"shoeshine" poems
What poem will you wear, when first we meet?
How will I recognition-you,
when you transverse my land?
Unknown our faces, our voices,
Only silent words electronic exchanged
Will lantern, it be: one, if by land, two, if by sea?
Will your ID badge, passport stamped and state,
Your chest bear a witness-sign?
The Arrivals Board flashes:
une poétesse est arrivé
eine Dichterin ist angekomme
a poetess has arrived
una poetisa ha llegado
Will there be a haiku in your hair,
A limerick exposed by raucous grin,
Or just ten words
allotted for your entire visit?
**Desperate to locate
Urgent to sensate
Matters I take
Into two cupped hands,
On the shoeshine stand
Climb and recite-shout**
Know me by my words,
Know me by the lilt lyrical
Of my American accented,
Canadian Tongue of my mother
Know me by my words,
Carved by time on my forehead,
Poetry is the blood of this fool's soul,
Hear me, find me, look upon me slamming
Poems are the thorns in my palms,
See me crucified, bleeding stanzas
Upon my shoeshine stand cross
Recitation resuscitation welcoming:
Benedicting Gloria, Gloria, Gloria
But if this should fail your attention to secure,
Or the TSA unappreciate my second coming,
Look for the crowd gathered round,
A man of moderate height, in a tall hat,
Beard scraggly, looking sorrowful
Reciting the Gettysburg Address
Either way,
Should be easy peasy to find me,
Grab your bag, off to short-term parking
This is how an Americana poet meets n' greets
Arriving poetess from a foreign land
Is there any other way?
------------------------------
Postscipt
**Alas, five years on and I know in my heart
that you are not coming...**
Aug 31, 2013
Aug 31, 2013 at 3:17 AM UTC
A kilo of fish brinjal pumpkin
Cauliflower raisin and bean
Washing soap and eggs one crate
Need to buy bring from market!
Mustard oil some milk and rice
Cashew nut and a horde of spice
Gourd and potato spinach cabbage
The list is long fills a page!
Feel confused from where to start
How to pile and stack on a cart
Shoeshine cream to adhesive glue
All calculations and maths to do!
Ticked what’s got unticked what’s not
Cash dwindles with much unbought
Trudge back home in sweated daze
She checks items and fumes in rage!
Nov 15, 2014
Nov 15, 2014 at 10:55 AM UTC
Our so-empty lives are filled with pointless plans,
Every decision impacts life, and sometimes death.
The earth split - death was in that sometimes day,
Where unending need became the end of their world.
Montana was my home-from-home in Haiti,
Art deco paradise, an instant hellish grave.
What of my shoeshine man with ***** shoes?
Two hundred dead too hard, one is possible.
Little things we do to change the world,
The smallest possibilities in this nightmare,
Saving lives each day with lifeline texts,
Today we are the hand of God in hell.
Mar 6, 2014
Mar 6, 2014 at 5:30 AM UTC
"I think ***** may be a tragic hero,"
A student said,
"Linda tells her boys he is an average man,
And it's time for average men to be attended.
That he gets up and goes to work each day
Is enough to make him a hero."
We listen in the darkened room,
Breaking to think our thoughts aloud
Before we dive back into the pool
Of Loman miseries:
The braggart wearing down,
The cringing rage against
The darning of socks,
Silken stocking memories,
Naughtiness recapitulated.
And sons spinning round
The vortex edge,
Wondering whether
To bail or pledge....
The stage is growing dark,
The audience darker,
Receding from bright memories,
Nobility's idyllic days denied,
Nothing left but the emptiness of pride.
Accepting brassiness and braggadocio,
We lean, breathless beneath skyscrapers,
Accepting commission-only pay,
The emptiness of false news,
And mediocre heroes.
"Boys! The woods are burning!
Can't you understand?
There's a big blaze going all around!"
But no one understands.
We are all dreamers,
Hoping America makes us great again,
Wishing to live the Salesman's life,
Willing to leave Plan B hidden
Behind the fusebox for now...
If only hope remains,
If only champagne wishes,
Caviar dreams besot us in our schemes.
"Nobody dast blame this man!"
Says Charlie, and he is right.
It's tough being out there
Living on a wing and a prayer,
Promising the moon,
Promised the moon,
Age coming on,
No seeds planted,
No sun to shine
On what's left
Of the garden....
