"indiana" poems
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember when we talked about going to seattle?
you said you liked the rain
and the fact that no one there would know you,
i just wanted to be wherever you were.
i was never afraid of the dark
when you talked about yours.
i still don't have words for what i felt
when you told me the only other number
you had saved in your phone apart from your mother's was mine.
i keep telling myself you're not allowed
to just exit and re-enter my life as you please,
but i leave the door unlocked,
so what does that make me?
the last "i love you" from the last time we spoke,
is still stuck to the roof of my mouth.
other lovers have tried to pry it out of me,
but the memory of you is like lockjaw.
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember the lizard you caught last summer?
you let me name him forrest.
if life is a box of chocolates,
there are pieces missing,
and whatever is left has gone stale.
i can't smoke cigarettes in my backyard anymore
without wondering where you are
or if you're smoking too.
i hope you're not drinking,
i know you hate what it does to you.
your secrets are still tucked between my ribs,
i will hold them safe and repeat them back to you
if you ever lose your way home.
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember when you told me
about the person you were afraid of becoming,
i said i wasn't scared,
and i told you i was proud of you?
i'm still proud of you.
i hope you're in school or at least keeping busy.
i hope you still make yourself laugh.
i miss you so much it hurts my whole body.
do you remember what movie we were watching
the night you got arrested?
i still can't finish it.
i am holding the place.
can we pick up where we left off?
can we stand up and wipe the dust off?
i never got to tell you why i only write in pen,
or why i can't sleep with socks on,
or about the day i caught god with his hands in a public fountain
fishing for change.
i'm not mad at you for disappearing, but i'm lonely.
the only reason i haven't called
is because i'm afraid of being sent straight to voicemail,
but if i ever find myself in indiana again,
you'll be the first to know.
- m.f.
Dec 21, 2014
Dec 21, 2014 at 11:04 AM UTC
Hello Chicago
Flat carpet-town of corn meal
steel spears at the northern junction
of Cahokia and some unknown dream
No lillies grow here sir,
no tulip fields
though there are many Dutch
a little up north
Wisconsin, dontcha' know?
Family blood rains through the Chicago river
named of the blood of a slain tribal wonder
wanders
with the roaming buffalo
I sat at the top of Sears
(Willis)
Tower and peered into the foggy distance
and made out the shores of Michigan
through Indiana
the leftover rains of a continental freeze
churned the earth to butter and carved the arteries
and bowels
of today's earthly body
And when we drove in from O'Hare
in the late hours on incessant stoplight highways
counting down the streets
thinking maybe they'll go all the way to
Mississippi
just a long row of
Concrete
I saw the brick tower
of a decrepit Frito-lay plant
where they cooked their corn and potato
into succulent
can't eat just one
little snacks
for the whole of america
to enjoy in backyard barbecues
and convenience stores
and grocery outlets
All across the planet
Now with the trucks they come and go
up to and whizzing past Chicago
on to greener states with greater relief
with hills and lakes and winding streams
Different sections of the sculpture
Cities eroding into the pleasant coasts
quaking and breaking into tiny stones
a monumental David
cracked in the gallery
bird **** corroding the silicates
unpolished and immortal
words
Chicago!
oh you mighty city you
built from sod and sweat and dew
of new morning
I see your towers
you dreamer, you
But your towers are in Dubai,
and Shanghai
now
The world moved on
and forgot everything about
that magnificent mile
burned to make you earn
new toys and fancy things
from far beyond your winding river streams
But you didn't die
amazing, how much they tried
to rust you out
to bleed you dry
no,
Chicago,
you keep your ***** rivers flowing
all the way to the Mississippi
flanked by modern Roman concrete
all the way to the great green sea
out into the puddle that surronds
the Amerigo
Chicago
don't you give up that river dream
Jun 14, 2018
Jun 14, 2018 at 3:26 PM UTC
I'm running from darkness
She is avoiding the light
She is closing her blinds
I'm escaping the night
I can never fall asleep
She can never know
She's not broken like I am
If I give in I go
Sometimes the black lasts hours
Sometimes it lasts for days
She wishes she was asleep
To get over all the pain
She is ultraviolet
Keeping me awake
She is everything
The victim of every mistake I make
She always drives me crazy
But I need her all the same
She seems to really love me
But can't make the claim
I'll want her forever
Love her til my walls are blue
She is where my mind wanders
Her eyes are the best Indiana view.
