"shoveled" poems
Where we shoveled coal into the furnace was an inconsiderable door. Behind it held ***** chubby cherubs with cherry tomato noses, whose job it was to keep the fires of our parent's liquor cabinets full. This they did to keep them from constantly beating us, but the happy distraction did not always work. So, we would pluckily go. Go to the scuzzy pond at dusk with kerosine lanterns and listen for croaks. We tied forks to the ends of canes or stakes and would gig bullfrogs for dinner. It became only momentarily mortifying, but was always a choice way of ridding our sisters and other clingy girls of our company. We'd fry the legs in cornstarch and pepper flakes and be allowed to share with the adults their beer if it was a good catch. Usually, it was. Most of forever we waited for teaberry season, always the best time of the year. Though it was hotter than Beelzebub's bath water we'd go swimming in that **** pond to reach our favorite teaberry patches. This ensured our riches and fame throughout our Appalachian village. Everyone would eat teaberry ice cream and sing our names and no one beat us on those days.
Mar 28, 2016
Mar 28, 2016 at 3:08 PM UTC
Freezing a glance
Wind cuffs down-white heliums
Sweeps contrails
Separates cirrus across the moon
Cresting wave tormented
wind against steel
movement in movement
sprays of hair
Blizzard of petals from the apple
Furious snow
drifts off— garage roof
Fog that haunts the river on the coldest nights
_____________
The walk across the alley
took—
so long—
A lifetime from the doorway
of someone else’s impatience
Prints of motion
record the loss
a single set in snow
But there!
on the icy, shoveled surface of night
lies the snowflake of a bird
impossibly molted
Song of a feather
caught—
Flailing! Helpless!
More than lovely for its lying there!
Lying there!
Mar 12, 2017
Mar 12, 2017 at 6:38 PM UTC
When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs,
he forgot the copperheads and the assassin...
in the dust, in the cool tombs.
And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street,
cash and collateral turned ashes...
in the dust, in the cool tombs.
Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw
in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember?...
in the dust, in the cool tombs?
Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries,
cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns...
tell me if the lovers are losers...
tell me if any get more than the lovers...
in the dust...
in the cool tombs.
6k
All winter the fire devoured everything --
tear-stained elegies, old letters, diaries, dead flowers.
When April finally arrived,
I opened the woodstove one last time
and shoveled the remains of those long cold nights
into a bucket, ash rising
through shafts of sunlight,
as swirling in bright, angelic eddies.
I shoveled out the charred end of an oak log,
black and pointed like a pencil;
half-burnt pages
sacrificed
in the making of poems;
old, square handmade nails
liberated from weathered planks
split for kindling.
I buried my hands in the bucket,
found the nails, lifted them,
the phoenix of my right hand
shielded with soot and tar,
my left hand shrouded in soft white ash --
nails in both fists like forged lightning.
I smeared black lines on my face,
drew crosses on my chest with the nails,
raised my arms and stomped my feet,
dancing in honor of spring
and rebirth, dancing
in honor of winter and death.
I hauled the heavy bucket to the garden,
spread ashes over the ground,
asked the earth to be good.
I gave the earth everything
that pulled me through the lonely winter --
oak trees, barns, poems.
I picked up my shovel
and turned hard, gray dirt,
the blade splitting winter
from spring. With *** and rake,
I cultivated soil,
tilling row after row,
the earth now loose and black.
Tearing seed packets with my teeth,
I sowed spinach with my right hand,
planted petunias with my left.
Lifting clumps of dirt,
I crumbled them in my fists,
loving each dark letter that fell from my fingers.
And when I carried my empty bucket to the lake for water,
a few last ashes rose into spring-morning air,
ash drifting over fields
dew-covered
and lightly dusted green.
5.8k
I'm caught in between,
knowing what i do and don't need.
But this feeling seems to exceed,
whether or not i breath.
So i'll hold my ******* breath,
hoping this isn't another one of your tests.
Because i know i'll ******* Ace it,
and put an A on your chest.
I'm not the same person as i used to be,
I've been through some **** that only i can see.
I'll shovel it up for the simplicity.
It's like electricity,
Girl i know you're gonna miss me,
so stop dissing me.
Nobody has shoveled up your **** but me.
So trust me, before you motherfuckin' press me.
Don't test me.
You don't wanna be me,
or see what i've seen.
