"tonnage" poems
It was not a heart, beating.
That muted boom, that clangor
Far off, not blood in the ears
Drumming up and fever
To impose on the evening.
The noise came from outside:
A metal detonating
Native, evidently, to
These stilled suburbs nobody
Startled at it, though the sound
Shook the ground with its pounding.
It took a root at my coming
Till the thudding shource, exposed,
Counfounded in wept guesswork:
Framed in windows of Main Street's
Silver factory, immense
Hammers hoisted, wheels turning,
Stalled, let fall their vertical
Tonnage of metal and wood;
Stunned in marrow. Men in white
Undershirts circled, tending
Without stop those greased machines,
Tending, without stop, the blunt
Indefatigable fact.
8k
All summer I made friends
with the creatures nearby ---
they flowed through the fields
and under the tent walls,
or padded through the door,
grinning through their many teeth,
looking for seeds,
suet, sugar; muttering and humming,
opening the breadbox, happiest when
there was milk and music. But once
in the night I heard a sound
outside the door, the canvas
bulged slightly ---something
was pressing inward at eye level.
I watched, trembling, sure I had heard
the click of claws, the smack of lips
outside my gauzy house ---
I imagined the red eyes,
the broad tongue, the enormous lap.
Would it be friendly too?
Fear defeated me. And yet,
not in faith and not in madness
but with the courage I thought
my dream deserved,
I stepped outside. It was gone.
Then I whirled at the sound of some
shambling tonnage.
Did I see a black haunch slipping
back through the trees? Did I see
the moonlight shining on it?
Did I actually reach out my arms
toward it, toward paradise falling, like
the fading of the dearest, wildest hope ---
the dark heart of the story that is all
the reason for its telling?
6.7k
The tractor stands frozen - an agony
To think of. All night
Snow packed its open entrails. Now a head-pincering gale,
A spill of molten ice, smoking snow,
Pours into its steel.
At white heat of numbness it stands
In the aimed hosing of ground-level fieriness.
It defied flesh and won't start.
Hands are like wounds already
Inside armour gloves, and feet are unbelievable
As if the toe-nails were all just torn off.
I stare at it in hatred. Beyond it
The copse hisses - capitulates miserably
In the fleeing, failing light. Starlings,
A dirtier sleetier snow, blow smokily, unendingly, over
Towards plantations Eastward.
All the time the tractor is sinking
Through the degrees, deepening
Into its hell of ice.
The starting lever
Cracks its action, like a snapping knuckle.
The battery is alive - but like a lamb
Trying to nudge its solid-frozen mother -
While the seat claims my buttock-bones, bites
With the space-cold of earth, which it has joined
In one solid lump.
I squirt commercial sure-fire
Down the black throat - it just coughs.
It ridicules me - a trap of iron stupidity
I've stepped into. I drive the battery
As if I were hammering and hammering
The frozen arrangement to pieces with a hammer
And it jabbers laughing pain-crying mockingly
Into happy life.
And stands
Shuddering itself full of heat, seeming to enlarge slowly
Like a demon demonstrating
A more-than-usually-complete materialization -
Suddenly it jerks from its solidarity
With the concrete, and lurches towards a stanchion
Bursting with superhuman well-being and abandon
Shouting Where Where?
Worse iron is waiting. Power-lift kneels
Levers awake imprisoned deadweight,
Shackle-pins bedded in cast-iron cow-shit.
The blind and vibrating condemned obedience
Of iron to the cruelty of iron,
Wheels screeched out of their night-locks -
Fingers
Among the tormented
Tonnage and burning of iron
Eyes
Weeping in the wind of chloroform
And the tractor, streaming with sweat,
Raging and trembling and rejoicing.
5.2k
Upon a midnight’s visage airy,
T’was a lake frozen by fairy,
…and weighing on mind’s tonnage bearing?
There for ice’ opaqueness winter’s seized,
…and arms encased in rime; trees.
