"trowel" poems
it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street
I used to get drunk
and throw the radio through the window
while it was playing, and, of course,
it would break the glass in the window
and the radio would sit there on the roof
still playing
and I'd tell my woman,
"Ah, what a marvelous radio!"
the next morning I'd take the window
off the hinges
and carry it down the street
to the glass man
who would put in another pane.
I kept throwing that radio through the window
each time I got drunk
and it would sit there on the roof
still playing-
a magic radio
a radio with guts,
and each morning I'd take the window
back to the glass man.
I don't remember how it ended exactly
though I do remember
we finally moved out.
there was a woman downstairs who worked in
the garden in her bathing suit,
she really dug with that trowel
and she put her behind up in the air
and I used to sit in the window
and watch the sun shine all over that thing
while the music played.
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I thought of killing myself because I am only a bricklayer
and you a woman who loves the man who runs a drug store.
I don't care like I used to; I lay bricks straighter than I
used to and I sing slower handling the trowel afternoons.
When the sun is in my eyes and the ladders are shaky and the
mortar boards go wrong, I think of you.
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The urgent care is the nursery
Where I choose my seeds with thought.
The doctor is the gardener
Who knows how to fix what I’ve wrought.
She sows the seeds inside my skin,
Yet not with a trowel or ***
She uses a needle and surgical thread,
With budding knots lined up in a row.
Then she leaves me with my tidy ground
And some knowledge on how I should care
For the lined up plot she’s left to me,
Whose potential I’m required to bear.
The deep rivet I slashed into my skin
Is where the seedlings take root.
The blood from my veins keeps them moist
As the new blossoms stand resolute.
But when the weather grows dark and dreary,
My sprouts need cover from the cold.
So I bundle them up with jeans and sweats
To protect them and let them take hold.
But despite the layers I pile atop,
The small spiny blooms poke through.
I run my fingers back and forth,
And marvel at how fast they grew.
Then after they’ve grown for fourteen days,
I return to the nursery at last.
The gardener plucks and prunes and picks
‘Til the wounds and the blooms come to pass.
So now the perennials have passed us by,
And the sprouts have been taken to bin.
The wound that watered my seedlings’ through,
Has left but a scar on my skin.
Jan 23, 2022
Jan 23, 2022 at 11:20 AM UTC
#
Hands formed into a fist
her jaw, set..
****
She's gonna slug me*
***"You opened up a thirst in me, Paul.
Are you going to see it through..
or just stand there?"***
Her war-torn, Mesopotamian spirit
Bringing fire to those beautiful, Baltic eyes;
A direct descendant of all things, Telmun
She is waiting on a Pearl
Waiting, for the Pearl
Archipelago of Virginity
--Beautiful girl is the Pearl
After gazing at her stunning beauty
I turn back, and resume the task
of digging with a small trowel
into the dark, loamy soil
She slaps me on the shoulder,
tears streaming from those dark
sky-filled eyes..
"..I thirst"
Ladles are made for love;
In abundance, they bring drink
to those who sojourn,
those, who wait
And it is I
who have allowed myself
to become distracted,
as of late--
Holding out for beauty
When all along, Beauty
Has been holding out for me
#
Jul 27, 2023
Jul 27, 2023 at 11:03 AM UTC
She was stark naked
I could see her ****
And her boyfriend had
Quite the **** on him.
His meat should have
Made him quite proud
And the lady’s ****
For crying out loud
Were perky and prominent
And quite nice to see.
Both of them seemed
To be pointing at me.
And I seemed to be
Eagerly pointing back.
They both very obviously
Aware of that one fact.
She smiled openly
And the guy broadly winked.
I started asking myself
“Do you think? He did wink!”
So, I winked and smiled
And let them see my bone
And hoped this meant I
Would not be alone.
I hoped they’d invite me
To sit on their beach towel
To slather sunscreen on them
Like a human mortar trowel.
There are not many things
There are few better for me
Than hot mixed couples
Into some fun bisexuality.
I have games for both kinds
And genders of human beings
All based on the stimulus
Of what I’m feeling and seeing.