Nov 13, 2013
Nov 13, 2013 at 2:35 PM UTC
Her eyes burned from ammonia and snow as she shoveled the driveway
in the parts where the cat litter failed to appropriate traction.
This is what cars are for she said before she slipped away onto a twin mattress
next to pile of laundry and a pillow of books.
Sleeping with dryer hot clothes is only comfortable until you realize
you are still alone and loneliness is only formidable when you know it is indefinite.
So she folded each item into a pile and wondered if a suitcase wouldn't be better
than her dresser. But running away is not an answer like pit bulls and vipers having daughters, even though they ran out of formaldehyde and jars.
Aug 11, 2011
Aug 11, 2011 at 8:17 PM UTC
I fear that my insight
will be interpreted as "deep"
and in a sense it may be true
since I can feel the loose dirt
being shoveled over my head
by critics and hypocrites
who passively preach
while staring down:
that to be a normal person,
one must close their mind
and rather than retaining
creative ideas,
they should bury them.
Apr 7, 2016
Apr 7, 2016 at 1:28 AM UTC
We named our brothers ****** Boy John
We shoveled indifference with our ignorance
Into the grave of civility and brotherhood
The white family – we are the majority in the school of intolerance
Leading to social starvation
A minority of one is not wrong or mad
One is the last line before
an infinite sea of negative
Under God we are all equal and even
I hope we’ve cracked the whip for the last time
One more might sound louder than Judas’s kiss on Jesus’s cheek
Whips of words are seen holstered
On the tips of tongues and the points of pens
If the worth of your values breaks, and dogmatic hate begins to leak
Then stick the gum of pride you’ve been chewing on for years
To protect whatever you have left
Dr. King was an inspired man and leader
He painted the pages of history with red, not black
Sacrificed his blood, while accepting his skin
It was the kind of idea that seemed too extreme
Never forget the words: “I HAVE A DREAM!”
Nov 26, 2012
Nov 26, 2012 at 12:33 AM UTC
I used to feel like i was suffocating but since you left i feel like i am in a hole and the dirt that is shoveled on me is all the lies ive told and now i will let it bury me.
Jan 27, 2015
Jan 27, 2015 at 2:56 AM UTC
How we are like a snowflake each our own shape.
We’re all born pure, and land wherever the wind takes us.
Our destination is never for certain, for a cloud over a calm field,
May have flakes land in a distant fire,
Or fall to the concrete and get shoveled aside
Forgotten of their magic and stomped to ice.
Not you, the flake on the other side of the mountains,
The flake that is part of an aura of calmness and peace.
How we are like a snowflake each magical and full of potential.
Some turned to snowmen or formed to angels,
Others turn to ***** for a joyous fight,
Some flakes fall on mountain tops and remain up there for years,
Others fall to that same mountain and cause an avalanche.
Some fall to rivers and wash away and are never seen,
Not you, the flake that remains the same, that is untouched by time
And unscathed by hands and prints, needing no other form to remain beautiful.
Some flakes get walked all over turned hard and cold,
Unfavorable to be around and hurtful when one falls.
Other flakes are turned to homes providing shelter and comfort.
You’re that flake free and soft, still able to fly with the wind.
You’re that snowflake in the wilderness, the clean snowflake
Not covered in dirt, not marked, and not yet on top of the mountain,
But that snowflake that is full of so much potential and beauty.
Oh how we are like a snowflake, and how you’re brilliant among us all.
Mar 30, 2014
Mar 30, 2014 at 12:49 AM UTC
It's not me, it's you
these words they haunt beds
but I can sleep at night.
Rather be cold, covered, and neglected
than hot, naked, and rejected.
Yeah you're winning cause you have feelings
but nothing is ever what it seems.
Crying and purging at the thought of my body
but I won't let you see me because I'm shaking.
You're so far away from my tree that I appear
to be still but my leaves are trembling.
I never asked for thunder and rain,
you were supposed to bury the pain.
Instead I watched as you endlessly shoveled to find
the root, so the the thorn in your heart can be extracted.
But I won't let you get soil deep
forever bound
chained and held in my hand
curled up defeated
a snail in a shell.
Sicker everyday.... all because I didn't wish you well.
Shame
fingers point
and they blame
you.
Libra weigh the scales
I'm tired of the lower hand
I want you so bad it's stupid
It's stupid that I want bad news
Yearning centuries now for something new.