“Oh my,”
At dark of sky thought the eye of something troubling upon my mind?
And the frosty cloudy glass,
Take to it upon my axe,
…and the sting of shards will pass.
And will I eat at last.
Thusly, thrusting through the skull, wettened, weakened for the cold.
…and burden carry I with me,
So encased in rime is he,
Doth make of fishing’s night a chore,
Something that I do abhor!
…and stare I did into that sea,
…my frory breathe in imagery,
Dismay it did fluster me, when my eye captured by Sea,
...and in whirling thoughts could reflection see?
…and something else came back with me.
Pool with drops, light curves, dark rings; in vapid mind now find nothing...
T’was a misty sheen seen after showers?
A damp muggy place of reflecting hours,
Typhoid strange did make snowing;
The Asteraceae of my wilted flowers,
…and that Wren philosophically sings,
…and at lake a lone be -ing,
Appearing peering my soliloquy, I am therefore I into thee.
…and fixed calm stared back at me,
“What pray tell I Enquiry?”
Did something else look back at me?
...and glaring gaze thus did see, something I had hid from me,
…and gawking in my mind did ogle; a malevolence of thought once frugal...
A gaping, oscillating, pierced Abyss, forced farther back into consciousness...
Deeper in and further still,
Climb atop Old Arthur’s hill,
…and the winged Raven’s nearer, reflected on me in my mirror?
…and time did pass turning frozen dying, icy tears of sadness from my crying,
…so did silent Hume release, all the pain that’s troubling me; whilst frozen frame thus held in peace?
I fell forward and felt submerged,
Both characters, both now have merged.
And that creature which accompanied me?
Found a solace back in wine dark sea.
Jun 7, 2016
Jun 7, 2016 at 12:31 AM UTC
peeress: a woman holding the rank of a peer in her own right.
what tools fo you require?
a microscope, binoculars, perhaps an observatory telescope...
you ask to peer into my soul,
the heart of the matter,
and I object
not,
asking only for a workman's wages,
of honest preparation,
have you the tools to see me properly,
and when you love what you see,
will you have them by your side
to see the future close by,
and so far ahead?
do you possess within thy
secret places,
an archeological brush
to wipe gently away my ancient earths,
or a toy red shovel to remove fossilized
10,000 year old grains of old hearts,
or fresh, damp from this morning,
of words and sand from my inner
beach, even then, the tonnage may
require an industrial excavator
to clear, hold and perhaps contain
all that poetry, all that love that it contains,
so I ask, you, myself:
*Do you have the proper tools,
the necessaries and the necessities,
to find to store to relish and to delight
in what you may find?*
be an explorer,
and write of all your discoveries,
hurry, for the word
time
means in soul terms & the heart's specialized verbiage,
never enough
so girl scout/ mademoiselle peeress
you s t i l l
have much to assay/essay/uncover
re the meanings of love...
for there is as much to learn from the
quietus of love,
as there is, from the vibrant tumbling of
climbing to new heights
peer carefully...
5:44am
Wed Sep 10
Twenty Twenty Five
Sep 11, 2025
Sep 11, 2025 at 9:28 AM UTC
Too much alone
Too much afraid
Too much unknown
Too much paid
To let us go
By the way
For no show
So they say
Could I tell you a story
Ole storyteller
Like bees buzzing flowers
With some honey on hive's mind
It's a modern tale
That has sat sail
All sewn up
At a rate of knots
That black book
Bought with blood money
Dares to say it holds a name
Spar - with these throat barnacles
(Alternately feeding and fighting With their feet)
bowsprit [bee block]
know your ropes, carried away deep six
It's a thieves cat o nine tales
Captain of chewing the fat
Or combing the cat
I've never seen (one) better
Dunnage topping a tonnage
From that trusty barrage
I'm everything on top and nothing handy
An eye splice on a short rope
Given and giving leeway
Haven't got a clew for true whence such hails from
...