Generally a single man
Is not lucky at this scene
A common concept that I
Always found to be quite mean.
I understand about jealousy,
An emotion foreign to me
So, I usually keep my distance
And behave circumspectly.
But when I get the go-ahead
I never hesitate very long.
How could something this good
Be considered bad or wrong?
Feb 26, 2016
Feb 26, 2016 at 10:30 PM UTC
I found you
lone brick, of a million, one part of a mortared whole
your brothers now buried by time, without benediction
progeny of clay, shale, you were born in a kiln as hot as all creation
dragged to this plain by spoked wheel and mule--sweat of the honest illiterate
long before the dusters blew the crops to hell, and Tom Joad's kin to the promised land
the mason who laid you in a proud straight row is now in the ground too
not a mile from you, where the county put him the hot Friday a man set foot on the moon
the bricklayer’s days with the trowel long past, his memories of you, your place in all weathers interred with him
I found you , and you are the man’s legacy, he yours
Feb 19, 2018
Feb 19, 2018 at 4:09 PM UTC
I've worked with shovel and
trowel half of my life but right
now if I could recall the hypo-
tenuse of a right triangle I'd
try another angle for putting
those tools to use digging a rect-
angular hole so neat and six feet
deep then sew my mouth shut
just so I can't tell the devil where
to go when it's cold and I'm sleeping
with white slugs behind my ears like
big Beltones so I can hear the mock-
ingbird sing those words on my stone.
Mar 4, 2016
Mar 4, 2016 at 9:57 PM UTC
I walk to my work, says Senlin, along a street
Superbly hung in space.
I lift these mortal stones, and with my trowel
I tap them into place.
But is god, perhaps, a giant who ties his tie
Grimacing before a colossal glass of sky?
These stones are heavy, these stones decay,
These stones are wet with rain,
I build them into a wall today,
Tomorrow they fall again.
Does god arise from a chaos of starless sleep,
Rise from the dark and stretch his arms and yawn;
And drowsily look from the window at his garden;
And rejoice at the dewdrop sparkeling on his lawn?
Does he remember, suddenly, with amazement,
The yesterday he left in sleep,--his name,--
Or the glittering street superbly hung in wind
Along which, in the dusk, he slowly came?
I devise new patterns for laying stones
And build a stronger wall.
One drop of rain astonishes me
And I let my trowel fall.
The flashing of leaves delights my eyes,
Blue air delights my face;
I will dedicate this stone to god
And tap it into its place.
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Put this matter with trowel and ***
Into the dark and fertile ground,
With each hit, he loosed the soil
A once happy man thou condemned to uselessly toil
His claws, cracked and broken shells
Jaundiced with the duty long days that did require
Lamed by grief and forced to work
Here, till the end of days, within this garden, this mire.
Deep does a ****** live here, past the clay and bedrock
Like the pride and valor and resolute spirit of the domineering ****
Or so her mien, it does beget
Or some other erroneous sentiment
That she, not he, were to bear this labor.
Within the ground, he did remember, in his spritely youth,
He planted, and thought none of, but a seed,
Into this verdant splendor, which bore that infernal ****
And, thence, thereof came a fruit,
Of malignity infinite,
All the while it poisoned the Virgin’s white and water’s pure,
As its eerie little spines proceeded to take root.
Her garments poised to emulate white, instead
The ****** to him, had lost her white
Or never had white at all,
The ****** to him, had lost her white,
To him, the ****** was dead.
The fruit and seed, effulgent and pretty, to those who saw them bloom
Attractive were they so to them, irresistible to behold
That they, to him with great chagrin, did immediately consume.
“But the ****** he cried. “The ****** has poisoned them!”
Yet they continued to eat.
“We do not believe you,” they replied, and slept ceaselessly on their feet.
One by one did they all collapse from the toxin of its juice.
The ****** watched and laughed, of caution was there no use.
Powerless and sullen, he stood, for remedy was far passed.
The ****** now regarded with delight,
Has he, poor, poor man, to tend to his blight.