Apr 29, 2015
Apr 29, 2015 at 8:41 PM UTC
You are
the sky to me
clear and bright and endless
You are
laughter to me
loud and happy and peeling
You are
sugar to me
sweet and small and fine
You are
the computers software to me
the Indiana Jones adventure to me
the pyjama-wearing Sunday to me
Comforting, Comforting
Stop hugging me, it’s annoying you said
May 11, 2014
May 11, 2014 at 9:29 AM UTC
The Dullard
A well intentioned
Comrade dropped
Off a basket of learning
Tools for my niece and nephew.
Among the colorful array
Of big red dogs
And purple dinosaurs
I find a book titled
"God Thought of It First."
I paused to consider
Pernicious Anemia,
Gary, Indiana, Republicans,
The Ford Pinto...
I sure never would
Have thought of it.
Aug 25, 2015
Aug 25, 2015 at 8:58 AM UTC
Pale-skinned girl from Indiana,
with freckles,
yes, freckles, on your cheek,
this is who I am. This is my story.
It is only coincidence that I sing it
to you,
but sing, nonetheless, I do. One morning
amidst the restlessness of my top-bunk sheets
I heard a whispering and thought it might be God it was
me. My unconsciousness begging me
for nourishment, silently loudly attacking
my awareness with questions: it asked why
I neglect it. Pale-skinned girl from Indiana,
with freckles,
yes, freckles, on your cheek,
is this, too, why your body vibrates
when your thoughts are feelings? Because you too
have recognized feeling as thought? That that
faculty of wonder you hush about as if a
***** secret of forgotten childhood memory
is something that is as real as
the metaphysical pores of a skin you cannot touch,
but know is not some foreign, distant, effacing
thing, but is thick, is thick, thick as words
creaking like old wood in a library filled
with students who read so much ******** to get into
college but never venture forth for such skin
in the skin of those unconscious voices in the
shelves? Selves: we call them books but they breathe.
The ideas wriggle in your veins like
a worm. They block your blood yet move
your soul. The stillness of your speechlessness
is some movement in itself. So I suspect of you,
pale-skinned girl from Indiana,
with freckles,
yes, freckles, on your cheek.
So I suspect of myself.
I do not understand how else I could have been born
without eyes which we call eyes. I cannot see
why else.
I cannot.
You cannot.
There is light over there in that darkness.
A glimpse of it- a sliver of silver
has shocked you into your paleness. Into my
blackness. It is the same difference. A different
same.
Line break:
A mirror tells me things with my eyeless eyes.
My brownness ***** me into journeys with
tunnels so deep that we call them pupils.
In the distance that I gaze into I find
myself gazing into a distance I gaze into. Fathom
it. Do not. Will not will it will it will not
willed. Touching it will wilt it without touching:
this is the soul you said does not exist.
It is not there. It is.
In Indiana.
Where's that? asks my blood.
In Indiana.
Over there? my finger points out the window.
No. It is.
It is. Not.
Suddenly I smell something and it is myself.
It is not Indiana or freckles or pale-skin.
I ask you where it is.
Suddenly you smell something and it is yourself.
It is not Gaborone or curly-haired or black.
You ask me where I think it is.
What the **** do we know?
Apr 19, 2016
Apr 19, 2016 at 9:04 PM UTC
I met her in a cold cemetery
somewhere in the south-side of Chicago;
raindrops foreshadowing snowfall
fell delicately on her tanned face.
Her embrace warmed me throughout the winter,
and her laughter soothed my damaged mind.
I wanted to travel to Paris,
yet she so dearly longed for Indiana's fields.
I decided that I'd like to be a lion,
and she decided that she'd be a lion too.
Nights kept passing quickly, until they slowed.
Suddenly the weather was too cool for lions.
We parted upon the promises of Spring,
both of us agreeing to remain quite close friends.
