffness in his fingers,
despite the way his fingertips harden with calluses,
the industrious pianist hammers out the same tune
that he played last night,
and the night before,
and the night before that,
and unnumbered evenings before that.
Each notes falls magically into place,
none out of tune or without purpose,
perfectly in time.
Raw diligence and focus flooding his brown eyes,
gazing deeply into the sheet music.
His yellow forehead wanted dabbing,
Steeped in his sweat.
A manifestation of his time spent in his trade.
The conscientiousness in his eyes.
The raw vitality of his weathered hands.
The way he fills each note with sentiment.
Perhaps those are what keep calling me near?
Dec 9, 2010
Dec 9, 2010 at 3:19 PM UTC
I am tired of my rants
like a millions hammers
pounding away in my brain
constant chatter drowns sanity
expectations love and affection
comfort insecurities and misadventures
regrets lost and found
a million lives not lived
what could be and what is
hauntings and remembrances
shadows looming large on today
today that is not perfect
perfection that is just in mind
mind on verge of lunacy
constant screams drowned
in the agonizing void
void that is my life
I am tired, very tired
tears they have a mind of their own
roll down when you least expect
open your soul to strangers
strangers that glare
stay in dark away from glare
tucked in blanket of oblivion
lost and lonely yet sane
lost and lonely yet sane
Jan 30, 2013
Jan 30, 2013 at 1:56 AM UTC
Girls played hopscotch
While boys played ball
To some of us kids
It made no sense at all.
What if a girl had a
Powerhouse right arm
Would you want her staying
Back home on the farm?
Blue and pink
Pink and blue
Does all this insanity
Make any sense to you?
Hammers and nails
And puppy dog tails.
And all the nonsense
That nursery rhyme entails.
And what if a boy
Had balance and agility?
Would you look on him
As having a disability?
Girls had to take cooking
Boys had to take shop.
Why does this sexism
Never come to a stop?
Boys get a box of toys
Girls get some dolls.
Sometimes that makes
No real sense at all.
Girls take lessons on
How to dance and live.
Boys learn to ridicule
Not to take, but to give.
Blue and pink
Pink and blue
Does all this insanity
Make any sense to you?
Hammers and nails
And puppy dog tails.
And all the nonsense
That nursery rhyme entails.
Oct 20, 2016
Oct 20, 2016 at 5:36 PM UTC
It was not a heart, beating.
That muted boom, that clangor
Far off, not blood in the ears
Drumming up and fever
To impose on the evening.
The noise came from outside:
A metal detonating
Native, evidently, to
These stilled suburbs nobody
Startled at it, though the sound
Shook the ground with its pounding.
It took a root at my coming
Till the thudding shource, exposed,
Counfounded in wept guesswork:
Framed in windows of Main Street's
Silver factory, immense
Hammers hoisted, wheels turning,
Stalled, let fall their vertical
Tonnage of metal and wood;
Stunned in marrow. Men in white
Undershirts circled, tending
Without stop those greased machines,
Tending, without stop, the blunt
Indefatigable fact.
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This weight on my chest
This feeling of 100 punches to my gut
The pounding of hammers in my head
The feeling of a blade slip through my fingers
The smell of iron in the air as the thick red water drips and flows
All these pains and yet the worst feeling I've felt was the crushing blows of your words echoing in my ears.
Your words weighing heavily on my heart like an Anvil defying physics.
I feel the pressure and it's caving in...
May 31, 2015
May 31, 2015 at 9:37 AM UTC
Art has the unfortunate responsibility
of reflecting all the ugly truths
of the world
while at the same time
upholding the heavy burden
of hope
at the times breathing
becomes its hardest
we must inhale deeper
and transform the pain
in our lungs
and the doubts
in our own hearts
into something for others
to hold onto
to rest upon
to take refuge in
we must fight hate with love
give kindness the strength
to hold back cruelty
we must eat a little less
so those with nothing
will have something to eat
humanity may seem
to be slipping away
taking a step too far away
to ever come back
to ever remember
who we could be
and isn’t this a beautiful burden
this heavy weight upon our backs
and within our hearts
this feeling
that we are still alive
still able to breath
despite the pain
that we can still create
something out of the things
others would see destroyed
the ugly beasts
that dress like presidents
and kings with no clothes
with their ****** power
and their blatant lies
history will remember their crimes
as we will not let them be forgotten
tomorrow is not a day they own...
yet...
but if we want to take it back
we must start
by doing something today
remember
artist need other artist
to remind them
that there is still something left
in this world worth
making something beautiful for
and everyone
everyone of us
is an artist
so pick up your bricks
and your hammers
and your buckets of paint
and let your hearts
run wild through the streets
and start the taking of tomorrow
by turning the world
into something better today
Oct 7, 2018
Oct 7, 2018 at 4:14 PM UTC
And when you fall for a girl with hips like hammers and lips like pens, never let her go. Though it may be difficult, do not let her go. She will be the girl who is there to keep you safe. She will be the one who saves you.