I want you so bad it's stupid
it's stupid that I want you so bad
so bad, my want is bad,
but I'm stupid for you.
The Victim and The Villain
interchanging between the two
chemistry ignited in red
but now we're entering the blues
The positions they change as frequent
as lies that transform into truth.
The Victtim and The Villain
they live inside of us;
and they live inside of you.
May 24, 2013
May 24, 2013 at 12:42 PM UTC
There are walls waiting,
crumbling
as pockmarks of decay
beside sidewalks
along motor cities’ streets.
There are terminal
and forsaken structures
colonized
with ungrateful squirrels
that abandon
attics for creaking kitchens
with corroded sinks.
Un-shoveled snow melts
slow on walkways
unfamiliar with worn heels
or rubber soles.
There are forlorn relics
patient and waiting
for us to join them.
Nov 14, 2012
Nov 14, 2012 at 11:33 AM UTC
We've reached an age where we talk at people. There's no 'to' or 'with'. We carelessly throw words around to each other hoping not to catch any unsatisfying sentences in return. Most of these substitutions for conversations are shoveled bit by bit through radio waves to small circuits in our pockets. Verbal language has become distant and alien to us. We're too content removing ourselves from the intimacy of communication that we've created societal norms that only further entrench this behavior while encouraging a facade of emotionless abandonment.
An answer other than 'good' to the masquerade of an endearing question - "how are you?" - will raise eyebrows and prompt suspicion. How far removed are we as humans from one another that a question on another's well-being is genuinely regarded as a greeting and meant to be mostly ignored and never answered honestly?
Put down your device and pick up your tongue.
Jul 16, 2014
Jul 16, 2014 at 7:25 PM UTC
She was sure of the shore,
much before the crushing storms
buried her at four - shoveled and pale
Sunk her soul
the brutal gales wailed
Tides dragged her off without a name
she lived where seashells lay
No words to speak, the silence keeps
fear's troubling beasts at bay
Cold watery world, no place for a girl
she sleeps now in a fern's curl
songbirds sing of forest's green
the frond gently unfurls
Oct 12, 2012
Oct 12, 2012 at 1:20 PM UTC
This ship has set sail
With a crew of fifty good men
And twenty heavily coated dogs
Over half the crew will be dead
By the time we reach our destination
On this secret government expedition
Journey to the bottom of the world
To find the Southern Pole
The wind blows us where no life lives
But the bitter cold
From North America
Past the southern tip of Argentina
Harbored at the Falkland Islands
For our last taste of civilization
Six months
Or maybe it was a year or more at sea
To the icy shores of another planet
Encased in endless days of darkness
The ship became marooned
In frozen oceanic tundra
For many winter nights
We the crew chiseled, shoveled
And pick-axed our way to break free
Of our prison made from solid crystal air
Finally unyielding land ahead
An unmovable iceberg
We dock and unload
Steady our sea legs to skis and sleds
The dogs take off across this untraveled land
Pulling us in tow
Faster against the frigid wind
Than our own frostbitten limbs would allow
Ninety degrees south latitude lies somewhere ahead
Blanketed in fresh snowfall and ice storms
Supplies and moral run low as this weary travel continues on
Shaded in zero visibility we set camp for the night
Harbored against the soulless chill
In a frozen crevice of ice mountain
Our health deteriorated and the dogs drained
Polar sleep sets in
The arctic wind chills us to the bone
And my cold eyes close
Sep 24, 2011
Sep 24, 2011 at 7:28 AM UTC
On my bed night after night I
sought him who my soul loves, I sought him
but did not find him...
I sought this morning
a handful of domestic tools.
I raked, I shoveled, I let fly
a gust from my mighty
two-stroke gas blower, which
shuddered to death in my hands,
before all of the leaves reached
the end of the ******* driveway.
I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem
that you do not awake my love until
the motor has had a chance to cool off,
or you might flood the engine.
David was anointed with the
oil of myrrh and cassia. My wrists
are caked in Havoline from
1998. Solomon ate banquets,
loved Sheba, three hundred
concubines and boats of perfumed wood.
Ramen at lunchtime. Sixty yards of two-by-fours.
If I never resemble a king,
let me sup of television dinners
let me work my hands in the valleys
of a clogged fuel line, let my bed
fill with the twin odalisques of
leisure reading and ***** sheets,
and give me never three hundred concubines.
