"toolboxes" poems
1.
You can never go home,
not to the home you left.
When you leave, you get bigger.
Not necessarily in girth, but in consciousness.
When you come back, everything,
even the walls of your parent's house,
seem to have shrunk.
2.
Look.....
Here comes the parade.
With its paper mache floats
and twirling batons.
Cub scouts and boy scouts,
all in a neat blue and drab green row,
followed by a high school marching band
playing "Stars and Stripes Forever".
From bygone wars, limbless surviving soldiers flinch with every cymbal crash.
3.
I watched billows of cottonwood clouds
swirl down a summer hometown avenue,
they met on the street corner for a song........
"Alley Oop", or "I Like Bread And Butter"
These ghostlike voices will live there forever,
innocent, asleep, numb, waiting.
Soon, the postman will bring your future.
Soon, you will be just a number on a lotery ball.
Soon, you will have to dissect luck or fate.
4.
I took my 87 year old Father to gather his tools
from his long time place of work.
The instruments of his livelihood.
He did not need them anymore, he had retired.
Some tools he had used since World War II,
some he made for a specific job.... never to use again.
All neatly placed in toolboxes built in the 30s and 40s,
yet not a trace of rust.
These were the tools of a tradesman,
a (Tool and Die Man).
He once told me, “Son, if I can’t fix it because I don’t have the right tool, I will make the tool”.
I thought him to be Superman.
But there I was, loading up my Father’s history,
to take home, to be sold to the highest bidder.
I myself have made my living playing music for audiences.
I also have tools.
Guitars, amplifiers, harmonicas, microphones.
There will come a day, in the not too distant future,
when I will have to “retire” the instruments of my livelihood.
Though I will not be as stoic as my World War II Father,
I will go kicking and screaming to the pawn shop,
remembering every song that fed me,
and every chord that made people dance.
May 29, 2014
May 29, 2014 at 8:38 PM UTC
Come on down to your Fletcher’s Store
It has all your needs to complete your chore
Marshal has it all you see?
Be it tools or p.p.e.
Obtaining kit is not that hard
If you have your induction card
But without your little piece of plastic
The treatment you get could well be drastic
Other than that, a cost code will do
That will prevent any further ado
If Marshal is otherwise indisposed
Help is near, it has been disclosed
His faithful helper Spiderman
Will always help you where he can
On the PC he also goes
Logged on as Marshal, I suppose
But back to the master of the store
He knows what’s behind every closed door
What stock he has, he knows off hand
spanners, raincoats , every little gland
a special order or a request
You can be sure, he’ll do his best
He is a man of his word
At toolboxes you may have heard
Laying down the law, giving you grief
Hoping to catch the lowly thief
Spending time with him, I have found
He is a rock, steadfast, morally sound
And if at times you may need a friend
Someone to listen, maybe an ear to bend
Someone there, sound and steady
You can count on Marshal Geddie.
Ernest 28 July 2011 (VPT)
Jul 28, 2011
Jul 28, 2011 at 10:49 PM UTC
Each of us possesses our own personal dialects.
Though many of us may indeed share a common tongue, perhaps even two or three,
each of us uses these toolboxes in our own, personal way.
A way that is constantly in flux.
Fluctuating from the inside, ideally,
but it can be imposed upon by various forces.
When we think,
our mind must fabricate
then it must translate that fabrication into language.
When we speak,
we must in turn mold and shape thought into a common middleground
which is then subject to interpretation
upon which people generally reflect
and can be shifted in their own minds
such that they now perceive differently
and thus interpret differently
than they once had before.
If done constructively, this is generally called teaching (if external) or learning (internally).
Destructively, it can be called brainwashing.
Sometimes it is more innocent
but it is often manipulated
by various people
for various ends.
One must fortify one's own interpretations
based upon personal experience
and ideally critical thinking.
Also,
One must realize the limitations of language
as well as the limitations of interpretation
before one can begin to cultivate
what may someday become an 'enlightened' perspective
that is to say the mind of the Sage;
the Shaman. The Teacher. The Student. The Buddha.