So... She measures faces with her heart and hands
And a camera lens for a few
Jul 27, 2015
Jul 27, 2015 at 2:29 PM UTC
doing the heavy lifting
*picking up my emaciated heart,
letting the rest of my wilting body
tag along qualifies, but is not the
heavy lifting referenced above.
we all have a meeting, the bits and
pieces, the bobs and keepsakes
that constitute my mien, a constitutional
convention of 13 colonies that raucous
write of burdens, of freedoms, with wild
inspirations and cold political calculations
this combining document hoping to topstitch
my reeling mind and deteriorating physic,
to write words of hopeful praise but rising
to a world that is baking in hatred into fabric
and tissue, and that is the heaviest lift of all
Sunday morning, coffe-d, somewhat rested,
a full day planned, and a Mike Message says
it’s me that does the heavy lifting and I know!
he knows! the displaced state of my mind, and
the hardened ache of writing with fresh hope,
when there is so little, that it is lost in the litter
of endlessness of a world gone, not going,
mad~insane and murderers are
illogically celebrated,
and yet here I am punching words on my
AM Morning Punch List of worthy words
available that aid us needy for repair & yet
might move us together to a state of full repair;
but I am punchy from trying, to find words
themselves that require do not require, a
truth washing,
a new word recleansing
and*
(they put the load right on me),
*and naïf-not, see the troubles ahead and get
me more paper to add to the list of lists of
worldly worrisome words that are heavy
lifting of the world as it is but know I weep as
I write this for not in my possess the light airy
words, the wordsmith is crushed neath the weight of***
tonnage of human word-lessened-ness
Sunday Morning
Oct 22 2023
9:02am,
writ in a singed single cry
Oct 22, 2023
Oct 22, 2023 at 10:09 AM UTC
Age old forests compressed
To thick primeval ooze
Interred between layers
Of sediments fused
By time and tonnage
To hard papa rock
Concealing CRUDE OILS’
Subterranean shock.
Shocking in value
Escalating with time,
Shocking in politics
Which equates to a crime,
Implications shocking
When you stop to see
That resource limitations
Have diminished quickly.
Consider the clout
When a fast world of cars
Without hydrocarbons
Would seize up like stars,
Stars, in the sense
Of their immovable grace,
For a fuel less planet
Would IMMOBILIZE this place.
Abrupt immobility
To bring chaos and mess
And the utter lost beauty
Of a girl in a dress,
And the time and space
To smell a good rose
Instead brittle chaos
Malevolently posed.
Bleak desolation
Of the world we hold dear
And a massive regression
To impoverished fear.
Marshalg
Looking thru the hour glass
4 July 2011
Only way to deliver this poem is SLAM and with vehemence!!
Jul 3, 2011
Jul 3, 2011 at 10:40 PM UTC
“never lament casually”
Leonard Cohen
*the serious are plenty burdensome,
so if the flight delayed, or the device batteries,
moments away from recognizing that
0% is still a viable digit with a special meaning,
these, none deserving of deploring the human condition
but the weight of leaving her in cold Montreal,
while old promises made, demand a presence in L.A.,
freezey veins, icy cracking inspiration attempts in vain,
all the unrecognizable for crying out loud verses on a
cocktail napkin scribbled, watching ink letters wet melting
your wants simplest, fireplace warmth snap cackling
pop love songs verses for her, the sheets of her dark skin,
silken on your tongue, the wetness of her Oh’s,
left a connect-the-dots map from your nose to toes,
but her fingertip markers, now a thousand miles away,
busy throwing up to the sky, hands filled with leaves of
crisp falling colors assortment, only the colorless no’s left
they play a tune you wrote years ago on the lounge speakers,
modified, wordless, so it’s innocuous, background harmless,
this axes paper cuts on your private places where the songs get
birthed, and now your whole package is tonnage measurable,
the lamentations serious, serious constellations, etching a new song*
*<>
“for the relearning is the crown jew-el,
that jesters rob from their kingly masters,
pride in love is the fall season preceding
Canadian winters, always thinking
you know better, be better at keeping warm,
this time which is the next time
you cannot learn from love,
cause it’s twice, two times,
never the same,
past lessons ain’t no prologue,
the body is maybe in the wafers,
sometimes vanilla,
sometimes chocolate
and the epilogue is
100% of the poem~songs
that I loved writing
and hate remembering*”
Sep 10, 2019
Sep 10, 2019 at 3:03 PM UTC
Books to the library
photos to family.
