"smokestacks" poems
To future conquering civilizations
in galaxies far far away . . .
don't worry about polluting the air,
our smokestacks have shot dirty-bombs
into the clouds for centuries,
mixing rain drops with the
black grime of industrialization,
transforming our children's tears
into cesspools of sulfuric acid and ddt.
We've also drained the bayous and swamps
and between you and me
don't even bother landing in Africa
there isn't suitable drinking water
for miles, you see.
You can thank years of colonization for that.
In fact, you may not want to land
on Mondays, Tuesdays, or Thursdays
in LA either-
on those days the air quality index
is 175 and far too unhealthy for any
biological organism to survive.
But at least you won't die of malnutrition
you've got decisions:
McDonald's or Burger King
choose
cholesterol and diabetes are your shock troops.
Send them in immediately,
there won't be much resistance
we've got these things call lazy boys
and daytime t.v which have
enslaved the population and decreased
the distance
between fully functioning
human beings and mindless apes.
Don't worry about bringing weapons
we've got those too
we've perfected the art of blowing each other away
there's not much for you to do.
we destroy cities with fire from the sky
and our mushroom clouds rise
at least ten miles high.
And god can't see, there's too much smoke
in his eyes
and our radiated children die
with radiated sighs.
While we are on the topic
don't worry about us spreading
propaganda
we've lost the ability to communicate.
We've learned
books turn a peculiar dark yellow
when lighted and burned.
And forget erasing history,
we've done that too.
Our subjugation of native peoples
is masked as 'patriotism'
under the red, white, and blue.
But don't get me wrong,
I tell you all
of this not to dissuade,
please come and attack,
please come and invade.
Here, I'll even turn
on the lights . . .
Dec 23, 2012
Dec 23, 2012 at 9:06 PM UTC
Sunday night and the park policemen tell each other it
is dark as a stack of black cats on Lake Michigan.
A big picnic boat comes home to Chicago from the peach
farms of Saugatuck.
Hundreds of electric bulbs break the night's darkness, a
flock of red and yellow birds with wings at a standstill.
Running along the deck railings are festoons and leaping
in curves are loops of light from prow and stern
to the tall smokestacks.
Over the hoarse crunch of waves at my pier comes a
hoarse answer in the rhythmic oompa of the brasses
playing a Polish folk-song for the home-comers.
6.5k
Burning nails, the beginning of the end and black sails for the death of an invisible friend,
Tragic loss resulting from the magic catapulting from my fingertips.
Read my fiery lips:
Give me shelter from your Neptunian storm,
Split the world with a wedge and keep our bodies warm
Kick the trunk of the oak until it bleeds with the fire you stoke
And coke you need and **** you smoke, and ****** Prometheus,
You are only human. But the fire in your blood leaves their smokestacks fuming
And nothing can save you, enslave yourself
With your strong-willed bravery on a rocky shelf.
Roll your eyes, disregard, spit in faces, **** me off
Because I'm the good sister, just tend the hearth and when I speak I scoff.
My name is Hestia, and I don't often stray from the Pantheon
So just trust me on this:
I'll introduce you to the smoldering truths, induce catharsis
And let your body loose, pick up your liver, tend your wounds
As if they were ash and oil, because we alone know justice.
You alone know how you've toiled.
And I can only start to understand your firebrand,
A passionate command. I tolerate you and adore you for your mortal score.
Prometheus, don't let those raptors gouge you anymore.
Dec 27, 2013
Dec 27, 2013 at 1:32 AM UTC
ON the one hand the steel works.
On the other hand the penitentiary.
Sante Fe trains and Alton trains
Between smokestacks on the west
And gray walls on the east.
And Lockport down the river.
Part of the valley is God's.
And part is man's.
The river course laid out
A thousand years ago.
The canals ten years back.
The sun on two canals and one river
Makes three stripes of silver
Or copper and gold
Or shattered sunflower leaves.
Talons of an iceberg
Scraped out this valley.
Claws of an avalanche loosed here.
2k
in the weeds where the dark bees
believe in dark dreams; savoring the frostbitten
nostalgia of wet mittens and smokestacks
hacking hearth-smog and dingy bitters
against clouds from a nameless
grudge... spawn from downcast holly.
where red berries
gasp for yellow
in the crotch of a wooden Fluegelhorn
sprouting from the branch
of a hedge without
Lips.
But a mouth full of snow.
