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September Mar 2013
I saw you in Tim Hortons for the first time in three years.
You told me I had grown and
I congratulated on you on your weight loss.


She is my best friend.
You didn't raise a child,
You raised an ironwork frame.
You threw a girl into reality before she could even spell the word.

And I would love to look at the other side, but I can't—
it always loops back around like that little girl
doing circles around on her ten-speed as she pulls up
to the convenience store to buy you cigarettes.

Hey, at least you called her an ambulance—
On Thanksgiving Day when she passed out
from lack of nutrition because you spent your last welfare check
on something I don't even want to hear your excuse for.

I remember my mother, coming into my room at eleven pm on a Wednesday, telling me to put some shoes on because you snapped a pool cue and placed it to a guy's neck.

My pajama pants ripped as I broke into your apartment to wake my best friend up and tell her that my mom was parked outside and she had to spend the night at my house.

You spent the night in the drunk tank hitting on officers.
She spent the night beside me crying and asking for any other mother but you.

We were in grade 6.

When she was 13, she had to live with me for 3 months because social services deemed you, "unstable."
When she was 14, she moved away to the city because she couldn't handle you anymore.

I went to visit her last weekend and she didn't say a single word about you.
I think this is the most unrefined thing I have ever posted online. I just kinda wanted to get it off my chest because honestly it's been seething inside me for a long time, and I just recently saw the mother sooooooo..
The leaves are a
rustling surf of trees
as we wait for the
fireflies to ignite.
I am electrocuted by
the muted rush to live.

In the mud gourd corner
tawny frogs are hungry
for their father beneath
these jasmine clouds whose
scent is on the ironwork.
Words embezzle each another.

The dark comes in
for landing right behind
us. The moon witnesses
our truce in a moment
of silence. We address
her charity with
silvery gestures.

Sara Fielder © June 2018
Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches,
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Up on the little ***** behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water's edge, at the place
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down
at intervals of four or five feet.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me.  He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
He stood up in the water and regarded me
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas.  The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky *******
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
R Dickson Jan 2015
I'm just back frae The Kirk
Doon Canongate way,
Afore yi get tae Parliament,
That was brand new yesterday,

Way back tae the 1700's
A poet in his grave,
Fergusson the poetry man,
He couldnae be saved,

Banging his heid  in a fa'
Tumbling doon a' the steps,
Hadnae sterted livin' yet,
His poetry had some depth,

Rab trained as a minister,
He abandoned fir poetry,
At the age of twenty two,
With no heart for the ministry,

He took a job as a copyist,
Tae earn a crust tae live,
Probably hated it,
So much poetry for tae give,

If he wis alive the today,
He'd be pertying in Ibiza,
DJing wi' the discs,
Rapping like a geeza,

He was only 24,
At Cape Club he'd dae a gig,
I'm sure he enjoyed himsel',
It's something that he did,

After the fa',
Darkly melancholic,
Depression followed,
He  wisnea an alcoholic,

Straight to Edina's loony bin,
Then ca'd Darien House,
On Bristo Street used to stand,
Can't think what'd be worse,

He was born in 1750,
Died penniless in '74
Unmarked grave in Canongate,
Nae headstane was in store,

Many years later,
Head stane was selected,
Rabbie Burns inspired,
Was paid fir an' erected,

The date upon the stane was wrong,
Hopefully wis being changed,
By Robert Louis Stevenson,
But died before old age,

Grave is now restored,
Tae it's former glory,
Ironwork and stane cleaned,
But it's no the end o' story,

A statue wis erected,
On the street ootside the Kirk,
The way they positioned him,
He's on his way tae work,

You'll see the Parliament building,
If you wander doon the road,
Poems and poetry on the wa's
But none in Fergusson mode,

It seems he's been forgotten,
In this day and age,
Someone with his talent,
Wan o' Edina's greatest sage,

Let's hope we'll see his poetry,
On Scotland's parliament wa,
I dinae mean graffiti,
I mean poetry fir a'.
Marshal Gebbie Oct 2010
Written in the language of the hard hats and dedicated to each and every one of us who have endured this horrible ****** Winter weather*

Rain in gouts from June till now
There's blue clay mud forever,
Orange excavators ply
With sturdy tracked endeavour.
Lakes of water, turgid brown,
Are Swirling  with the flow
Of four inch pumps in overdrive
With ****** all to show.

Streaming rainfall day by day
As dogged men press on
To concrete saw and generator's
Screaming, nearby song.
Welders, under shelter, flash
Their lurid silver light
And ghosts of reinforcing bars
Reflect like day is night.

Mightily the ironwork
Descends by crane to trench
And snaking snout of concrete pump
Disgorge their load to bench
The magic of the bentonite
Performs it's subtle dance
And the concrete locks for centuries
As thunderous skies advance.

Knee deep in the morass
With perplexed furrowed brow,
An engineer is pondering
A sticky problem he has now
How to isolate contaminants
From mud to water flow,
How to guarantee the purity
As seaward tonnes of it does go

And still the deluge thundered down
Relentlessly it poured,
Day to day and month by month
Despite the plea's implored.
Relentlessly the hard hats
Bent their sodden backs to task
And forged a mighty work of progress
.... More than anyone could ask!

Amazing the endeavor,
Just amazing how they work
How men can face adversity
And simply will not go beserk!
How bounteous camaraderie
Generates between ranks.
When the hardship is shared
And the boss smiles... thanks.

For the roof beams are settling
And those deep holes begin
The tunnel takes shape
As slanting rain whistles in
And the big trucks do loiter
To idle there for a bit,
As the loud water blasters
Clear the clogged wheels of ****.