Paint cans and lumber
from renovations years ago.
Most of the furniture
including the piano.
Fastest way to do this
is rent a dumpster.
On the internet
nothing’s permanent.
I like that.
Photosynthesis, evaporation
as if your spirit disappears
when the sun appears.
It’s a burden lifted
not to have to persevere.
Edits
for clarity
and brevity.
One owes the reader
a respite from
the tonnage of
fructifying English.
To drown one’s book is devoutly to be wished.
Coupla trumpets,
big comfy couch,
four beds and dressers
and the contents of closets.
Tools we don’t use,
surge protectors and chargers,
lawn and patio accoutrements,
table settings for ten.
Lamplit underground,
the stray branch,
synchronized chaos,
a red fez.
One canary,
map of Antarctica,
three deaf little otoliths,
six or seven sybils.
Extra salt and pepper shakers,
sharpies and crayons,
a printer and a scanner,
the Bible and Koran.
Kaput calculators and computers,
subscriptions and prescriptions,
a host of vitamins
and the ghosts of ancestors.
Time itself
but not nature.
Wealth
and most of culture
but not my health.
That I’ll keep,
and sleep—practice
for perfect rest.
Mar 19, 2024
Mar 19, 2024 at 6:54 AM UTC
The crumbling, earthen stones,
over which I clamber entrap the ghosts
of those who left before their time.
The cool, glassy tunnels through which I crawl
threaten to give, and bury my corpse
beneath the boulders and rubble.
The creaking catwalk to which I cling
sways ever slightly in the absence of wind,
teasing my toppling doom.
The mammoth steel drums
loom heads over mine, their rattling
and rumbling ceased decades ago.
The rotting apricot timbers
wedged into the endless darkness,
no longer support the tonnage of slabs
hoisted higher than my eyes will find.
The wrought-iron machinery
long stopped in time,
lies warped by the weight of gravity.
The soaring windows
spider-webbed and shattered,
litter the floor with their fractured bones.
And the walls and floors
and ceilings and doors
that once bustled with the liveliness of labor
lie silent.
Mar 20, 2019
Mar 20, 2019 at 9:50 AM UTC
A millstone of terrific intensity and abject tonnage , hoisted o'er
the muscled backs of goodmen , stone of great magnitude and wealth
bestowed his beloved , kindred recipients ....
Feb 1, 2016
Feb 1, 2016 at 3:23 PM UTC
I sometimes have too much to think
Mind liquidised by the blades of conflicting aims
A maelstrom of ideas, words and feelings,
Whipping up a sea boiled by emotional gales.
The fine cutter of thought, though elegant
Is tossed like a cork, compass spinning
And can only weather such a storm
Sails in tatters, with I strapped to her main mast.
Only a vessel with the assured tonnage of true purpose can make headway here,
And that, a rare ship in my oceans,
So take me in tow,
To a safe berth,
Where this cutter might wait out the tumult
And, unfurling new sails, take once more to calmer seas.
Feb 10, 2012
Feb 10, 2012 at 10:32 PM UTC
And it begins.
The re-emergence off my sins.
The wolves tell me to walk their way.
The government tells me to walk it off.
But I stay where I am.
Swallow this, recite that.
I shout my worst nightmares as if they're fact.
I was taught to hate but learned to love.