The garden gone, its cleanliness perverted,
His words were ignored, and thrown wayside,
His admonition he so heatedly asserted,
The ****** her words never to be trusted
Had won over the people, whose homes she sought to entreat,
And with her rite, so treasured, so adored,
They enslaved and force him to his mire, to tend to the rag and filthy lands
Where he would remain with the garden
His words, his skin so like the sands
Sep 13, 2013
Sep 13, 2013 at 7:44 AM UTC
---
when every last vestige of
your humanity seems to be
a jigsaw puzzle game
strewn across the universe
with no possibility of
retrieval
of all pieces
KEEP YOUR MIND UPON THE LORD
when rage accosts the
very center of your heart
like a home invasion
taking with it
all the
milk of human kindness
KEEP YOUR MIND UPON THE LORD
when your flowers die
in a blight of ice
the very roots
frozen in the tundra
and spring becomes winter
in the space of an hour
KEEP YOUR MIND UPON THE LORD
when worry wrings your brain
like a fishwife with a towel
doubt lays a crooked wall
using your bones as a trowel
fear is a raven which
travels with the owl
KEEP YOUR MIND UPON THE LORD
when evil wells out
of every pore of your existence
like sludge drained from
the bottom of a
juggernaut
TANK
KEEP YOUR MIND UPON THE LORD!
for Jesus Christ is the
puzzle piece
which restores
the entire game
---
He's the peace which
passes all understanding
the joy which is our strength
---
He is the
Rose of Sharon
which has no time nor season
but blooms eternally
---
He is the mechanic
who made all destruction
and will
DESTROY THE WORKS OF DARKNESS
**KEEP
YOUR
MIND
UPON
♡ JESUS CHRIST ♡**
THE AUTHOR AND FINISHER
OF OUR
~~~< F • A • I • T • H >~~~
SoulSurvivor
(C) 7/16/2016
Jul 17, 2016
Jul 17, 2016 at 12:22 AM UTC
It is noontime, Senlin says. The sky is brilliant
Above a green and dreaming hill.
I lay my trowel down. The pool is cloudless,
The grass, the wall, the peach-tree, all are still.
It appears to me that I am one with these:
A hill, upon whose back are a wall and trees.
It is noontime: all seems still
Upon this green and flowering hill.
Yet suddenly out of nowhere in the sky,
A cloud comes whirling, and flings
A lazily coiled vortex of shade on the hill.
It crosses the hill, and a bird in the peach-tree sings.
Amazing! Is there a change?
The hill seems somehow strange.
It is noontime. And in the tree
The leaves are delicately disturbed
Where the bird descends invisibly.
It is noontime. And in the pool
The sky is blue and cool.
Yet suddenly out of nowhere,
Something flings itself at the hill,
Tears with claws at the earth,
Lunges and hisses and softly recoils,
Crashing against the green.
The peach-tree braces itself, the pool is frightened,
The grass-blades quiver, the bird is still;
The wall silently struggles against the sunlight;
A terror stiffens the hill.
The trees turn rigidly, to face
Something that circles with slow pace:
The blue pool seems to shrink
From something that slides above its brink.
What struggle is this, ferocious and still--
What war in sunlight on this hill?
What is it creeping to dart
Like a knife-blade at my heart?
It is noontime, Senlin says, and all is tranquil:
The brilliant sky burns over a greenbright earth.
The peach-tree dreams in the sun, the wall is contented.
A bird in the peach-leaves, moving from sun to shadow,
Phrases again his unremembering mirth,
His lazily beautiful, foolish, mechanical mirth.