(To be continued)
Jan 20, 2013
Jan 20, 2013 at 3:42 PM UTC
The poor children
That's what we were called
Surrounded by drunks and drug addicts
Single mothers and their hordes of children
The future cleaning ladies and harbour workers
We sometimes watched the orphans
Wondering what would become of them
In our own world
We were richest of them all
While the mothers worked
Through sweat, tears and stress
There was always someone
To show a little kindness
"Those kids can come with us, we're neighbours"
This meant pizza for dinner
The summers were for exploring
Golden fields hiding rabbits and phaesants
Truthfully covering a dump yard of course
Trees were naturally for climbing
Move through the forest without touching the ground
A tailbone got injured here and there
No time to see a doctor, it will heal on it's own!
Play hide and seek
Race each other on bikes
I always cheated
Where that stream really lead to, we never found out
But by that very stream we built
From planks and nails
Isolated with candlewax
A little cottage
Every day after school
No one knew where all the nails and candles had gone to
And how the community wood supply seemed to vanish
"Only the good planks" because we had standarts
Who would've noticed the little ones when the grass grew so high
It was our little secret
Naturally the road workers took it down
"Unsafe structure" someone said
A whole summer lay in ruins before us
The toolboxes were quietly returned to their rightful owners
Bored as we were, we gave it another shot
This time supported by a tree
We'd hoist ourselves up with a robe
That was taken down too
We felt sorry for the tree!
But winter's close
That meant snow castles
Never wondering what might happen
If the structure collapsed on us
The tunnels lead to nowhere and everywhere
The mothers were working
Who would stop us
But when our mum was home
All kids were invited for dinner
Us and 12 others
Future cleaning ladies and harbour workers
Blissfully unaware
What lengths the mothers went to, to feed us
I've never been poor in my life.
Jan 27, 2016
Jan 27, 2016 at 3:05 PM UTC
Toolboxes, pictures, clothes and more stuff
Where do I start this is gonna be tough
A bag for charity, the skip and to keep
A wall I've to climb cos it's all in a heap
Why didn't I sort it before I moved in
It's a lifetime of **** that I couldn't bin
And now the pile's grown and in disorder
I've even kept my old recorder
Its hard to decide what to throw away
So much reminds me of another day
I need to be ruthless, I have to do this
What doesn't matter and what will I miss
An old ***** box just full of old pics
Remembering that day when I was only 6 Over to the keep side, the skip pile still bare
Why is decluttering so hard, it's not fair
Another pile of clothes that don't even fit
The last time I wore it I looked like a ***
So why have I kept it, why is it still here
Now I remember and start to shed a tear
What on earth is this, a bit of old plastic
Oh yes, a souvenir when I danced the night fantastic
It looks like junk just a bit of old debris
But to me it triggers an old happy memory
I've now been rummaging here for a while It's made me cry and it's made me smile
Over to the keep side, the skip pile still bare
Why is decluttering so hard, it's not fair
Apr 28, 2021
Apr 28, 2021 at 2:19 AM UTC
the backroad to
Florence, the one along Elm
that cuts past the McDermott
trailer park--
from matt's house past
Cedar and the old liquor store
at 50mph the cicadas sound more
like a cry or a lingering scream
the crickets don't stop for passing trucks
creaking to the metronome of a swishing
cow tail
farmers switch off their brights, come around
corners slow, in striped beat up Chevys, rusty
toolboxes weakly sliding from side to side
like their owners in threadbare leather seats
the young kids trail close, bumper
to bumper on a two-lane road, just me and
some kid named after his grampa, poppy,
Clint, who needs to get home before
mama chews him out--
sunday service still warm from this morning
where a single beetle clung to the wall and translated
my father's sermon, morse code for the elders, for the
elk and deer, he's been known to speak to hummin'birds
anyway, I think.
Sep 18, 2016
Sep 18, 2016 at 5:19 PM UTC
Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
We Have No Enemies Among the Dead
For the Young Crew of the Moskva
14 April 2022
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave...
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea
-The Navy Hymn
Proud admirals and presidents rattle their medals
The young - in screams among burst steam lines die
Explosions and darkness and seawater and hatches sealed
The bulkheads blown, there is no up, no down
Only pain and horror and throat-torn shrieks
Proud admirals and presidents jing-aling their medals
Training manuals, pocketknives, and comic books
Naughty pinups, letters from Mom, wrenches, and boots
Toolboxes, ball-point pens, and coffee cups
Fall with the young deep down into the sea
Proud admirals and presidents dazzle the room with their medals
Mothers and fathers grieve in emptiness
Our Leaders caution them to mind their attitude
Proud admirals and presidents – to Hell with their medals
Apr 15, 2022
Apr 15, 2022 at 11:35 PM UTC