A little salary,
A smile,
A shoeshine,
Cannot suffice.
Believing dreams that lie
Is no reason to live;
Seeing the blue sky alone
Is no reason,
If there's nothing to own,
And no place to call home.
Mar 13, 2017
Mar 13, 2017 at 4:20 PM UTC
A lounge singer came across the water for me,
His shoeshine and perfect polish.
And the light only made sense to direct attention to the ripples in the water.
So, he came forward,
Opened his mouth and belted rotten,
Beautiful tufts of ulra-violet sound.
The lake seemed to caress the ivory echos of his voice,
Each note executed precisely,
Each page full of half notes on behalf of the executioner.
-P.S.
Jun 12, 2013
Jun 12, 2013 at 4:06 AM UTC
He wasn’t a boy,
He was forty years old
But they called him boy;
A habit born of old
Bigotries and behaviors
Difficult to defend
But that doesn’t mean
They came to an end
The shoeshine boy
Mostly shined the shoes
And if anyone listened, he had
Good advice they could use.
But most read their papers
On the busy city street
And paid no attention
To the wisdom by their feet.
The people read the news
And ******* about things
And gave their confusion
Talkative wings.
One day a guy asked
Why do people do
The horrendously crazy
Things they seem to do?
The shoeshine boy looked up
And gave the man a smile
And said a pithy sentence
After a decent while.
He said it often,
Sometimes audibly,
“Most people die
Of plain stupidity.”
The fellow thought this wise
And shared it with his friends
And that’s how a catchphrase
Or idea ultimately begins.
It’s something that is simple
But makes a lot of sense
For those looking for answers
If they are not too dense.
Sometimes it’s the only answer
That seems to apply at all
When madness is afoot
And morality seems to fall;
When people waste money
On toys instead of their kids.
That is often how they take
A ride down to the skids.
If only they heeded the things
The shoeshine boy said,
They might have grown wiser
Fewer rocks inside their heads.
But instead they sided with
Maddening mediocrity
Never realizing most folks
Die of plain stupidity.
Jul 8, 2015
Jul 8, 2015 at 11:19 PM UTC
everybody
whispers in shoeshine voices
(through polished brass lips) when the ovarian light hits
her
glittering in designer degrees of loss
and cherry *******
unfolding an inner eye while opening her wings
to the ages
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 7:50 PM UTC
*oh, and advertisement, καπριτσιολογια's natural ******* offspring works well with the perfectly pitched representation of the dynamism on the scales of cross-parallel social strata (i.e. "psychology" / social standardising en masse): a new york grid system: square square square, rectangle, square square square: shoeshine popsicle goldfish pig's trough.*
i found the investments of psychology
all too unfathomably capricious,
where the ratio of theory
to full-extent concrete proofs is a solution:
in that when one theory fails
another two emerge, and so on and so forth,
in that great existential ******
of dream interpretation, the golden cockerel
of freud glees with anticipation
to sprout a gigantic volcano gush of microscopic
life to enter the great **** eye that
cannot peer into itself and consider
both being and nothingness, as the great
ego eye of man does from the fully formed foetus
nimble footed and thumbs on the ready
in the grand coliseum of life - just a great
fishing net where once the mighty fisherman
st. peter caught fish, now herr anti-sanctus freud
catches foetuses of frogs - the womb the water
of these paradoxical amphibian representations;
psychology, the study of dreams, the extinction
of soul - apparently even asthma is unaccounted
for, the way in which thinking becomes
what thinking always was: a malignant capricious
medium pulverised by five vectors, and
the sixth a form of two selves: the selfless and the
selfish... dragged down to the molecular
degeneracy of explanation using genes,
but not protons neutrons or electrons - that's
reserved for the sun, the planets and the cosmos.
indeed, if psychology is the study of breathing
and not the study of thinking: imagine
what a hot snarling and wet breath raising
a voice in anger does to a cosy psychologist sitting
in his office, surrounded by ******* figurines
and african voodoo masks... sends him running...
the inverse form of asthma, asthma with words,
the angry asthma, of uninhibited thinking,
pure vocalisation of emotion...
no, i think less and less of psychology...
i think i'll just call it καπριτσιολογια:
the study of caprices, the study of whims -
e.g. a guy walks into a McDonald's, orders
a big mac in the following way:
- yes, but no lettuce, no mayo, no cheese, no
onions... just the bun the meat and ketchup.