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Children, watch me eat suns. Hello, darkness. I have made peace with your caress. Forgotten leaves falling from the tree. I planted you. With my bare hands I dig away at the black earth flesh. A place to bury you and leave. Beneath the porch I rest panting in the noon day sun. I listen to the children sing and play on the old piano in the house above me. Will you love me when I am rotting here flies and sores. I listen to them stomping on the boards and electrical chords installed buzzing blue colors when I chew through the rotting floors. Until I see the sun and the dining room table she sings and plays the old piano in the corner. Her voice buckles the beams and hearts tumble in the chest of her guests. Though she has been uprooted now. I dig her up with a stone trowel. Whistling as I work. clank against her skullcap. Pulling her up and onto the dark dew covered grass. Her eyes stare endlessly into the star blanketed sky
Apr 14, 2013
Apr 14, 2013 at 5:08 PM UTC
there were no chives, so we hunted for ferns.
they are everywhere here, we wanted something
in particular, me with my green trowel, gardening
apron.
she was coming up the lane, head down,
i waited. a steep slope.
on looking up she smiled, and chatted a while.
did you know him? she asked, told me he had
died suddenly.
she went on her way, she has moved house
you know.
we went on looking for a fern, and
found one.
sbm
May 30, 2015
May 30, 2015 at 2:44 AM UTC
Daves trowel has a hickory handle,
With a blade thats broader than most,
It could cover the **** of a Tipperary mare
Going down to the Steeplechase post.
I spin it around in my palm,
the trowel . . . not the horse,
Its old, from a bygone age,
When skill was the poor brother of force.
Now its weatherbeaten and corroded,
Every cut and nick still lingers,
Daves trowel shines as bright as day,
Im talking about my fingers.
Jan 27, 2016
Jan 27, 2016 at 7:38 AM UTC
Pompous:
"Oh God, no, not another shallow rhymer,
fitting each word to its neat little place.
Oh God, no, not another painterly composition
with planal directions going round and around or leading that way and this.
They did that in the past; get to the new.
Make sure the reader or viewer knows that the masterful
knows more than than the masterful lets t/h/r/o/u/g/h/ out.
Disdain extenuating weakenings caused by straining for clarity
or unnecessary exertions in expressions of cohesion.
Words, though plain, arouse astonished wonder by nonchalant impenetrable shufflings.
Be clued-in, be bold, be tough and show it when you sculpt the clay.
When shaped, use your trowel to scratch the surface, evoking even more obscurity.
Toss it off in broad strokes of masterful negligence.
Be above the miniscule.
By these means show in shadowy hints the profundity that winks beyond merely ordinary restrictions.
Break the barriers, fly the constructive. Those old shackles lie about the world.
Show you ain't no conforming sissy.
Display in impatient referenceless strokes
Your forceful awareness of the world as known."
Facetia:
"Oh?
A world which evidences no form and structure in living creatures;
no eons of effortful evolution;
Forests have no ecology, and laws of nature aren't for binding.
Mind never happened, spirit's a farce,
unions only expedient plottings.
Lessons of history describe the disruptive;
it's what you grab and who you club;
others are only take or be taken.
Show 'em who's boss,
stash it away,
it's dog eat dog until there's nothing.
Shake it all up and break it all up.
It's only entropy."
Mar 21, 2010
Mar 21, 2010 at 7:17 AM UTC
My rose is not just any rose,
It is very special, one-of-a-kind.
The keeper of the vase on my window sill
The lily that I found,
So beautiful, so delicate, so pure,
So unbelievably uncorrupt,
I couldn't pick it.
My fingers I fear,
Wouldn't fail to wither it.
See, my rose has thorns,
a tough outer layer.
The lily is so soft,
So delicate,
I couldn't risk the chance.
So I offer just one last glance.
I will leave the lily where it grows,
To dodge my trowel, and those of others.
Until it finds the tenderness of real love
to pick it from its lonely plot of soil.
Where it will sit on someone's window sill,
in a vase, thriving in all the spoils.
Nov 5, 2012
Nov 5, 2012 at 10:35 PM UTC
In the hot noon, in an old and savage garden,
The peach-tree grows. Its cruel and ugly roots
Rend and rifle the silent earth for moisture.
Above, in the blue, hang warm and golden fruits.
Look, how the cancerous roots crack mould and stone!
Earth, if she had a voice, would wail her pain.
Is she the victim, or is the tree the victim?
Delicate blossoms opened in the rain,
Black bees flew among them in the sunlight,
And sacked them ruthlessly; and no a bird
Hangs, sharp-eyed, in the leaves, and pecks the fruit;
And the peach-tree dreams, and does not say a word.