II
in the weeds where the dark bees
believe in atoms of uncorrupted joy and pollen.
where they collude with silent majorities
and swindle sunlight for a spawnsong
anchored to the beak of a kestrel...
shrieking the maniacal disquiet
of a perfect moment.
rattling the hinges -
adored.
without
a key.
May 4, 2018
May 4, 2018 at 7:33 PM UTC
What is the Rust Belt?
Can we define it?
- on a map, we mean -
Can we circle in black marker,
topographical green and brown, one mound,
from Canada on down to
Kentucky and say
well, there -
America’s sore fingers in old age
floating, separate, in the pond,
white and knobbed and wrapped around something
a lever, the haft of an oar,
the tuning dial to twist to Cavalcade,
the body of the eel which just keeps swimming away.
You said it in a message -
“Rust Belt” -
and a great blank region was filled
by old poets in corduroy
better than their surroundings
and if not better precisely
then at least when they drink
they drink in bars like smokestacks
with hubcaps on the walls, with weak plumbing,
listening to conversations, not having them.
Rust is something I know well:
I feel rust (but I don’t wear corduroy).
Rust like a signal ingredient
all through the cupboards.
Shot through, something you have too much of
and could never want to write about.
Rust in this message, too.
Mar 27, 2018
Mar 27, 2018 at 10:27 AM UTC
frozen fallout shelter housing dried goods and tinder
black bean and rice prepper bent on the end of days
looking first to the sky and then to the government
absorbing radiation and propaganda
faster than organic apple juice can flush the system
triple berry blast yogurt smoothie shakes violently
in hands coated with Lyme and the scent of the non-believers
bodies unburied lead only to disease and discomfort
stench filled landscape harboring mutated mankind
arms outstretched seeking normalcy and edible grains
contaminated meat from damaged cans sits unprotected
thin and frail lithosphere no longer preventing dermal cancer
only encouraging drought and famine while burning retinas and emaciating newborns
procreation as a plan of self-destruction and child-abuse
distant smokestacks, cracked, create a forlorn skyline
instilling visuals from days gone by
of easy life and happy youngsters
before the nuclear discovery
Mar 17, 2014
Mar 17, 2014 at 3:54 PM UTC
I only wish I had a better memory...
Everything just became too monotonous, even with the light glittering on the surface of the water, casting thousands of facets across the pool deck like shattered glass.
So I went out for a bike ride.
All was quiet and seemed to sleep in the sweeping hand of the warm breeze that traveled all the way from the beach, and I can smell the faintest smell of the ocean waves, in the midst of all the jumbled pollutions and crashing smoke of smokestacks and exhaust pipes.
Then I saw.
On the side of the road there was a small black rag, that was not a rag, but a tangled mess of feathers twisted into a grotesque shape like the claws of death. Little threads of raw life all dried up seeping through shining fibers that had lost their sheen, turned into dull blackness, like strings of tar forgotten on the roadside.
So it goes.
And I rode on, into a large expanse of concrete, dotted at intervals down the center with trees covered in purple blossoms, standing out boldly against the dark grayness and stark white lines. A silver car was parked lazily in the shade of a purple tree, with sunlight shining off its streamlined hide. The shiny metal surface was being whisked to even greater heights of polished perfection by a rainbow colored duster, its wispy hairs blown sweeping gently across the Civic as the small lady in the purple shirt that matched the trees dusted busily. With her trimly cut black dress pants and pointy shoes, she moved quickly, half of her face hidden in a pair of expansive brown sunglasses that perched on her nose. What she was doing, no one knows.
Will no one remember?
I will time travel.
Now I am gone, and her existence still is, and was, and will be until it is gone. So will the sorry little rag of feathers by the side of life's unknown road, and the policeman parked across the lot, eating a donut.
Aug 18, 2013
Aug 18, 2013 at 11:58 PM UTC
INTO the gulf and the pit of the dark night, the cold night, there is a man goes into the dark and the cold and when he comes back to his people he brings fire in his hands and they remember him in the years afterward as the fire bringer-they remember or forget-the man whose head kept singing to the want of his home, the want of his people.
For this man there is no name thought of-he has broken from jungles and the old oxen and the old wagons-circled the earth with ships-belted the earth with steel-swung with wings and a drumming motor in the high blue sky-shot his words on a wireless way through shattering sea storms:-out from the night and out from the jungles his head keeps singing-there is no road for him but on and on.
