"ironwork" poems
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.
Mar 28, 2013
Mar 28, 2013 at 1:49 AM UTC
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'.
Jan 2, 2015
Jan 2, 2015 at 3:17 PM UTC
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?
Nov 15, 2011
Nov 15, 2011 at 12:04 PM UTC
In Greenhead park's drained
paddling pool
a black cast iron water spout
stands three feet tall;
a puddle of ***** rainwater
reflects it's rusting brown base.
Red capital letters warn
Don’t go into the Water when
there is No Attendant,
another sign says
No Dogs.
This Victorian ironwork pipe waits
for August
when it will fill the pool with
water and welcome
excited, splashing children.
Round the shore
families will
enjoy vanilla ice cream
or sit on plaid blankets eating
ham sandwiches and blueberry muffins
washed down with
tepid coke.
I gaze at the sleeping iron spout and remember
a blistering childhood August
when the pool was full
every day and
no one thought about lifeguards
or dogs.
Ralph and I chased
each other round the pool:
our bare feet felt
rough concrete through
the shallow water.
He dared me
to explore the overflow
as it trickled into
a dark York stone tunnel.
I followed Ralph
down the cold, cramped culvert
to the starlight of distant planets.
We walked through Skaro’s black and white
petrified forest and helped
Dr Who to defeat
the Daleks
in their ozone electric
metal city.
Transported to another universe
we boldly went
to seek new people
and civilizations.
Ralph and I were
red blooded Captain Kirk
and green blooded Spock.
In September
school called us back to earth
but the pool stayed
full of water
ready for
winter ice.
Today
I walk past the hibernating paddling pool
as it dreams of summer fullness
and meditate on
the roles I played
after last paddling
in this pool.
Mar 11, 2025
Mar 11, 2025 at 4:58 PM UTC
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.
Jun 2, 2016
Jun 2, 2016 at 9:28 PM UTC