Thunder and Rain
The thunder and rain this morning
Play a symphony of sound,
Bringing life-force water to earth,
Fostering growth of trees,
Grass and flowers for the sake of
Beauty of the land for just us
And too, for the bees that coexist
In a dance of fertilization and honey
It is a beautiful world in all its seasons,
In all its climes and all its glory!
Labor Day 2020
Union Job
I was just a kid really,
But a union job was big-time,
You had to know someone.
I didn’t realize that at the time,
The environment was frightening,
But the money was good.
They show you the ropes in a moment
Where to punch in, what happens if you don’t
That is, punch-in or out.
They show you the break area
Picnic tables on concrete with a few vending machines
God-awful coffee, that I learned to drink to stay up the first night.
They show you the bathrooms
I still have nightmares
Having to go, and there are no non-filthy ones available.
Dude I started with got the paint line
Sounded scarier than what I got.
I worked the warehouse, loading trucks
With aluminum siding of all types
In long boxes picked from cavernous warehouse.
Put on long carts, pulled by way too fast fork lifts
Driven by crazy people that feared nothing.
The carts were backed into tractor-trailers
We unloaded as fast as we could, never fast enough.
The eye loops for the hooks on the trailers
Bruised our shins, the old guys had disfigured legs
The young guys limped until they became more nimble.
Hands dried out from the cardboard and cracked.
The dust and dark and dingy trucks had woad flooring.
They had holes sometimes. but we filled them with boxes anyway.
Lunch was a half-hour, they had it timed, perfect
Two beers and a ground-round from local bar.
Pre-ordered and consumed in heartburn inducing rapidity.
We worked the night-shift – usually about 14 to 16 hours.
Overtime pay was what everyone wanted.
I’d team up with Jimmy sometimes, he was 4 years older than me
That made him an old-man… he sang in a band on weekends.
We would sing together while picking in the warehouse
House of the rising sun… seemed oddly applicable.
I learned to smoke cheap cigars, because that’s what everyone did
Cigars or cigarettes .. but when you are loading, cigarettes slowed you down… Cigars burned the inside of your bicep when you were lifting boxes over your head.
Monster of a guy was second in state arm-wrestling.
Naturally I challenged him, my knuckles were bruised hitting the picnic table top… didn’t do that again.
You get along, or they get you out.
Two fights and you’re fired.
First fight gets you a week off without pay.
To get rid of someone, even these guys thought was dangerous
Two people picked fights with him over a few week period…
We all pitched in to pay for the week off with pay for each pugilist
I feared being asked to fight someone… I was happy to pay my share.
It was a world and a community all its own.
The pay was good, but they went on strike anyway.
The factory moved away, and I went to school and found other summer jobs… yearning for an education and a future.
In the Fall
In the fall of our existence
The trees creak in the wind
Giving in, providing no resistance
To failings and faults within
And without our limitations
No matter how we pretend
We are but poor imitations
Of who were back then
When there was spring in the air
And summer played in time
When we never seemed to care
Win or lose, we’d never mind
Just get up and do it over and over again
Never think it might be the last
Before fall intrudes, and winter sets in
As a cold and disabling blast
So we’ll bundle up, and enjoy once more
The memories of a simpler past
When it seemed we were young evermore.
Book 3, Self-Published
I used self-publishing saving much
But with no review, edit or such
It is there perfect, never trampled, pristine
Like powdered snow, that’s never been seen
Not a single comment, not a single buy
No publisher, no editor, no-one but I
To blame, and no value yet, not a single star
In a way it is absolutely perfect thus far
Nothing but a feeling of completion for the third-time
Of my passionate thoughts and occasioned rhyme
Vigilante Horror
Some will praise a vigilante
Some will see him as a hero
Some will oil and load their guns
Some will fail to mourn the death of protesters
Many will view this is just another part of the landscape
But ever more will see this as a horror
More will fear a white supremacy movement
More will question why police ignore an armed 17 year-old
More will mourn the death of protesters
More will see this as a sad corruption of a 17 year-old
More will see this as Trump’s dystopian America
More will pray for peace
Let’s hope for an answer
It is necessary to fearlessly face reality, while maintaining hope!