And if I go about the city at night,
pleading with the watchmen, have they seen
she who my soul loves, let them answer:
"There."
The driveway is clean, now,
all the leaves left at the end to rot,
or be swept away.
Jun 7, 2010
Jun 7, 2010 at 4:22 PM UTC
I wonder how they dug the graves
and shoveled in their young.
When grass was your last supper
your reserves are clearly done.
My forebears wouldn't" take the soup",
they wouldn't sell their souls.
So perhaps determination, then,
gave them strength to dig those holes.
To starve in the midst of plenty
was the saddest sight on earth,
but to their London Landlords
Irish serfs held little worth.
It's known that a potato blight
was the famines primal cause,
but I still blame beef eating men
and the cold uncaring laws.
Feb 8, 2013
Feb 8, 2013 at 7:53 AM UTC
All intellect is dissected
Through the tunnel visioned perspectives
Stretched thin
In a stream of feed
Producing the illusion of need
Projected from old men
Who grin
Below the suicidal idols
Of the rivals
And glutton in the maniacal sins
Commenced
By brain dead Americans
Painted in the amens of the dense
Commending the hymns
Of spent casings
Atop the blood of babies
And maybe
One day
It can be better
Than the clever endeavours
To sever the head of the predators
Washing our hands of their sedatives
And delivering the skulls to the slavers
But we are pay dirt
Shoveled into trucks to work
For a leafless tree
Ready and wanting to believe
In anything
That doesn't see our deeds
As we
Are manufactured with the greed
Of sleeved wisemen
With five of a kind
In the fight for life
Putting our souls
Upon our rites
We bet
Despite the path of right
Infringing on the height
Of success
In excess
Of the tests message
We are the blessing
Of a warning
Within a forgotten story
Historically denoting its anointing
We are the disappointment
Of the warrior
Defeated in a court
Of corrupted consorts
Sorting out the blueprints
For a new fort
Distorting the borders
Of moral disorders
With orders to ****
The hoarders of will
We are the shrill screech
Of a dying world
And we are alive
But dead
Born to ****
Batteries of a shield
Building hell
To sell heaven pills
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 3:32 PM UTC
I long
to be nothing to somebody.
Discarded as the filter,
that peace
keeping this toxicity
at abated levels,
after you've used me
and have left nothing but ash.
Toss me aside
so dust and I may meet
rebuilding my being.
Fear not this poison,
over-exposure occurs within moments
and hence,
this making you, wretch,
will leave you immune.
Wanting to look into your eyes
fluttering as shades drawn
to allow us our privacy,
shutting off you from
me recomposing,
we are perfect together.
Disgust, your first impression
does well for my mirror,
destruction willing, my reprisal.
Shatter this looking back,
use shards of what's left to pluck heartstrings,
slide your glass-edged bow across these vocal chords,
allow all to hear the cacophony of a failing being.
Lose yourself, my torment
your release, emotion
but false memory.
Allow me your feet,
a subservient posture
dipping to welling eyes,
glistening to the light
of our true deaths, notes
and screams punctuated by
inkwell swelled wrists while
we fall six feet beneath
these sheets
and roll in our seductive graves.
Once there's been enough
shoveled on top
that we may be laid
to rest,
find comfort knowing
you've stolen my breath.
I long
to be nothing to somebody,
discarded, tossed aside
so the next to come needn't pick me up,
filtering my words through the masks we wear.
So I may be free to fall by this way,
not caring when I am lost.
Aug 16, 2012
Aug 16, 2012 at 2:19 PM UTC
today i made love to a gorgeously golden woman high above the ground.
she gave me great warmth and her foreplay made me smile.
sweet and hot like cinnamon-sugar.
a chocolate covered chili pepper melting all over my skin.
somewhere coal shoveled into an engine burns the same color she releases with her essence.
almost like a dragon, her breath scares me and protects me both,
but fails not to wrap around me the aftermath of billowing smoke.
Jan 29, 2012
Jan 29, 2012 at 10:13 PM UTC
Crazy things we didn’t know were there
Without an X to mark its spot,
We shoveled and we dug over our bodies
We pillaged acres of skin, ravished even,
Our flesh fueled by the promise of glowing treasure
Wielding shovels and picks only our better natured angels
Understood, or could call “sweet intentions”
No map we possessed ended in gold
So we drew up our own tracing mountains and streams,
Upturning every rock, wading in every pool,
Our made-up languages became passcodes for secret doors
Our hair and nails became booby-traps
Like poisonous ivy and razor sharp spikes.