Feb 26, 2016
Feb 26, 2016 at 7:34 AM UTC
A legacy
On a jet plane
For the coast
The Great Northwest
Hallelujah
Nice to knew ya
Glad I blew ya
Fair Grand Rapids
How ya held me
Sometimes uppie
Sometimes downie
Always homie
Now I roamie
Furniture City
Chairs are pretty
Tables sturdy
Girlies hurtie
But no more sittie
Need new pretty
Land of Portals
And no mere mortals
It's divine time
Need new shoeshine
Get the cool
Or play the fool time
May 13, 2015
May 13, 2015 at 1:43 PM UTC
The old ones seem haunted
even with ole Presidents
making their whistle-stop
campaigns.
Blacks on their exodus from the south,
streaming into them, one can visualize
with their souls and
spirits accompanying them as they seek
a decent life.
Imagine the shoeshine stands with their shoeshine “boys” and black attendants in the restrooms
which was probably as far as some of
them got.
The newsstands with their variety of
newspapers and sundries alerted
the lonely travelers to Wall Street
and elsewhere, businessmen
who would stream in with a sophistication
the common traveler feared.
The smells of leather baggage,
the cleanser that porters used
to keep the coaches clean wafted in.
The smell of cigars and wrinkles
of old men’s skin let us know
that the porters would be appearing
with a bevy of special guests.
History speaks in these stations
as well as some bus stations
around the country with their
dangerous drifters who would serial ****
and the ambitious young talents off
to the big city to seek success who we would
later never hear of.
The local Union Station in Champaign has been
turned into businesses, but I can
just see Abe Lincoln arriving
speaking from the caboose and making
his way to a horse and buggy
outside to go to the local county courthouse.
Long live ghost-filled train stations
everywhere, and don’t let us forget
the homeless and destitute street people
who need to use their restrooms and
sit down in the waiting area seats
to take a needed load off.
They’re that important in the general
pictures of things, at least to me.
Sep 8, 2016
Sep 8, 2016 at 12:51 PM UTC
The Day Lady Died
It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me
I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness
and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it
and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing
Apr 25, 2015
Apr 25, 2015 at 10:58 AM UTC
I like to rub her righteous
Rubber baby buggy bumpers
While her Sister Susie
Sells seashells by the sea shore.
Susie works in a shoeshine shop,
She sits, and she shines all day long.
She confesses with too many esses
It lispers up her whispered song.
Peter Piper picking peppers
Putting pickled peppers in a ***
Woodchuck chucked wood,
Chuckling, chucked the wood he got.
Susie’s sister Betty Botter
Bought a pound of bitter butter.
Betty was a bit of a ******
She said her butter was better bitter.
I thought of a thought, thinking
It was a very difficult thing to occur.
Thinking, busily thinking;
Blinking, and winking, thinking of her
We made a date at a quarter to eight
Said, “I’ll see you at the gate, don’t be late.”
Lucky and plucky, my ducky doo,
It was a heavy date, and a heavy gate.
Leary of a really weary *****
We wandered in our wandering leathers
Wondered if whether wetter
Weather were better to weather together.
We celebrate our late date
We didn’t skate, or deliberate our fate
Suffice is to further elucidate
And cheerily chewed the churros we ate.
Apr 25, 2016
Apr 25, 2016 at 9:54 PM UTC
Montana shoeshine man has ***** shoes,
Billie sings “That Ole Devil Called Love”,
The sun is shining but rain falls over me.
Occasional internet frustrates all work,
Every problem is someone else’s fault,
A Groundhog Day of daily tasks undone,
The black dog is with me in this place.
Is it me or is it them I ask myself again?
Today I cannot even die enough to cry-
Guess it’s those old Haiti Blues again.
Nov 25, 2012
Nov 25, 2012 at 9:30 AM UTC
Some is rich and some is poor and that's a fact you can't change;
Working all day to break your back and give it to the company store.
Now I was told to work smarter not harder, but when you're the smartest one in the welfare line even work horses have to laugh at you.
Now I don't sleep under this bridge for fun;
It keeps me dry when the storms come.
Jun 3, 2016
Jun 3, 2016 at 3:43 AM UTC
The old ones seem haunted
even with ole Presidents
making their whistle-stop campaigns.