. . . Senlin, tapping his trowel against a stone,
Observes this tree he planted: it is his own.
'You will think it strange,' says Senlin, 'but this tree
Utters profound things in this garden;
And in its silence speaks to me.
I have sensations, when I stand beneath it,
As if its leaves looked at me, and could see;
And those thin leaves, even in windless air,
Seem to be whispering me a choral music,
Insubstantial but debonair.
"Regard," they seem to say,
"Our idiot root, which going its brutal way
Has cracked your garden wall!
Ugly, is it not?
A desecration of this place . . .
And yet, without it, could we exist at all?"
Thus, rustling with importance, they seem to me
To make their apology;
Yet, while they apologize,
Ask me a wary question with their eyes.
Yes, it is true their origin is low--
Brutish and dull and cruel . . . and it is true
Their roots have cracked the wall. But do we know
The leaves less cruel--the root less beautiful?
Sometimes it seems as if there grew
In the dull garden of my mind
A tree like this, which, singing with delicate leaves,
Yet cracks the wall with cruel roots and blind.
Sometimes, indeed, it appears to me
That I myself am such a tree . . .'
. . . And as we hear from Senlin these strange words
So, slowly, in the sunlight, he becomes this tree:
And among the pleasant leaves hang sharp-eyed birds
While cruel roots dig downward secretly.
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A trowel and an infinite supply of spackle. Leave me to work, friends. I perceive your cracks, everyone, every one. Canyons, hairline crevices, they trace your backs like rain down windowsills. I've never quite been able to predict where the fissure will turn.
A trowel and an infinite supply of patience. Leave me to my duty, friends. Let me fill in your fractures, I can saturate them to their basin with reparations, reconciliations. I will breathe forgiveness, companionship, love, whatever you need onto my mendings, they will harden. Paint over them what shades you will, I’ll hold your hand as you hold the brush.
A trowel and an infinite supply of compassion. Leave me to my compulsion, friends. Maintain my repairs, I beg of you. You let them become brittle and they flake off of your faces like paper Mache masks. You, let the paint fade. Your work, our work, to fix the fissures, it’s crumbling through your fingers, outstretched, dumbfounded you stare. Pick up the trowel and spackle your own canyons. Spread the fleeting putty across your faces till your eyes cry dust when you blink.
Oh look, upon your left eyelid. A fracture. A trowel. Leave me to my love, friends.
Apr 13, 2013
Apr 13, 2013 at 11:59 AM UTC
Senlin, walking before us in the sunlight,
Bending his small legs in a peculiar way,
Goes to his work with thoughts of the universe.
His hands are in his pockets, he smokes his pipe,
He is happily conscious of roofs and skies;
And, without turning his head, he turns his eyes
To regard white horses drawing a small white hearse.
The sky is brilliant between the roofs,
The windows flash in the yellow sun,
On the hard pavement ring the hoofs,
The light wheels softly run.
Bright particles of sunlight fall,
Quiver and flash, gyrate and burn,
Honey-like heat flows down the wall,
The white spokes dazzle and turn.
Senlin, walking before us in the sunlight,
Regards the hearse with an introspective eye.
'Is it my childhood there,' he asks,
'Sealed in a hearse and hurrying by?'
He taps his trowel against a stone;
The trowel sings with a silver tone.
'Nevertheless I know this well.
Bury it deep and toll a bell,
Bury it under land or sea,
You cannot bury it save in me.'
It is as if his soul had become a city,
With noisily peopled streets, and through these streets
Senlin himself comes driving a small white hearse . . .
'Senlin!' we cry. He does not turn his head.
But is that Senlin?--Or is this city Senlin,--
Quietly watching the burial of the dead?
Dumbly observing the cortege of its dead?
Yet we would say that all this is but madness:
Around a distant corner trots the hearse.
And Senlin walks before us in the sunlight
Happily conscious of his universe.