Off she went to her muddy mid-western fields,
yet here I stayed longing for cold rains.
Feb 25, 2016
Feb 25, 2016 at 6:45 PM UTC
KEEP a red heart of memories
Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;
All starlights of cool memories on storm paths.
Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say.
Other faces rise on the prairie.
They are the unborn. The future.
Yesterday and to-morrow cross and mix on the skyline
The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets. One waits.
In the yellow dust of sunsets, in the meadows of vermilion eight o'clock June nights ... the dead men and the unborn children speak to me ... I can not tell you what they say ... you listen and you know.
I don't care who you are, man:
I know a woman is looking for you
and her soul is a corn-tassel kissing a south-west wind.
(The farm-boy whose face is the color of brick-dust, is calling the cows; he will form the letter X with crossed streams of milk from the teats; he will beat a tattoo on the bottom of a tin pail with X's of milk.)
I don't care who you are, man:
I know sons and daughters looking for you
And they are gray dust working toward star paths
And you see them from a garret window when you laugh
At your luck and murmur, "I don't care."
I don't care who you are, woman:
I know a man is looking for you
And his soul is a south-west wind kissing a corn-tassel.
(The kitchen girl on the farm is throwing oats to the chickens and the buff of their feathers says hello to the sunset's late maroon.)
I don't care who you are, woman:
I know sons and daughters looking for you
And they are next year's wheat or the year after hidden in the dark and loam.
My love is a yellow hammer spinning circles in Ohio, Indiana. My love is a redbird shooting flights in straight lines in Kentucky and Tennessee. My love is an early robin flaming an ember of copper on her shoulders in March and April. My love is a graybird living in the eaves of a Michigan house all winter. Why is my love always a crying thing of wings?
On the Indiana dunes, in the Mississippi marshes, I have asked: Is it only a fishbone on the beach?
Is it only a dog's jaw or a horse's skull whitening in the sun? Is the red heart of man only ashes? Is the flame of it all a white light switched off and the power house wires cut?
Why do the prairie roses answer every summer? Why do the changing repeating rains come back out of the salt sea wind-blown? Why do the stars keep their tracks? Why do the cradles of the sky rock new babies?
4.4k
Call me the greatest adventure of Indiana Jones.
Call me the Graeters of tasty ice cream cones.
Call me the Ed Rosenthal of relaxing stones.
Call me the Natasha Trethewey of meaningful poems.
Call me the Pauly Shore of Bio-Domes.
Call me the Jack Hannah of Columbus Zoos.
Call me the Martha Stewart of delicious stews.
Call me the Bob Ross of independent creations.
Call me the Dr. Phil of mending relations.
Call me the Albert Einstein of mathematical equations.
Call me the Captain Kirk of Space exploration.
Call me the William Shatner of monotone greatness.
Call me the Jim Morrison of open doors.
Call me the Mr. Clean of shiny floors.
Call me the Hugh Hefner of stupid ******
Call me the Bob Dylan of traveling trains.
Call me the Samuel L. Jackson of snakes and planes.
Call me the Arm & Hammer of tough stains.
Call me the Blade of a vampire.
Call me the Froto Baggins of the Shire.
Call me the Firestone of a pumped tire.
Call me a Christ of ignited passion.
Call me a Lucifer of trendy fashion.
Call me a Shiva of shattered illusions.
Call me a Buddha of peaceful institutions.
Call me the Ron Jeremy of KY Jelly.
Call me the Emeril Legassi of food for the belly.
Call me the Tupac Shakur of spitting ****
Call me the Eminem of full sentences.
Call me the Smoky the Bear of a campfire.
Call me the Jim Carry of Liar Liar.
Call me the That Guy of desire.