She is everything you've ever needed in a person and more.
You always said that all you need is someone who can make a dull day be seen in technicolor
And who will love you for who you are.
And that IS her.
But you never mentioned how you need someone whose eyes are so blue that you could drown in every shade of her iris.
Or how you need someone that will make you bathe with her even though you're not the one who needs cleaning.
You never spoke of how you need someone who is able to make all of your insecurities melt-
Even if only for a second.
You never talked about how you need that girl that will tease you for how tightly you grip her hand when it's dark
And who will make your body thrash and tremble in pleasure rather than terror at night.
You never said a thing about how you NEED that girl whose laugh is too precious to ever forget the shape of her smile.
You never mentioned it because you had no idea.
Apr 29, 2014
Apr 29, 2014 at 10:52 AM UTC
her mouth was sandpaper.
her mouth was sandpaper
and she spoke like
a smooth surface,
words scraped into fluidity
like a wooden sphere,
turned over behind teeth ‘til all friction
is lost.
she spoke like the walls of a birdhouse
in the room of a dead carpenter:
pretty unassembled things.
her mouth was sandpaper
and every kiss chafed,
rubbing raw my lips
and tongue
crafting with each touch
drawing blood like
juice from an apple,
like sap
from wood already cut from the tree.
her mouth was sandpaper
and she told me
*i bite my lips,
rip at
the inside of my mouth,
cannibalize myself cell
by cell.*
bone saws in her mouth.
the only difference between teeth of jaws
and saws
is mercy
(and she swallowed her mercy long ago).
her mouth was sandpaper
and she spoke like a carpenter’s hands:
rough palms,
tough pads,
a utilitarian artist
a crafter of dead flesh.
a mortician for dryads
and kodama.
the art and the artist
in lips
tongue
and teeth.
her mouth was sandpaper
and i brought mine to hers
again and again,
her bitten-rough lips
opening like doors to
purgatory.
less entrapment than addiction -
returning once more to nails and hammers,
hell’s blacksmiths below
heaven’s painters above.
coming back home
to the space between,
to bone saws
and a carpenter’s hands.
her mouth was sandpaper
and her voice was carpentry,
her teeth bone saws
her words
birdhouse walls.
her mouth was purgatory
but her hands
were hands.
her mouth was sandpaper.
i held her hand
and chafed my lips raw.
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 12:26 AM UTC
They gathered by Williamson Road at sun-up
from neighboring spreads across the Tioga valley.
They came with carts laden with lumber stacks -
with saws, adzes, hammers and sundry tools.
They gathered with the homesteaders bond.
to co-build their neighbor's' dreams.
Sweet music of community echoed off the hills.
Chisels clanged into rock, shaping the foundation,
saws sang into boards to frame a timbered skeleton.
The staccato syncopation of hammers fastened walls
that soon would shelter plowshares, stock and grain.
A smithy leaned over his fire and forge -
chiming iron into sturdy latches and hinges.
Children scurried about mixing squeals and laughter
with exuberant fetching and lifting whenever called.
In two short passings of the sun the deed was done
and a handsome new barn, decked out in a wash of red
was silhouetted tall and proud against the fading light.
Homesteaders gathered at a celebration table
to share a hearty meal adorned by the music
of fiddles, grateful smiles and easy laughter.
Then one by one they steered their wagons home
gazing back at what their labors had wrought -
knowing to the depth of their communal souls
that we are more together than we are apart
Listen up, America! This is the music of community.
We are more together than we are apart.
© 2016 by Robert Charles Howard
Jul 31, 2016
Jul 31, 2016 at 10:16 AM UTC
This is the Devil’s hour.
It’s when George Lutz hears the ghosts
And murders his family in Amityville Horror.
Shia Labeouf get’s high on acid at 3:15.
I decide to write a poem.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
For 4 hours
I’ve been trapped in the Internet.
From Facebook posts about feminism
To related searches on Google.
“Mexican **** Takes Huge American ****
A video of a man receiving oral from
An eighteen-year-old Hispanic girl.
After ******* on her face,
He spits in her mouth
And slaps her with a foam finger
That says, “America is #1”
The cameraman then says in Spanish,
“Still happy you’re doing ****
------------------------------------------------------------------------
As I watched this woman degrade herself
It became hauntingly aware
That I could have stopped watching at any time.