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I'd love to be the harbor boat
That gently tugs, keeping you afloat
Or perhaps even better yet
The soft comfort of your unmade bed
I'd love to be the garden trowel
The one you use when you plant spring flowers
Or perhaps even better still
The lucky coin in your wishing well
I'd love to be the big red barn
With stacks of hay inside to keep you warm
Or perhaps even more than that
The loving purr from you favorite cat
I'd love to be your private Learjet
To take you places that you've never been
Or perhaps given half a chance
The diamond ring slipped on your left hand
I'd love to be your automobile
The comfort you feel from behind the wheel
Or perhaps to tell the truth
I'd love to be all this and more for you
May 20, 2014
May 20, 2014 at 5:34 PM UTC
It is noontime, Senlin says, and a street piano
Strikes sharply against the sunshine a harsh chord,
And the universe is suddenly agitated,
And pain to my heart goes glittering like a sword.
Do I imagine it? The dust is shaken,
The sunlight quivers, the brittle oak-leaves tremble.
The world, disturbed, conceals its agitation;
And I, too, will dissemble.
Yet it is sorrow has found my heart,
Sorrow for beauty, sorrow for death;
And pain twirls slowly among the trees.
The street-piano revolves its glittering music,
The sharp notes flash and dazzle and turn,
Memory's knives are in this sunlit silence,
They ripple and lazily burn.
The star on which my shadow falls is frightened,--
It does not move; my trowel taps a stone,
The sweet note wavers amid derisive music;
And I, in horror of sunlight, stand alone.
Do not recall my weakness, savage music!
Let the knives rest!
Impersonal, harsh, the music revolves and glitters,
And the notes like poniards pierce my breast.
And I remember the shadows of webs on stones,
And the sound or rain on withered grass,
And a sorrowful face that looked without illusions
At its image in the glass.
Do not recall my childhood, pitiless music!
The green blades flicker and gleam,
The red bee bends the clover, deeply humming;
In the blue sea above me lazily stream
Cloud upon thin-brown cloud, revolving, scattering;
The mulberry tree rakes heaven and drops its fruit;
Amazing sunlight sings in the opened vault
On dust and bones, and I am mute.
It is noon; the bells let fall soft flowers of sound.
They turn on the air, they shrink in the flare of noon.
It is night; and I lie alone, and watch through the window
The terrible ice-white emptiness of the moon.
Small bells, far off, spill jewels of sound like rain,
A long wind hurries them whirled and far,
A cloud creeps over the moon, my bed is darkened,
I hold my breath and watch a star.
Do not disturb my memories, heartless music!
I stand once more by a vine-dark moonlit wall,
The sound of my footsteps dies in a void of moonlight,
And I watch white jasmine fall.
Is it my heart that falls? Does earth itself
Drift, a white petal, down the sky?
One bell-note goes to the stars in the blue-white silence,
Solitary and mournful, a somnolent cry.
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I am from a Good Samaritan,
a cesarian birth.
I am from a green thumb, born
into garden gloves;
my mother’s leather hands.
I am from Hyacinths and Begonias,
from Chrysanthemums,
and Black-eyed Susan’s.
I am from the river,
struggling against the white waters,
her hands supporting my underside.
I am from those summer evenings
spent snatching fireflies from the stars;
our cheeks glowing in their radiance.
I am from the dirt beneath fingernails,
the airless August sun,
and a long day on the trowel.
I am from pulled weeds, and those
precious things blossomed
and grown too soon.
Oct 29, 2012
Oct 29, 2012 at 12:12 PM UTC
Begin with my skin,
White, hairy and thin;
But for my brothers,
I'm much like all others.
Dig deeper to bone,
Europe's our home.
Trowel down to my marrow
You'll uncover our Congo.
We travailed
Down our paths,
We share the same cells,
Have the same origins,
Hear the same knells.
The one difference lies in
My white, hairy, thin skin.
Apr 23, 2015
Apr 23, 2015 at 11:30 AM UTC
Get the trowel out
Im piling it on thick
Sequins and the glitter
and the red lipstick.
Slap it all on
To paint the town red
When the evening is over
I shall smear it on the bed.
Dec 4, 2014
Dec 4, 2014 at 2:09 AM UTC