And the public all clamoured
To wait and queue in the stall
To watch and to witness
A quite remarkable call.
For the old Birdcage tavern
On that grim cloudy day
Promptly lifted her skirts
And slowly scuttled away.

All the glue and epoxy
And the rivers of nails,
And concrete trucks queuing
As the ******* flails.
And steel by the megaton
All rusted and twitched
And worriers worrying
Till the problems are fixed.
And the augers are drilling
In a great tandem arc
And nobody knows
Where the **** they can park!!!
  
Then the bright sunshine breaks
And the smiles all appear
And the work rate accellerates
For the way is now is clear
To inter that  dear old Vic tunnel
Down deep in the sod
Then you'll hear us all chortle
"We've ****** done it ...Thank God!"


Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
3 October 2010
Candace Nov 2011
1** Iron-bodied, you stand giant;
a thousand feet into the air, rigid
metal swaying in the wind.
2 Neck-breaking,

3 Sears Tower -- world-reflecting, glass-paned --
eclipses you, yet pales in your shadow.
4 Your ironwork: murky, camouflage brown
in the daylight, beautiful only by the twinkling dusk.

5 Prostrated, the multitudes hope to ascend,
flashes melding with the hourly light show --
6 Capture the splendor across the city!
7 L'Arc de Triomphe, Champs-Elysee, Notre Dame, ...

8 Euros squandered in trite gift shops,
9 -- Attention les pickpockets! --
10 Key chains, pens, 4 by 6 postcards...
Miss you loads. Wish you were here.

11 I climbed you. And now? 12 I watch
from Trocadero; fountains alive, illusions in place
but observed from afar, removed; 13 Apart
from the greedy, flocking masses.

14 One day, you will fall, and with you
the congregations that kneel before you
to wait in the line of impatient,
shoving, babbling, 15 Hallelujah tourists.

16 And when your feral echoes
fade to rubble on the crucified pelouse,
17 We at the grand marble square
will blink and miss it and wonder:

18 Were you ever there at all?
Drakmasters101 Jun 2016
I see them, do you?
The oldest from the dead, the youngest from the new.
The trek to the borough unknown, speckled with these.
All tethered to the iron girders supporting the ironwork.
I see them, do you?
100 years hence, still tethered?
Every metal rectangle representing love, marriage, a vow.
They will not fall off.
My children’s children will trek, with a parallelism to me.  
They will be rusty.
The weak, perished.
But you will see them.
Maybe I will lock one on too.
For the world, and you, to see.
Or maybe not.
If I do, I will remove the key and sacrifice it to the river.
That’s the way I like it.
It takes me fifteen minutes walking fast
But not that far
Three rights, a left, then straight ahead
To Cemetery Yard

It sits upon the corner of
Macarthur and Fleet Streets
I go there every Wednesday
To see ghosts I like to meet

The entry is medieval
With it's gated ironwork bars
And there hasn't been a gatekeeper
For many, many years
So I walk right in and I can have
A conversation with
The Captain Robert Cunningham
Or wife of Mister Smith

And who these dried up people were
Back then God only knows
For their tombstones only have their names
And some don't even show
Yet I speak to them like they’re alive
Or maybe I am dead?
But either way
I'm speaking to them all within my head

Captain Robert Cunningham
Says 'Thanks for coming here
'Cause back in eighteen sixty five
It was the very year
I was in a bluish uniform when under an attack
I was aiming for confederates
When shot straight in the back'

At which time I find I'm lacking
In appropriate reply
Over all the awe that I now feel
About his sacrifice

'Well Captain, not that much has changed
And I can’t really lie
The question is not who we were
But how it was we died'

And the grave of Mrs. Smith
next to him quietly there sits
calling out for my attention,
so attention I do split

And she tells me that one Christmas Eve
while milking in the barn
Two red faced angry Indians
strode in and she was harmed

Though she did whatever she could do
to put up a good fight
They stuck a knife right through her
on that territorial night

'Sara tell me, please, please tell me,
am I right or am I wrong?
Do my children lay beside me,
or did they live on and on? ”

But the courage isn't in me
'cause the tombstone dates don't lie
'Mrs. Smith, it isn’t if we lived,
but how it was we died'

And a couple hours later
When it was time to go back home
And I felt that they were satisfied
With being left alone

I turned around and looking down
I asked them with a sigh
“You have all of the experience…
How is it one should die? ”


Written by Sara Fielder © Feb 2012
Tom Atkins Jan 2020
The house sits at the edge of the woods.
Long abandoned the forest has taken over.
Vines tendril through nooks and crannies.
The door hangs on one hinge.
In the center of it all, a tree has grown,
pushing its way through the roof,
The ironwork has rusted.
The floor has collapsed.
And the mortar between the bricks has fallen out.
Bricks litter the floor,

Evidence
of what happens, slowly,
from the first moment of surrender
to the last.
About buildings. About our own lives, on so many fronts.
Sam Lawrence Nov 2020
The park gates keep the tangled
strands of street and brick away
from nature's pristine, geometric ways.

Grandiose, perhaps, with all the stone
and ironwork - why do we need a clear
divide? Is it pride? Should we marvel

at how far we've come from our earliest moments in primordial ****? Or perhaps
beneath the steely geese, dark water hides

a deeper fear - the knowledge we can never
tame the beast inside that bares its teeth.
We'll never know; the park gates close.
Universe Poems Jan 2022
Ironwork
Alcoves
Marble shield
Stonework
Classical columns
Georgian sash
Three or four floors,
plenty of space,
with townhouse grace,
or stood alone
with an approach,
that won't need a phone,
Just a view,
that will withstand,
any Storm
Drive up
Cappuccino and, cup,
or tea with a view,
that will inspire you

© 2022 Carol Natasha Diviney

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