You can even call me an *******
Apr 29, 2013
Apr 29, 2013 at 5:20 AM UTC
Yes I jumped in those leaves
crunchy, fluffy, autumn leaves
Waded in the decorative fountain
Climbed on the public art
Yes I danced swing in the BART station
Hid in the grocery store among rolls of
toilet paper
Had to *** a ride after the Dicken's faire
Played in the rain
Hugged my mother
Made my dad take me to see Tangled in 3D
Yes I measured the baking soda for those
dinosaur chocolate chip cookies
Loved Steve Irwin will all my childhood admiration
Was afraid of the Deep End
Memorized Shel Silverstein
Remember my sister reading me Harry Potter
Gripping my best friend on Tower of Terror, Indiana Jones, Space Mountain
Sang Christmas Carols in October
And I'm not even sorry
I was a pirate paleontologist pop-star
pokemon master steampunk rocker renaissance girl who
time-traveled, hunting T-rex
adventuring with Christopher Robin, Calvin and Hobbes
Made two corsages for my junior prom, fed ducks,
ate at Mels, posed in the dollar store, watched
the Avengers in our glittering dresses for the second
Laughed so hard I cried about the stupidest things
I doubted, got lost in Costco, found my faith
Had my prayers answered
For the bestest, most faithful friends
I have the "simple human relief of knowing you’ve done wrong, and living through it"
And don't take this the wrong way
It's not like I'm going to jump off a bridge
Well, maybe with a bungee cord?
But if I died right now
**** Gone.
I wouldn't say I envied anybody
Not really
We've had a pretty **** great time
haven't we?
Oh sure I'd protest
Places to go, people to see, things to eat, but...
As long as You forgive me
my faults
Whose to say,
There is anything else I HAVE to do
Before I have lived a GREAT life
I have nothing to prove
besides that I am grateful
for this breath of life
which may pass at any moment
Nov 10, 2013
Nov 10, 2013 at 2:49 PM UTC
I am in such a **** mood,
the mountains have no meaning.
Big ******* rocks.
**** you, dad.
**** you, Fox News.
**** you, Indiana.
None of you *******
know what irony is.
Google that ****
Jesus Christ.
There are yellow streams--
that's poetic ****
There are ruby stained sheets--
that's blood, obviously,
and, I dunno,
maybe somebody died on a bed?
Everyone can **** my ****
To be or not to be,
that is the
shut the **** up.
Rapists are disgusting people.
They aren't people.
******* idiots.
Romanticizing everything
you wish you had
because
suicide, mental illness,
and eating disorders
make you cool,
riiiigghhhttt?
**** you.
If you do this,
you aren't interesting.
You're just you.
Get used to it.
There are people
that go through
these issues
and they don't think
it's ******* rad,
*******
I hate 75% of the south.
The south will rise again?
Get the **** out of here.
Stalin was a ****
Most writers are *****
Most of them ****
I don't care.
For the love of "God",
if I read one more poem
about what poetry is
or how to define a poet,
I'll slam my head against
a ************* knife.
Some people are so dumb.
Most ******* people.
******* pseudo-knowledge.
Armchair philosophers.
If you guys wanted
to **** yourself,
you could jump
from your ego
to your IQ.
Something, something, imagery.
Metaphor.
Apr 7, 2015
Apr 7, 2015 at 1:18 AM UTC
Hair stands upon jolted skin folds.
You never could eat a salad.
You look pregnant with a fat pig!
Large enough to eclipse the sun!
Large enough to cause nuclear winter for everyone!
Grass ceases to grow with every step that you take!
The earth weighs a percent more whenever you ingest!
Your rolls could warm the Eskimos!
An orchestra of clapping flesh fills the room with every movement you make!
You don't seem to care about the people you run over when rolling in the street.
You say it is their fault for getting in the way.
They all look like Indiana Jones trying to outrun a boulder.
Too many happy meals can make a lot of people unhappy.
Man sized pancakes dot the side walks that we all used to tread.
Skinny people no longer exist, they are all dead. You mistook them for French fries.
You are just as imperfect as me,
So who are you to point a chunky finger.
You think you are so big behind that screen. Lecturing me about body standards when you look like you washed up on the beach this morning.
Stop crushing your high horse and come down just a little bit.
Time for you to get a serving of your own medicine.
Gape those ears wide and give a listen:
I don't live to look good for some fat *** greasy, disgusting pig on the internet, jerking off to ********** **** while his mother makes microwave pizzas upstairs!