From a broken soul, a wounded dove.
Pure was his name.
He flew away, like the elusive day.
I work hard, then harder I play.
I was told this was wrong,
To know only misery, like an empty song.
I knew the words before it echoed in my ears.
And don't you dare walk away
I know you want to flea into the clearest day.
But I can't afford this,
After you overtook me with your perfect kiss.
I won't make it a third time.
Like the mirrors and clocks
That have locked me in this box
I show you an image only the empty can stomach.
Though it weighs on me like horded tonnage.
But, the sun will set again.
Nothing will change.
I still play the game.
I lost, I'm lost.
Apr 4, 2016
Apr 4, 2016 at 2:15 AM UTC
Trust, ties, tears, tears;
With setting rising sun,
just Truth remains.
Trinity's traits transcending to transcript,
The temple trusting the tryst to tall togas;
Truces, tangs, tangles, tags, teams,
with tricks or trills are tackled, tamed by
Those trained to taste the towering truth.
Taints, taboos, tattoos;
With cycling of seasons,
only Truth stays there.
Transgressing traps, talons, treasons,
Thorns, thongs, tides translucent;
These tapes, talks, tales transient,
Are trifles, tickles, trivial, trite;
To tribes treading the track of truth.
Talents, tacts, top techs;
Against infinite labyrinth,
Truth alone can pass.
Taut troops trotting the toiling trek;
Taunting, tapering the tonnage of trash;
Transversing tough tests of tempts,
Are trails of tiring trials, For
Those who treble the tone of truth.
Thrashing traumas to transfixing trance;
With beast or with beauty,
Truth belongs to soul.
Through love and death,
the true timeless tapestries;
Life translates to truth,
and becomes a happy moment;
The moment which is forever.
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 13, 2016 at 9:57 AM UTC
I straddled
the white-twins,
camped under the shadow
of ancient ice, basked
in the magic.
For days
I heard not
a single voice,
no human
passed my way.
Once
after midnight,
I heard a tonnage
of ice breakaway,
it sounded like thunder,
echoed out of my valley
& onto the altiplano.
After so much silence,
I became so astute
that I heard the sunrise.
Have you ever heard the sunrise?
Mar 6, 2014
Mar 6, 2014 at 9:32 PM UTC
I arch my back
Tightened
My balance misplaced
My vision shut
Everything seems cold on the outside
But above my anatomy
In between you and me
It feels cordial
Invisible
Entrancing
Less than a hundred
But feels like a tonnage
Pressed into the surface
Soft
I plunge
Greeted abruptly by a wet warm
Surface
My sight shutters
1 second to the next
Each view is the same but
Feels like a brand new day
With every blink I grasp
Unbending my framework
Senses heightened
I am Embraced
On the Inside and Out
I am filled
With a said tangible joy
I never felt better
Mar 29, 2021
Mar 29, 2021 at 12:26 AM UTC
(20 minute poetry)
Hoodies oh goodie I'm in for a treat,
I shall pull up a chair and put up my feet
the show is about to begin.
In the red corner is ***** he looks a bit ropey, wouldn't trust him with a dog on a lead.
And in the blue corner weighing in at some tonnage from Sandwich in Kent,
is bald headed Bob who looks a bit of a **** with his pink leotard trying hard not to be the **** that he is.
Showbiz Sally's getting really rather pally with my right leg, she'd beg to differ, but something's getting s... Wait.. Ha, a comb in my pocket and I nearly broke it or 'Brock it' as they say up Lancashire way.
St. Paul's just a stop on the way to the bank and Bob's just told Frank of his love.
And the crew is cast out at Holborn, I doubted they'd stay,
for more entertainment one needs the circle line,
I'm on my way.