Against the sea bastions and the land bastions, against the great air pockets of stars and atoms, he points a finger, finds a release clutch, touches a button no man knew before.
The soldier with a smoking gun and a gas mask-the workshop man under the smokestacks and the blueprints-these two are brothers of the handshake never forgotten-for these two we give the salt tears of our eyes, the salute of red roses, the flame-won scarlet of poppies.
For the soldier who gives all, for the workshop man who gives all, for these the red bar is on the flag-the red bar is the heart's-blood of the mother who gave him, the land that gave him.
The gray foam and the great wheels of war go by and take all-and the years give mist and ashes-and our feet stand at these, the memory places of the known and the unknown, and our hands give a flame-won poppy-our hands touch the red bar of a flag for the sake of those who gave-and gave all.
1.4k
Five AM.
Dawn is the one remnant of the 1800s left in all of us - the weather. And even that disappears quickly. The pockets of morning stuck between you and me, between this car, and that car, and Dawn's Appalachian highway slipping itself in between the SLEX and the sky take your breath away and slip past consciousnesses like faint dreams. You snap awake. ****** reminder that it's already
Five AM.
Faint strains of rooster crow and traffic whistle keeping you up despite your desire to sleep. This bus ride is meant for sleeping, rather. Your teammates lean on pillowcases shifting hues from black to gray to light pink to faint orange. You stare quietly out the ever shifting window. Somehow your eyes keep track of the streaks of light running alongside it. Somehow you're awake even if it's just
Five AM.
The sky is the one part of our cities that isn't yet covered in ******** Outlines of shantytowns and exhaust smoke belching smokestacks and piggeries and overpriced skyscrapers provide platforms for the sun's pink rays to shine upon but still it rises above it. With it. Through it. Over and around. Sunset mornings that glow with an innocent hue. Some say Apollo preferred the form of a young boy whenever he'd come down to Earth. Makes for easier running, I guess. The roads look wider at
Five AM.
The sky is the one part of our cities that isn't yet covered in ******** The time it takes for one photon of light to hit the surface of the Earth is eight minutes. Light is far. Light is distant and twisted and radiant. Light provides surface for the sky - paints the floors of heaven by which we gaze upon with bleary eyes and pray to. God walking on our ceilings. Humans knocking on our floors. Alarm clocks reminding me it's just
Five AM.
It's just
Five AM.
Feb 13, 2015
Feb 13, 2015 at 8:02 AM UTC
BY day ... tireless smokestacks ... hungry smoky shanties hanging to the slopes ... crooning: We get by, that's all.
By night ... all lit up ... fire-gold bars, fire-gold flues ... and the shanties shaking in clumsy shadows ... almost the hills shaking ... all crooning: By God, we're going to find out or know why.
1.1k
backpacking in the Jefferson wilderness
eating fresh wild blueberries
warmed by a late spring sun
the crystal blue sky captures me
and I stand, transfixed –
How could we have collectively been so blind?
pumping Co2 into the atmosphere
dropping atomic bombs
and an atoll
named after a bikini…
and the plastic island –
A wispy cirrus cloud
floats gracefully overhead
and takes my thoughts
on a journey
distant smokestacks dot the horizon
and drilling platforms stand menacingly
just beyond the shore,
and inside the bellies of sea creatures …
the plastic –
readjusting my pack
and leaning over to re-tie my shoestrings
the slow crawl of an ant packing lunch
sends me reeling
so many hungry children
just in the state I live
hopeless and *****
in run down or condemned houses
waiting, with tear streaked cheeks
for someone to show up with dinner
as the third foodless day
is always the hardest –
Jun 17, 2015
Jun 17, 2015 at 5:06 PM UTC
i'd like to live in the geometry
of your body
like the cut of your kneecap
and the planes of your cheek
build myself along the rays
growing from your fingers
like so many smokestacks
the dodecahedron
Platonic in my orbit
Feb 10, 2013
Feb 10, 2013 at 7:37 PM UTC
A Winter Ship
At this wharf there are no grand landings to speak of.
Red and orange barges list and blister
Shackled to the dock, outmoded, gaudy,
And apparently indestructible.
The sea pulses under a skin of oil.
A gull holds his pose on a shanty ridgepole,
Riding the tide of the wind, steady
As wood and formal, in a jacket of ashes,
The whole flat harbor anchored in
The round of his yellow eye-button.