Blacks on their exodus from the south,
streaming into them, one can visualize
with their souls and
spirits accompanying them as they seek
a decent life.
Imagine the shoeshine stands with their shoeshine “boys” and black attendants in the restrooms
which was probably as far as some of
them got.
The newsstands with their variety of
newspapers and sundries alerted
the lonely travelers to Wall Street
and elsewhere, businessmen
who would stream in with a sophistication
the common traveler feared.
The smells of leather baggage,
the cleanser that porters used
to keep the coaches clean wafted in.
The smell of cigars and wrinkles
of old men’s skin let us know
that the porters would be appearing
with a bevy of special guests.
History speaks in these stations
as well as some bus stations
around the country with their
dangerous drifters who would serial ****
and the ambitious young talents off
to the big city to seek success who we would
later never hear of.
The local Union Station in Champaign has been
turned into businesses, but I can
just see Abe Lincoln arriving
speaking from the caboose and making
his way to a horse and buggy
outside to go to the local county courthouse.
Long live ghost-filled train stations
everywhere, and don’t let us forget
the homeless and destitute street people
who need to use their restrooms and
sit down in the waiting area seats
to take a needed load off.
They’re that important in the general
pictures of things, at least to me.
Oct 19, 2016
Oct 19, 2016 at 11:27 AM UTC
the rags pop
just listen
to
the
crazy rhythm of
the
shoeshine beat
yeah
pop, pop, pop
goes the
sound of
the
shoeshine bebop
Sep 18, 2017
Sep 18, 2017 at 12:06 PM UTC
Why did his lost love
Find the shoeshine
And not the moonshine
As she polished his walk
With closure
Her tongue ragging his soul
Their arch
His boot
His foot in the grave
Those lost steps are so unkind
We're they not a pair
The fabric of their souls
One lace short of an eyelet
Two insteps short of a dance
Then ... her kiss of wax goodbye
The ***** and spam
The breaking of a dam
He often looks back
At the years
Thirty four unanswered prayers
At the abyss, the black
The knife in his back
The foreclosure
With no procurement
His mind playing no tricks
To her, it was just for kicks
She, twirling in defeat
The moon, the stars absent
Forever, the lingering pain
His step in time elongated
Logan Robertson
10/29/2019
Oct 29, 2019
Oct 29, 2019 at 5:29 AM UTC
Sunshine, moonshine, shoeshine
only the last I can claim to be mine.
Nov 11, 2019
Nov 11, 2019 at 4:35 PM UTC
Tonight,
Like the feathers on the water,
We’re floating until our strands get
The same way my body gets
Under the sheets.
Why do you always have dirt under your fingernails?
I want to chew them
Between my bones
And taste them on my swollen pink tongue.
I imagine your tongue on my cheek.
It makes me tingle
I think saliva is disgusting.
The water looks good from where we’re sitting
And you just cut your hair
And left it in the snow
Why were so many people there?
I watched my dog shed for years.
Batting eyelashes over layers and layers of body
Sounds silly to me
And hardly seems worth the effort
When there are so many productive things to do
Like curling up in bed
And letting sleep touch you like a lover would.
If I spit into this river
Would it sink or stay
Long enough to hear you scold me,
Yes I’m unladylike
And the river doesn’t need a shoeshine today.
New York is a scary place because there are so many people willing to make your shoes look pretty while simultaneously aching to watch you hate your reflection
If you’re one of the living.
God knows how the undead
Flock to the cities for a 9 to 5.
You cough and your skin erupts in goosebumps
Maybe the wind is better in bed than I am.
Feb 24, 2016
Feb 24, 2016 at 8:36 PM UTC
You don't have to tempt me
I'll take it and
if the offer's a sound one
I'm all ears.
I
see nothing or
all and am one with it,
up sometimes and
I'm down with it,
come **** or shoeshine
if I have the right time
you won't have to tempt
me at all.
At the point when return is impossible
and to go on is probably suicidal
I will and my will are one.
Sep 12, 2017
Sep 12, 2017 at 1:16 PM UTC
I am
in that sleepy
window
where lives
double
crushing pills
for the scarecrows
of trampoline
graveyard
/ suicide, it lowers
a shoeshine
chair
in a spotless
interrogation
room
for pregnancy
thing
of the present
Dec 11, 2016
Dec 11, 2016 at 9:44 AM UTC