So jam that finger up you ***
May 21, 2019
May 21, 2019 at 6:51 PM UTC
Remember:
That time you put a candle in an egg roll
told me “happy birthday” and you were the
only one singing. I was the only one listening.
Candle lit dinner.
Remember:
That woman we stumbled into
who created the world out of yarn and thread
we wanted the world, but she was asking too much
although not unkindly.
Remember:
“there’s nothing borin abo’ Texas daalin”
oh what was his name- Greenberg? Graham?
he had charm the way Indiana Jones has charm
“Write her a poem”
I tried.
Remember:
That monster bass I caught on a
right-handed pole while you read
Faith Seeking Understanding
snug under your sleeping bag and yellow
volleyball blanket all of it just the bait
but we had both been hooked by that time.
Remember:
What happened next?
the stars had a twinkle and the water had
a shimmer the moon had a glow
but not as much as you. I never told you
I was freezing that night.
I just had a V-neck
****** if I broke the moment though.
Some things are worth suffering through.
Remember:
When I lied to you
about being on vacation
while you were in Honduras
rescuing children who knew how to **** dance”
lying may be a sin, but I think it made God smile
if not, the smile you had waiting could be sung about
for eternity.
Remember:
How we could argue.
Fights are ugly, but I was grotesque
words hit harder than my mother’s fist.
While it went on, words escaped, but the
ones that mattered I’m so sorry crept by unnoticed.
Remember:
The taste of “I Love You”
On your tongue, your lips.
Our unique flavor some parts fire and spice (you)
Some parts simmer and thyme (me)
or vice versa? Maybe a combination.
Remember:
Your goodnight.
Goodnight.
Sweet Dreams.
Sleep Well.
And Be Safe.
Feb 2, 2012
Feb 2, 2012 at 12:41 PM UTC
It can’t be TOO hard- being a duck that is.
My stomach growled watching a tot feeding a duck in the castle garden,
then my famished gears started turning.
Right. That’d be nice- I could go for some bread and a swim.
Ducks don’t even have to work for food- not these ducks
-they get fed.
I have to shop for bread,
and that’s not the half of it.
First I have to get to the bread,
which means risking it in my tired van
or sitting on a bus with a perfect smelly stranger
or pushing my luck crossing a bustling street.
And then, if I’m not way-laid…BREAD!
But I can’t just stuff it down my gullet,
and sure as day nobody’s gonna feed it to me.
The worst that can happen to a duck
eating bread
is getting its head wet…or choking on fruitcake.
Just when I was feeling particularly underprivileged
on the food chain,
I thought of my great grandfather
and his wooden decoy duck bobs
still sitting on my hearth back in Indiana,
and I thought of the dogs he used to chase the felled birds
and I thought of the bullets and the sharp October air, and the teeth,
and I felt silly.
Aug 24, 2011
Aug 24, 2011 at 2:15 PM UTC
i fell in love with you
once
long ago
with my eyes closed
and the dream-screen drawn
we danced
like music notes across their barred landscape
we danced
the loveliest late-night lullaby
you became my hiding place
lilac and lace linens
stretched over a lumpy matress
my indiana jones
waiting patently and poetically
in a long-lost temple of slumber
you come back to me in waves
softly and subtly
while i'm half awake
you're kissing the broken down shorelines of an insomniacs holiday
i wish i could keep you
like an empty bottle in the window-sill
or a heart arrhythmia
this lonely romantics cardiovascular waltz
let me snag you up from my dream-dust
and stitch you to my sole like a lost boys shadow
let me find you in my reality
tip-toeing over an underlined paragraph
of a beer stained paper-back
i'll find you
someday
after a long-over-due nights sleep
perhaps in the guitar strings
or type-writer keys
or at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey in the ever-humming freezer
be mine
evasive valentine
i'll even let you hide in the curls of my hair
or under my fingernails
i'll keep you
if you'll let me
just don't forget me
come sun-up
when you gallup away
from my sub-conscious escape
take my heart-rate with you
tucked into your breast-pocket
like a floral handkercheif
or a photogaraph taped to the dash
come back
to the grey matter kingdom
tucked behind my eyelashes
i'll meet you in the idiosyncrasies of my synapses
writing love stories that never once happened
Dec 20, 2012
Dec 20, 2012 at 12:56 PM UTC
IT'S going to come out all right-do you know?