Perilous our hunt for heirloom, we would find.
But how could we not look?
Our compass points Northeast from down here
So as I climb towards your chest and you to mine
Our knocking proved there were unhallowed
Cavities under ribbed-caged bodies
And still we dig
Closer and closer to the treasure in our chests.
Oct 4, 2011
Oct 4, 2011 at 8:18 PM UTC
Every child of ten knows
the universe is a jagged shape
edged by home and park
and school and market -
at least that’s the way I knew it
and all the world’s kids
went to McKinley school
and everyone's dad
worked at Lincoln Park Tool
while mother stayed at home.
So my entire universe
was shaken to shards
when father broke news
that we soon would be moving
to a distant galaxy
a dozen miles away -
entirely peopled by aliens.
Well it wasn’t so bleak after all -
my brother and little sister
were allowed to come with us
and we kept the same grandparents too.
New friends popped up everywhere
like rainbows of tulips in May.
The house was fresh and new
but seriously lacked a lawn.
so a rusty old truck rumbled up
and dumped us a mountain of soil.
Seizing the obvious challenge,
I put a shovel to its intended use -
moving and spreading non-stop
until Mom called us to dinner
then went back and shoveled ‘til dark.
The pile was nearly leveled
by afternoon next as
Dad turned his fifty-three Ford
into our driveway -
hitting the horn to call me over,
“Son I need your help.”
Dropping my shovel
I sped to the open trunk
and stared in disbelief.
In an ecstatic yelp
produced only by ten year old boys
I circled Dad's waist with my arms,
then gratefully unloaded
the best yellow scooter
in this or any other galaxy.
September, 2008
Mar 7, 2015
Mar 7, 2015 at 1:54 AM UTC
In Israel, you live in today
you never know what tomorrow will bring
if there will even be one
or if you will be asked to shed your civilian blood
on a bus or at a falafel stand
Today is what you have
connected to the dirt
under your feet that is
not taken for granted that is
a second chance at life
and is precious
and precarious
So you smoke
you yell and scream
and forgive the next second
everything is up front
there is no time for hidden agendas
everything on the table now
Everyone in a strange bond
On the day to remember the Holocaust
Sirens scream through the entire land
In the middle of nowhere on a highway
at the appointed hour, the siren
and all cars stop
and people get out and put their hand on their heart
united in a common grief
feel the pulse of your beating heart
feel the miracle that you exist
that despite an industrial scale effort
to destroy you, you are here
despite the millions who didn't make it
who were shoveled into mass graves
whose flesh was burned and the fat spattered and monitored
you are still here
today
a testament, to survival
No time for so much focus on the pettiness of ceaseless consumerism
A strange relief comes when you
realize, you are now a part of something larger than
yourself and are precious to a community of strangers
Jul 25, 2012
Jul 25, 2012 at 2:15 PM UTC
no one told them it was the place
that we watched the water go by -
sat, for hours,
and watched the water go by.
nobody said it was the spot where i started to move on from the boy i loved
and where you stopped caring what your father thinks.
it's the spot where we sat in the roots of trees
and smoothed sand off of purple river stones.
it's the spot where the old lumber mill had been decaying,
and where the kids would go when they were too old for the playground.
it was where the stray dogs poked around in the rubble and the lumber scraps
and where the stray cats fought and made love.
no one told them it was where we sat
and planned out our lives together -
a pair of girls with too-long legs and our hair askew
whose clothes were covered in paint
and whose hands where used to climbing the tree behind the bakery.
no one told them it was our spot,
our best-friend soul-speaking spot.
nobody said that it was spots like these
that hold the heart of our little town,
our artistic-afterthought town
with its peeling-paint coffee shops and friendly passersby.
they built concrete trees over our spot on the river,
an ugly corporate jungle.
they put grey bricks in the sand and shoveled away the purple river stones
and dug up the roots of our trees,
and now we'll have nowhere to watch the water tumble by.
no one told them it was the spot, our spot,
and no one will remember it but us.
Apr 21, 2013
Apr 21, 2013 at 7:07 PM UTC