Oh Noisy Redding

Redding Poem 1 "Oh Noisy Redding" There at the Thunderbird Lodge in downtown Redding, I heard the gods screaming from steel axles with rubber Claws, scratching the timeless asphalt streets with mayhem. I heard the sirens from the mysterious distances on Market Street, As monster machines hovered above with roaring determinations, And the rumblings of the trucks shook the building I slept within, Like a raging stampede of stallions, coming through the canyons, In search of prairie grasses and the sap of a million pine trees. Oh noisy Redding, You finally drift to sleep in the late hours, But your Kansas-like silences seared my soul with your plaintive noises, Something you could have whispered perhaps, but were not inclined to try. Then in the wee times at vulgar five o’clock, they come asunder again! The madness machines with roaring engines about to explode like maniacs On hyper-drugs, make their appearances with screeching brakes, And grinding steel nerves and hydraulic sinews made of entwined madness; And time stops, as we wonder what monster has arisen from its grave. Oh you, detestable ghoul from the grave, why must you scream? There at the Thunderbird Lodge in downtown Redding, Oh noisy restless Redding, You belch loudly as you drink to the new day, and to the last. Oh Noisy Redding, your maniac trains rumble and massacre the silence As your old streets grumble like something wanting to get up and dance, Shaking old hips, as with the tremors of the deep land, the sacred land.