I couldn’t get a song out of my head for several days… I find it nostalgic and haunting, written by Steven Goodman and made famous by Arlo Guthrie, called “The City of New Orleans”… for me it was as if the train was calling on America to think again about who we are and what it all means as we pass our five hundred miles of life. How we see each other and how we see the world we are leaving for others. The first verse I left the same, except Mr. Goodman described passing towns with no name, instead of trains as Mr. Guthrie recorded the song. The second verse is largely my fabricated notion of what a world we are in the afternoon of our lives. How we see others, how judgmental we can become, and how we should see rather the simple joy of kids that ask the engineer to blow his horn. The last verse, I changed from “Dealin’ cards with the old men in the club car… Penny a point ain’t no one keepin’ score” to reflect our current form of distraction, our smart phones, and I try to bring into the thought the memory again of being young and the joy of rocking babes to sleep. As we fade into our evenings of life what are we leaving for our grandsons and granddaughters… our dreams.
Good Morning America, How are you?
Riding on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail
All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields
Passin’ towns that have no names
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles
Good afternoon America, how are you?
Don’t you know me, I’m your native son
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done
And where were you
When the City of New Orleans came rumbling by
When all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still hadn’t heard the news
A train can have the disappearing railroad blues
Don’t you recognize your native son
Why do you think you have to judge anyone
When they just would like you to listen to what they said
After-all they pledged a sacred allegiance just as you did
And those that came after with desire to be as one
With us in heart, sharing the dream of a native son
Regardless where they came from or where they were born
And the engineer waves and gives a blast of the horn
From his perch sitting way up high on the train
For children in their yards pulling an imaginary chain
Good evening America, how are you?
Don’t you know me, I’m your native son
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done
Life Stream
Bobbing in a stream of life
Turbulent in place, calm in others
Believing our choices are ours
Believing our paths are ours
That those that flow and weave
Through us and with us are theirs
And our choices
When the Earth was carved in serpentine
By the millions that came before
And the choices they made or did not
And the rocks we hurdle were smoothed
And made shiny by the blood of millions more
That tore their skin on the jagged challenges
As we are so often asked to contribute
So that we bounce together, and
Sway from east to west when we must
Thinking it was our own choice to
See the sunset
To have a stream of conscious
To find a quiet ride in the middle
And no longer work at carving the land
Or even to turn and swim upstream
Running into those that follow
Disrupting and distrusting
Instead of bobbling along
Enjoying the choices made
By and for us and for each other
In Plain Sight
Can you feel the darkness in the light
Hiding there, perfectly in plain sight
Blowing against the winds of change
Turbulence past trying to rearrange
To resist the evidentially historical wrong
Do you feel, do you hear its siren song
For it does not go quiet in to the night
It continues, as does darkness in plain sight
For it is part of who we are and always been
For it is dark art that can never be shown again
But it is there as a sure as the sun rises each day
As long as we allow darkness to have its say
In minds distracted, and hearts hollow
With the purpose of those we follow
Giving us our failed-thoughts to believe
So our collective-darkness will never leave
Waiting
The stench of asphalt on a hot sunny day
The incessant whine of weedwhackers
The distant hum of chillers creating
An artificial universe somewhere, not here
The flies that wander by, certainly
Attracted by the nauseating odor of asphalt
And maybe the sweat on neck of those waiting
For the world to say where to go next
For the world to have an answer to what’s next
For I do not…
Public Health Officials are being threatened with physical harm and being harassed because people believe a pandemic is a hoax, and public health directives impinge on their freedoms, while they rather believe conspiracies promulgated by those who have made public health a political battleground… God help us as a species…
When Darkness Comes
When darkness comes it will not be night
It will be in a world filled with light
It will be a time when many will know truth
When we will need to hear from our youth
And yet enough will never listen and hear
The science, the data, the truth so clear
They will seek the fatalism of conspiracy stories
With their evil intent, and twittering flurries
As every con artist knows, it’s the elaborate show
Witch doctors, shamans and village priests know
Just weave a story for the ignorant, to keep them sheltered
From evil they contrive, never mind science and truth altered
No, the darkness does not come in the night of fear
It comes when people hear what they want to hear
It comes when anxiety wins out over thought and reason
It comes when data and science is declared to be treason
Then in a world full of available and abundant light
Darkness will reign along with the anxieties of night