The men in the video were pigs
But then what does that make me?
A ****** A lonely man?
Not to say I gained pleasure from this.
I don’t get off on
Women being demoralized by
A ***** (the true icon of male dominance)
For the ****** entertainment of others
Man is not a wolf,
Man is a parasite.
(My self-included)
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My eyes are made of glass
My head like a bag of hammers
Insomnia got the best of me.
Sep 9, 2013
Sep 9, 2013 at 5:25 PM UTC
my love sings as the nightingale sings
as all birds sing my love hides
behind all gifted songs of Earth
psalm and childrens laughter
the sound of rhythmic hammers
mankind at work with wood and metal
hearts full of life and love and singing
May 28, 2014
May 28, 2014 at 4:16 PM UTC
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
’Tis of the wave and not the rock;
’Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest’s roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee,—are all with thee!
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The Morning after Woe—
’Tis frequently the Way—
Surpasses all that rose before—
For utter Jubilee—
As Nature did not care—
And piled her Blossoms on—
And further to parade a Joy
Her Victim stared upon—
The Birds declaim their Tunes—
Pronouncing every word
Like Hammers—Did they know they fell
Like Litanies of Lead—
On here and there—a creature—
They’d modify the Glee
To fit some Crucifixal Clef—
Some Key of Calvary—
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Howls in the night
cross the threshold of savagery
Coordinated hate
of a hundred jackboots
stomping faces in the streets
Storefronts smashed
Crushed glass crunching
under the feet of unbridled violence
Doors bashed in
Swinging sledges smash
Women and children dragged
kicking and screaming from their homes
Beaten unconscious
then beaten while unconscious
Clothes rended
flesh roughly groped
******* mashed
by laughing barbarians
with teeth made of knives
Innocence of a generation *****
in a single evening
Ransacking hands
strangle the wealth of a culture
One thousand synagogues in flames
light cast magnified in the carpet of crystals
sparkle of hellish brilliance
Ninety one lives snuffed
they were the lucky ones
Avoided the camps
where greater horrors were wrought
in the forges of torment
from the pounding of flesh
beneath hatred like hammers
Jun 18, 2012
Jun 18, 2012 at 8:27 AM UTC
Shh, listen.
Did you hear it?
Its disturbing echo
inching down your spine.
Its chilling breath at the
nape of your neck.
Snaking through my mind,
creeping in like fog.
Seeping through the floor,
spilling secrets like blood.
Sounds of a clock
muffled by cotton.
Cloaked, it hammers
growing louder.
Can’t you hear it?
The thumping it emits.
Shuddering through my frame,
suffocation, blame!
It’s growing louder!
Uttering secrets only I know.
Acute are the senses
that hear its woe.
Pounding away all thoughts,
persistent, Its haunts.
Shattering midnight it stalks,
nightmarish pillow talk.
It grows, my skin pales.
louder and louder it wales!
A dead man’s heart yells,
telling its tale.
Say that I am mad, do you?
If only you knew,
I hear things in hell, it’s true.
Don’t you hear it too?
Nov 14, 2015
Nov 14, 2015 at 4:24 PM UTC
They are building a house
half a block down
and I sit up here
with the shades down
listening to the sounds,
the hammers pounding in nails,
thack thack thack thack,
and then I hear birds,
and thack thack thack,
and I go to bed,
I pull the covers to my throat;
they have been building this house
for a month, and soon it will have
its people...sleeping, eating,
loving, moving around,
but somehow
now
it is not right,
there seems a madness,
men walk on top with nails
in their mouths
and I read about Castro and Cuba,
and at night I walk by
and the ribs of the house show
and inside I can see cats walking
the way cats walk,
and then a boy rides by on a bicycle
and still the house is not done
and in the morning the men
will be back
walking around on the house
with their hammers,
and it seems people should not build houses
anymore,
it seems people should not get married
anymore,
it seems people should stop working
and sit in small rooms
on 2nd floors
under electric lights without shades;
it seems there is a lot to forget
and a lot not to do,
and in drugstores, markets, bars,
the people are tired, they do not want
to move, and I stand there at night
and look through this house and the
house does not want to be built;
through its sides I can see the purple hills
and the first lights of evening,
and it is cold
and I button my coat
and I stand there looking through the house
and the cats stop and look at me
until I am embarrased
and move North up the sidewalk
where I will buy
cigarettes and beer
and return to my room.
from "All's Normal Here" - 1985
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Liner runs thin
as I examine the skin
where I look for a tell-tale mark
Left of a ring that would prove
I'm not alone.