The sun, the birds, the grass-they know.
They get along-and we'll get along.
Some days will be rainy and you will sit waiting
And the letter you wait for won't come,
And I will sit watching the sky tear off gray and gray
And the letter I wait for won't come.
There will be ac-ci-dents.
I know ac-ci-dents are coming.
Smash-ups, signals wrong, washouts, trestles rotten,
Red and yellow ac-ci-dents.
But somehow and somewhere the end of the run
The train gets put together again
And the caboose and the green tail lights
Fade down the right of way like a new white hope.
I never heard a mockingbird in Kentucky
Spilling its heart in the morning.
I never saw the snow on Chimborazo.
It's a high white Mexican hat, I hear.
I never had supper with Abe Lincoln.
Nor a dish of soup with Jim Hill.
But I've been around.
I know some of the boys here who can go a little.
I know girls good for a burst of speed any time.
I heard Williams and Walker
Before Walker died in the bughouse.
I knew a mandolin player
Working in a barber shop in an Indiana town,
And he thought he had a million dollars.
I knew a hotel girl in Des Moines.
She had eyes; I saw her and said to myself
The sun rises and the sun sets in her eyes.
I was her steady and her heart went pit-a-pat.
We took away the money for a prize waltz at a Brotherhood dance.
She had eyes; she was safe as the bridge over the Mississippi at Burlington; I married her.
Last summer we took the cushions going west.
Pike's Peak is a big old stone, believe me.
It's fastened down; something you can count on.
It's going to come out all right-do you know?
The sun, the birds, the grass-they know.
They get along-and we'll get along.
2.1k
I could be falling apart
breathing this american air
the taste of kerosene
is on the tip of my tongue
pressed against my teeth
I can hold it and wait
once a traveler said to me
Jesus could put his tongue
into the back of his throat
and block all air flow
achieving nirvana
on a single breath
I exhale out ennui
another overdose victim standing beside me
and the mutilated legs from Tiananmen square
blown off by the country boys the party called in to ****** the city kids, or so its said
my words are noted in the public record
and I'm called up to the bench
and told to file a motion for release
in 30 days
I sit in a hallway and explain to the guy who found him
on indiana street because he just got the feeling he needed to go back
that nothings guaranteed on this timeline
but he only half listens
and looks at me with suspicion that softens
with steady detachment
all the masks
and mines a suit and title
the robe and the stare
are you on the level?
Feb 8, 2019
Feb 8, 2019 at 1:24 PM UTC
I’ve got fifteen years tied in knots
of green and brown and I have
decided that it is time for a change
of scenery. So I climb onto the roof
and pretend I am a chimney, spewing
smoke of blue and grey and lung cancer and
voggy Hilo mornings. A helicopter
circles overhead at an altitude of 805 feet, its
searchlight catching the neighborhood
lying spread-eagled on the living room
floor, brutally desecrated and left
bare-bones to die. I am a catalyst,
an instigator, a cynic with a palm tree.
Today I read an atlas and find
naught but “A Hui Hou” scrawled across
the pages in black pen. I burn the
book, the bridge, and the old tires in
the backyard.
On Saturday it rained and the floodwaters
took my bicycle.
Sometimes I sit by the roadside reading
Bukowski with hibiscus in my hair and
Indiana in my eyes. Hunting dogs
clash with rescue dogs at the house
with the stop sign. The moon falls
from the sky and engulfs the mynah
birds and the plague. The floodwaters
recede and leave a jigsaw puzzle
on the slopes of Mauna Kea. “I am not
afraid,” I say, “for I am only gravel.”
I play the eight-bar blues on Fortieth
and sing songs of drugs and missed
connections. I am hit by a truck and
a little gold car, but I proclaim myself
immortal as I am flattened to the pavement.
I am the Ki’i Pohaku beatnik, and
I write of nature and nurture and
the never-ending rain.
