"workingman" poems
"Son can you play me a memory
I'm not really sure how it goes
But it's sad and it's sweet
And I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man's clothes"
Billy Joel lyrics from
"Piano Man"*
~~~~~~~~~~~~
when I was very young
I wore Levi jeans and white
Hanes cotton T shirts
my mother bot me,
my feet, Ked clad, red
from the kid's "department" store
on Central Avenue,
the Main Street of my small town
when I was a young lad,
I wore workingman's cargo jeans and
white Hanes cotton T shirts
under red plaid
wooly shirts, itchy affairs,
that I bot for myself
in a real Army Navy store,
desert colored suede boots,
laced up high,
upon my feet
when I was of middling years,
my jeans were khaki pants,
Gap supplied,
and my Gap T shirts,
faded like me,
a non-descript color,
made in a gap of pale pastel colors
from Bangladesh or Vietnam,
pale pastel, like me
so as I slide~decline into
my nursing home years,
I wear unbranded jeans and
white cotton no name T shirts
with matching white disposable slippers,
that the Purchasing Department
bot for me, cause they know,
I like,
a younger man's clothes and
the memories that play all day
lost in day dreaming of a life
well dressed
2:01am
Aug 9, 2014
Aug 9, 2014 at 4:31 PM UTC
I am the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And
then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is ****** out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and
makes me work and give up what I have. And I
forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red
drops for history to remember. Then--I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.
2.5k
partly cloudy,
partly sunny,
clearly an indecisively
partly day,
bored, the heavens organized
a garden party, sky above,
eclectic crowd,
minted mixed,
party of partly
clouds, wind, sun rays,
summer showers and somehow,
I got partly invited...
but not partly windy,
no, entirely gusty
a workingman's breeze,
all grown up, full strength
has driven the good folk inside,
tho sailboats are entouraging fully,
just me and them in
Red Sea parting, a full blow,
unmistakably encouraging partying,
while under the influence
of white line snorting poetry
what is this partly poem doing?
receiving or bringing,
like the swirly gusts,
empowered but direction unknown,
I am partly confused,
I am partly clarified
lacking the metaphor skill,
he says to himself,
and to the over-hearers,
part with me not!
for I am partly this and that,
looking for reconciliation
of my accounts in full,
and will rely on your guidance
to seal the beams, patch the cracks,
write the parts of me that
you shall connect and declare
in one voice, unified
Will you?
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 6:48 AM UTC
I smile when I can
about good news,
sunsets,
the faces babies make
in super markets,
laugh in the evening
with a girl
who laughs back
and smiles over
dinner while we watch television.
In the evening, we sleep
together under blankets,
touch skin,
hold each other
until we both go to work
in the morning.
I work,
pay bills,
earn simple man wages,
enjoy simple man pleasures.
I drink bottle beer and
smoke workingman cigarettes.
Sometimes late at night,
I watch my alarm clock
and feel time is running out.
Other times, I regard the moon tattoo
inked in galaxies of freckles on her shoulder
and listen to her weak snores
while distant sirens moan
like banshees yawning
midnight sorrows
on blank streets.
Jul 5, 2013
Jul 5, 2013 at 6:17 PM UTC
I smile when I can
about good news,
sunsets,
the faces babies make
in super markets,
laugh in the evening
with a girl
who laughs back
and smiles over
dinner while we watch television.
In the evening, we sleep
together under blankets,
touch skin,
hold each other
until we both go to work
in the morning.
I work,
pay bills,
earn simple man wages,
enjoy simple man pleasures.
I drink bottle beer and
smoke workingman cigarettes.
Sometimes late at night,
I watch my alarm clock
and feel time is running out.
Other times, I regard the moon tattoo
inked in galaxies of freckles on her shoulder
and listen to her weak snores
while distant sirens moan
like banshees yawning
midnight sorrows
on blank streets.
Aug 8, 2014
Aug 8, 2014 at 6:29 PM UTC