A blimp swims up like a day-moon or tin
Cigar over his rink of fishes.
The prospect is dull as an old etching.
They are unloading three barrels of little *****
The pier pilings seem about to collapse
And with them that rickety edifice
Of warehouses, derricks, smokestacks and bridges
In the distance. All around us the water slips
And gossips in its loose vernacular,
Ferrying the smells of cod and tar.
Farther out, the waves will be mouthing icecakes —-
A poor month for park-sleepers and lovers.
Even our shadows are blue with cold.
We wanted to see the sun come up
And are met, instead, by this iceribbed ship,
Bearded and blown, an albatross of frost,
Relic of tough weather, every winch and stay
Encased in a glassy pellicle.
The sun will diminish it soon enough:
Each wave-tip glitters like a knife.
Feb 16, 2015
Feb 16, 2015 at 10:52 PM UTC
Lips and finger
tips send hips
on trips and some
sink ships. My ship
slips and trickles
down a rabbit's hole
I thought you were
a queen. Red cup of
liquid gold with dreams
about caterpillars choking on
smokestacks and fungi.
“Who are you?”
Even the Mad Hatter
would call that fiction
--------------------------------------------
Those blender-chipped
lips I kissed, that left welts
on my skin. Those Cheshire
choppers that could ****
a cat. You were no queen,
you had a heart of black
You twiddle-dumb
**** with wonderlust
thighs. Drunken eyes
and heavy lids that bid on
empty shot glasses. This
ship has done sailed.
Jabberwocky babies shoot out of your bandersnatch
“Off with their ******* heads”
Sep 25, 2013
Sep 25, 2013 at 1:31 AM UTC
Living in this
cold world.
Every detail is noticed.
The birds chirp
with a hum of
highway traffic.
They fly south
in search of
better opportunities.
Carpetbaggers.
The wind brings the
sweet smell of
civilization.
Breath in.
Breath out.
Favorite sun pokes out
from behind its shadowy veil
of sulfur spewing smokestacks.
Listening to the grass
move,
groaning to keep up
the world.
An environmental Atlas.
Maintenance men out
pulling
the weeds
silently screaming for help.
The leaves don't crunch,
they let out
an apathetic sigh.
They move on
to their next life.
They've fallen
down on their luck.
Listen to the sounds
of Mother
being pushed around.
Nov 30, 2012
Nov 30, 2012 at 10:25 PM UTC
That first puff,
the first sip,
the burn in my throat,
light headed
and shaking,
another hit
another shot,
I remember when I promised
never.
I am not
the person I used to be,
I am not
a beacon of hope,
I am a shipwreck
and I can see
the smokestacks falling
into the sea.
Sometimes I have to
remind myself I am awake,
that this is not a dream,
maybe one day
I'll wake up
and it will be.
Do not look at me
like a sob story,
do not ask
for a happy ending,
there is no ending,
this is my life
and it is
ongoing
smoke bumming
***** stealing
blunt passing
cold turkey
relapsing
screaming
screaming
screaming.
Red ribbons
and markers on posters,
this is not
the person
I was
before.
May 27, 2014
May 27, 2014 at 1:13 AM UTC
If I find you
Will you mind
My broken windows
My rotted steps
The rats
In my head
And the bats
In the basement
Will you mind
The smokestacks
And boarded
Up doorways
Will you recognize
That I don't want
For you to leave
I just want
Someone to
Break inside
Aug 12, 2019
Aug 12, 2019 at 3:20 PM UTC
Smokestacks billow to the clouds and their shadows cast
The littered concrete is an eternal ream
It travels a world we believe small but actually ever so vast
A clean living world seems a distant dream
We inherit a world of pure beauty, such so it leaves us aghast
A small blue fish, swimming up stream
Meeting each current, a determined spirit, but the river it can't outlast
Global warfare on the television screen
How did we not learn from our mistakes in the not too distant past
The patriarchy is truly a vicious regime
Are we not the generation of change, why are we not amass
With a little work, I believe we can redeem
And begin to build a peaceful utopian society at long last
We then lay back,
and float downstream
Aug 4, 2013
Aug 4, 2013 at 1:06 PM UTC
The shadow of a man shivers
As Time clasps its withering hand,
Becoming the shadow of a denizen land,
Knocking on Death's door,
Between the separate strands.
Resurrection abundance;
Find us in the shadow lands,
Among the writhing smokestacks
And the vegetable sand.