Dec 3, 2015
Dec 3, 2015 at 4:34 PM UTC
pleasant is this adverbial, complimentary-angled accusation,
but a ball masque covering
the huge desert ****** stretches where
water and words are one hundred
days and miles apart, with
no filling station on the navigation app
the relentless sounding silences
reverberate angrily between the cochleae,
spiral staircases to no impulse power space,
the impulse to create needy for a clean sparking,
**** if life doesn’t get in the way,
the responsibility tonnage, the never altered
‘to do’ list that knows only additions and sedition
have come to believe that poetry energy,
cannot be created and destroyed,
so pray the unwritten poem souls
are conserved further, awaiting a rainbow
Noah signal, that the *** of poems
are poet-that a-way, in attendance for me,
in attendance for a parental permission slip
from me, my father, my sons, and the ghost
that has never left but promises,
one day he will, absconding with all the drafts concealed
4/3/19
Apr 3, 2019
Apr 3, 2019 at 8:46 AM UTC
Dear ex,
It's funny how you hate the fact that I still exist and how I don't!
It is a subtle and nuance feeling to see you cross my sight once a while and the way I manage to carve out resemblance apart from the visible difference in your tonnage is seemingly interesting. Partially plodding your way through the streets with your long hair kissing the passing wind still manages to catch my eye. Committing a mistake is always formidable and the relationship is the price both of us had to pay but loosing a friend is still agonizing.
I should not be mistaken to be seeking redemption or approval.
I won't say I miss you but yes! I still do remember you!
Reminiscence is a thing of the past now! Thus, remembering you
is mostly because of the many beginnings
that came along with you.
God bless!
Yours,
Jun 4, 2018
Jun 4, 2018 at 7:16 AM UTC
In the present, this old beast of internal exploration filters in
Spattering the present self with stains
A person I was sabotaging the person I am
Or at least that's how it feels
Strange how in a time filled with extroverted explosions
The real detail of the piece
The real road of the journey
Occurred internally, with none but myself to truly see it
My friends were desperate to help the friend they feel they wounded
But all they did was add to the tonnage of the explosives
It was me who was so intent on pressing the ignition
It would mean a lot if they could know that
Yet shame sinks and the proud flawed man stands tall
Making proof of strength
Achievement and philosophy
More important to show to them all
Than communication of pain
But I have a friend who helps with that
A professional relationship sure
But you can't teach honest compassion like that
She cares about me despite seeing what I'm ashamed of
And having the northern hemisphere's supply of chocolate
Delivered to her house, along with a hug and a smile
Would just about show how grateful I am
I still have work to do
I glorify the old days
Speaking of things that shook my life to the core flippantly
In denial of the depth of connotations
Maybe because when things were good, they were groundbreaking
Expansion of consciousness and a dream of how things could be
If science just proved it
It made me numb myself to the searing cancer
Infesting me for so long
When it comes to what I want to change
They're just stories
It should be simple enough to teach myself
As stream of consciousness flows
Crafting self in abstract terms through sound waves
To let go of the stories that show who I was
I know that's that not who I am anymore
It's not the person I should show
I'm already good at what I do
This vessel of what I think is right
This tool of craft in visual and intellectual forms
This telescope pointed to the things I want from life
I need to grow more and be one with the present self
But I'm sure I can do it
I'm already someone I thought it impossible to be
Making him better shouldn't be too hard
Apr 2, 2017
Apr 2, 2017 at 4:04 AM UTC
a glass ocean meeting a mountain--
dead of the night discordant pitch
of thorough breakage.
tinkling shards in whirlpools slicing
and splintering in spiraling inundation--
toy like vessels sunk, what could not
float the tonnage of drowning sound.
cargo of guts bust open, miles long tangled round
those vessels, wrapped tight for the ride down.
Beethoven's defiant deathbed fist clashing
with lightning, thundering blows--the
mass exodus composition of an unbreakable
spirit.
******* The Face of The Deep that voids
eyes at will--to behold its own!
nothing is in vain, even when beset with
such vanity!
Nov 4, 2019
Nov 4, 2019 at 1:11 PM UTC