(it's not there)
My back arches and
my body quakes
as deep inside
Infantile sexuality wakes
as my lips let fly
assumed and guessed sighs
of fabricated pleasure
(whatever that is)
They did not teach me these things
I was left to assume
as hearts often do
when they are kept in a room
and ushered away from the pains and joys
of Love
I stare into a mirror
and I stare back
Until all of a sudden
my smile cracks
and I'm left to stare
into the eyes of one
born to lose.
I hug warm pillows
and stroke my own hair
Until I realize he
is not
wasn't
and will never be there
and I'm left to assemble
a Shattered Glass Heart
with nothing but hammers for tools
But then I see myself
beauty and flaws defined
and at this point I know
the only glass heart I need
is mine
even in pieces, it retains it's strength
and waits to be whole again
So dormant I sit
mesmerized by the prisms the pretty pieces make
as I wait
for a true artist to come
and give this
Shattered Glass Heart
new form
with the heat of reassuring and shared existence
and the grace of gentle words and sweet kisses.
Jun 27, 2011
Jun 27, 2011 at 12:03 PM UTC
The anvils rang and the hammers rose
To beat out bright blades of dwarvish steel
These were blades for elven kings
For soon the wars would rage
The Mordor hordes were marching
From the blacklands they would come
Bringing death and desolation
To the green and pleasant lands
But the elven hosts were marching
Alongside dwarves and men
And the eagles circled above them
Eyes searching every vale and glen
Bright were the swords of the elven kings
Tightly strung the bows
Heavy the axes and hammers of the mountain dwarves
Long and fierce the spears of men
The horse lords rode there on the flanks
And also in the van
They would be the first to fight
When the orchish hordes came into sight
Orc riders the target for their spears
Wargs the targets for their swords
To buy the times for the elven kings
To form their battle lines
Feb 7, 2015
Feb 7, 2015 at 4:01 PM UTC
There lies a closed door in all our lives
In love or friendship, hardships or tries
Between you and me, there is one such door
Which I long to open rather than look through the hole
But there it stands, gathering rust
Waiting to be re approached, like our trust
For you, my dear, don't have the key
And I'm too scared to find out what will be
We try in vain, the hammers of words
To break the barriers, to re emerge
But all it does is dully ache
And slowly away our memory it takes
So I look through the hole
With a hope that's nauseating
That you too are looking through it
That you too are waiting
Feb 15, 2014
Feb 15, 2014 at 11:24 AM UTC
Quietly the shadows grew one into another as the day withdrew
softly from the hollows of the trees until at last it stood
far away. The night crept up the lawns and rested
on the porches and peered into the windows.
The night came through the screens with the easy Summer breeze
and made us idle with its foreign song, chords of gray,
melancholy dissonance, its song that makes an end of songs.
Then we wanted nothing of the stuff of life however dear.
Yes, it pried the pens and hammers from our hands and wrought
with them nothing. It took our many conquests and made
one of them, shared by great and small alike that one ambition -
sleep. We were turned like strings around our newel posts.
We climbed the stairs and darkness followed, and darkness waited
while we bared, and darkness swallowed our last light.
We lost possession of our world tonight, sold it for a song,
rid of it as long as we could sleep.
Nov 11, 2012
Nov 11, 2012 at 11:37 PM UTC
Deep in the bottle,
where even the strongest minds fizzle,
perspective sways softly
and judgment is cutting
deep into submission
of stupor and stumble,
a profound lack of commitment
nodded off in the chair.
Wishing away
today and tomorrow,
but shadows can be patient
and wait for the dark.
The lump on the couch,
he bristles with anger,
fed whiskey and Winston’s
to dull those sharp cravings
for death ever-lasting,
for abyssal release.
You left the lump breathing,
withdrew your attention
to his core care and feeding;
you’ve taken to singing
serenades to the sleeping,
but memories keep bleeding,
that puncture your tincture;
for that lump is your fixture
of regret and remorse.
The lump does not whimper
until shadows are long,
the reruns on TV run into
the screaming of your song;
the drum solo hammers
on tomb-like front door;
a concert, just for husband and you;
the social worker’s knocking;
whatever will you do?
Oct 9, 2011
Oct 9, 2011 at 12:24 PM UTC
Snow White in fact to hell and back pursued the seven Dwarves
Who daily mined their businesses and never minded yours
She danced the ground where hammers pound
She sang in quadraphonic sound
She knew her scene was just on screen
And screens were not of human beings
She knew her life in truth to be
Light flickering through transparency
And that she soon as all cartoons
Would roll back to her film's cocoon
Then a sticky floor for a Disney *****
A princess serving clients
She did her part, now Dwarven hearts
Can beat the blood of Giants
May 8, 2012
May 8, 2012 at 10:11 PM UTC