Someone has painted my walls blue
and my hands grey. So I pack my suitcase
and run down the highway for
seven thousand miles and all I see
are mistakenly-numbered houses and
blank maps and dead neighbors
from families I used to know.
There are torrents of rain now,
forming puddles in the forest.
I know the reason. It is twelve
in the morning.
The neighborhood grows obscure.
We are demolished.
May 5, 2011
May 5, 2011 at 1:13 AM UTC
Went for a cruise on the maiden ship Titanic,
A wonderful ship everyone said would be epic
I was not scared because it was unsinkable
To be in fear would for me be unthinkable
Wanted to sail far away to another land
Where my life, I think could be quite grand
Unpacking my suitcase in a luxurious liner
This is the one yacht that could not be finer.
Passengers enjoyed dinner, dancing, and other entertainments.
All the days of the trip they would enjoy the embellishments
I heard that people like Astor, Guggenheim Straus, Thayer and Gordon
Would be on this ship including Stead, Fulrelle, Gibson and Morgan
On April 14, 1912 I was that evening returning to my room
Walking down the corridor I heard a deafening boom
Went to find an RMS crew member
When I was told on deck to assemble
He handed me a life jacket just in case
And to get in the lifeboat because there was space
Passengers were lowered down by the crew
The first little boat had just a few
A man started quickly paddling our tiny boat
Once far away he stopped and we would just float
Everyone watched as we heard screaming, crying and yelling
Amongst the chaos we heard music and saw the flares flying
In the early hours of April 15, the ship’s lights flickered out and then went straight up vertical
We all heard the moans of the iron and watched it break in half and it sank uncontrollable
From quite a distance I saw an ocean of people
Out in the middle of the sea, no one felt hopeful
Soon there was no sound
As we all looked around
Shivering crying and wondering
If we are going to live or die pondering
published in the Crawfordsville, Indiana newspaper
Copyright 2013
All Rights Reserved
Nov 20, 2013
Nov 20, 2013 at 3:55 PM UTC
I ASKED the Mayor of Gary about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week.
And the Mayor of Gary answered more workmen steal time on the job in Gary than any other place in the United States.
"Go into the plants and you will see men sitting around doing nothing-machinery does everything," said the Mayor of Gary when I asked him about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week.
And he wore cool cream pants, the Mayor of Gary, and white shoes, and a barber had fixed him up with a shampoo and a shave and he was easy and imperturbable though the government weather bureau thermometer said 96 and children were soaking their heads at bubbling fountains on the street corners.
And I said good-by to the Mayor of Gary and I went out from the city hall and turned the corner into Broadway.
And I saw workmen wearing leather shoes scruffed with fire and cinders, and pitted with little holes from running molten steel,
And some had bunches of specialized muscles around their shoulder blades hard as pig iron, muscles of their fore-arms were sheet steel and they looked to me like men who had been somewhere.Gary, Indiana, 1915.
1.8k
I
The road flies past underneath the tires of the car
and there's a hazy blur as the trees fly by
as fast as the regrets flitting across her mind
like so many white lines falling beneath the left wheels
She's never been to Chicago alone before
Yet she's felt alone in so many places
It was time for a new environment and new faces
and to drink greedily from Illinois skies
She plans to drink more air than alcohol for once
To be drunken in lust or contentment at a push
To feel and experience fully without substance
To be intoxicated on some profound emotion
She pulls up to the curb and kills the engine
so that time ceases to exist
Heart pounding, mouth dry, she steps onto the hot pavement
Every movement magnified in a Midwest summer meeting
Her ankles wobble over 3-inch heels with each step
stumbling like so many times before, but different this time
She takes a deep breath of her new-found independence
and takes the first steps into the welcoming light of the sun
II
It's funny how philosophical eyes can interpret the mundane
Every step an existential crisis under the surface
But even so, the days continue to come and go
as sure as the sun, blocked by clouds occasionally, but still there
like figures in the city, obscured by passing buses
You slash tires and try to blow the clouds away
because even big bad wolves run out of breath
Aug 11, 2014
Aug 11, 2014 at 5:37 PM UTC