Dec 22, 2023
Dec 22, 2023 at 7:32 PM UTC
The cornflower blue fields rolled to the edge of the town,
Held lavender and sapphire incense,
Absent produce just steaming scents,
Nestled in a vast valley,
Between pillars of countless smokestacks,
Churning out great sleepy coughs,
There was a place of milk and honey active consistency,
Where the lulled townsfolk dawdled,
The corners of their eyes and mouths thinned,
Within passing minutes and shifts,
From one scape to the next,
Predetermined and provincial,
As the sleepy smoke rose so did the passengers,
After a long and tired trip,
Leveled, gathered, proceeded on,
The machine's hum ringing in the air,
Slowly the air moved,
The townspeople gathered in their huts,
They barricaded themselves inside,
Imprisoned their own lives,
Content to be slow and easy-going,
They feared the one,
The One that they dare not acknowledge,
He strolled informally,
Chaotically, they say, he once lived in the fields,
The one greeted the sleepy folk,
But they didn't trust him,
Once he had been like them,
Until one day the One looked around and became hysterical,
No one know what to do with the one so they ignored him,
Day after day turned into year after year,
Soon the blue mist that rose from the fields turned navy,
It dyed the walls and the machines and even the people,
They became statues of alabaster,
Seeming to move now only slightly each day,
The one became a blur,
An invisible spinning, chanting, living, teraphim,
The one had lived a thousand years,
In a comparable minute to the townsfolk,
He only hoped that he could help,
But they couldn't see him,
Their slumped eyes had grown accustomed to the dream.
Nov 21, 2012
Nov 21, 2012 at 8:18 PM UTC
Smokestacks
with a
conscience;
Never
have
I
seen a more
startlingsight.
The bane of
creation, a
weapon of
consumption,
The sickle of
This broken
world. The
smokestacks
atomize and
scorch and
gnash, machines of flesh, tools for Eris and destruction,
with flues left back from 75 years of decimation and sin.
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 1:38 PM UTC
Another rainy night a lost emotion and a dependable vice did the train simply pass in the night leaving only a smokestacks embrace to the moonlit sky .
A single scar in a ocean of bad choices the naked view and the want is not need can we build from the nothing we are I lost interest and you simply lost the desire .
Passion is a infection that often is cleansed with time .
Old fools often resemble a mirrors reflection don't ask for what I cannot explain just be the person you no longer are and I will fade for now as well.
In steady rhythm together and so easily apart.
Salt water I recall the fantastic buzz by the ocean before the storm .
And now we are left only with this .
Its a perverse ending a dying flame .
I lost a time and you just simply a thought.
The page turned and we found a different story altogether.
Sometimes I think about viewing those pages deep within you.
Sometimes when it's dark and I'm alone.
Then I recall how I came to be here to begin with.
And I simply pour another drink and let those thoughts die with the passing night.
We are all shadows of are own choosing.
Apr 29, 2016
Apr 29, 2016 at 2:59 PM UTC
The last of six children
You made your way late
Through the humdrum of life
In the Volunteer state
Strapped to the hollows
Where your daddy and kin
Pulled coal from the mountains
And mine shafts within
The hum of the smokestacks
And the fog of the earth
Wore at your senses
And questioned your worth
While the cracks in the family
Like the cracks in the hills
Were as easy to slip through
As fortune’s goodwill
So you took to the bottle
And you took to the boys
With a thirst for the throttle
And the late barroom noise
While your mama and daddy
Sat at home by the phone
Sendin’ prayers for their youngest
Toward the gold plated throne
The folks down in Loudon
Remember too well
The night you rolled through
In your dust caked Chevelle
And the way it spun out
On a stray slab of ore
And careened down the slope
For the cold valley floor
The dirt in those hills
Never merited much
Beyond the black rock
Buried deep in its clutch
But the same soul that sprawled
Beside granddaddy’s grave
Was the same soul consumed
By the soil that day
When the April rains whisper
Their song to the pines
And the distant train whistles
Its lonesome steel whine
Deep in the thunder
Behind the grey hue
Your memory glistens
Like the late morning dew
The last of six children
You made your way late
Through the humdrum of life
In the Volunteer state
Pining for something
Your voice could not name
A dream and a dreamer
Too restless to tame
Dec 6, 2015
Dec 6, 2015 at 5:50 PM UTC