Barons Poems

cattle barons rode into town

The cattle barons rode into town
They were dressed in blah, black and brown
Faces stoic and plain
Bulls of Iowa fame
They marched to the square to confront the clown

The clown was frightened of these big six
There was not a happy one in the mix
Hamburger? No way!
We are here to stay
Clown, owner of the diner, was in a fix

The Demise of jim crow in Minneapolis

Fifty years ago...the age of self-reflection

Hollow crumbs, shadows of proud vestiges
As minneapolis' jim crow vanished slowly,
Painfully, no longer admired at country club
Cocktail parties celebrating ribbon-cuttings

My family was inside and unaware of history 
Working class achievement,
 First deli in marble edifice
To corporate greed,
 Connecting the longest Minneapolis
Skyway North to Washington Ave.
Dallas barons, puppet-masters

Guilding their empire on the backs
Of working class talent, eager to eat the
Crumbs of capitalism 

Spoon  (Mr Witherspoon) slaved to achieve the
Pinnacle of jim-crow "shoe-shine" stands in
 Pillsbury's new world headquarters
Admired in his community 
Proudly placed out front, then moved
To the back of a hair salon, ignoble-crushed

Under the weight of boardroom glare
jim-crow lost it's shine

Spoon

            Lost

                      His

                              Leg


4-18-25
5:55am

The Kings Of Backgammon

The kings of backgammon, descendants of
Bulgarian kings and Austro-Hungarian princes
Russian counts and countesses, Czech barons
Your ancestors have seen better days.
They accepted their fate as the natural state of affairs
And when it turned out to be just a fickle fortune
They had the nurture and tact not to show their shock,
Though usually such a ruthless discovery crushes many. 
Now, as you spend your days playing backgammon in smoky cafes
You rarely remember the fragments of days gone by.
You've learnt to rejoice in trifling victories, and not to be disheartened by losses.
The descendants of exiled kings and ruined nobles
They organise championships of sad joy
The winner owes a round of beer for everyone.
The new Russian opposition makes the right acquaintances
Just like the old one did a hundred years ago 
And in their later years, they all convert to Catholicism
Since Orthodox churches don't have pews
At least with Catholics you can doze off unnoticed
With a sniff of incense through the candle light.

The ugly belly of robber barons

To make money do what you may
And let no rules come in your way,
Capitalism blares
As laissez-faire declares
Wild ways to thievery,
Packaged nigh cleverly
For robber barons of today,
Who should look in mirror
To reflect on error
And ponder, made they are of clay.
____________________  
Happenings |19.11.2024|money, business, mirror

Poet’s note: US, who has charged an Adani company of financial misdeeds, needs to look into its own history of capitalism. The first two lines of this ditty talk of what laissez-faire was and still largely is. A list compiled in 1934 named 26 robber barons (a German term for knights who charged illegal tolls from travellers along with other forms of thuggery). The list includes Andrew Carnegie, JP Morgan, and John D Rockefeller-- who later turned philanthropists and promoters of art to earn rubber stamp of public approval. The country reminds us of a cat on a pilgrimage:

Upon killing hundreds of mice,
A cat is out to wash her vice,
On holy pilgrimage
To pop up her image,
Poor mice paying her laundry price.

Let It Burn

Now the Earth slowly dies

It burns before our eyes

The facts are unopposed

And yet our eyes are closed

The rich who try to hide

Most leaders on their side

They'll turn our world to dust

And still we choose to trust

Money is the master

Leading to disaster 

Nothing worth defending 

Such a sorry ending 

Oil barons never learn

They say just let it burn

Middle Earth

Rainbow robber barons
loose cannon lephricaners
rollin'n' tumblin' dice

Howling of the Coyotes

When shadows fall across embattled land 
Dusk creeps slowly westward over the plains 
Comes a-wailing, howling of the coyotes 
Searching for prey among the dry creek runs
Thirsty animals, like humans, take risks
Seek out the sweet nectar of the rainclouds
Potable water, life’s necessity.
This cracked earth, barren of tillable soil
Given for our homeland--great Sioux nation
And Lakota--once land of thunderbeasts!
Our land carved from brokenness and hardship
For generations we courageously fought.
We will never surrender one acre
To greedy Eastern oil-hungry barons
Not one dried-up ditch for a leaden pipe
Winding across our sacred tear-stained soil. 

July 8, 2022
Submitted to "2022 Poetry Marathon Mile 7" Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Mark Toney

Written/Edited June 13, 2022
Submitted to "Creatures of the Night" Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Julia Ward

Furry Maniacs

furry maniacs

acrobat squirrels
 apple tree robber barons ~
  furry maniacs

2-1-22
Contest: Squirrel Haiku
Sponsor: Robert James Liguori

Snapshot Dating

Snapshot Dating 

The right place
	The right time
Again the day begins with
Faint sunshine 
	Over the sleepy villagers 
Gathered in cities like stooks of corn
Stacked against the rainy form of
Another stormy morning 

The black & white snapshot 
Might tell a better story of
Grandfather sitting silently
On hay 
Perfectly posed 
in a quiet repose
He’s said nothing since his funeral 
That Saturday
 
In town
The young boys gathered round
The Model T with the flat tire
It’s easier than replacing horseshoes
Said the young liar among them
Lighting a smoke they went about
The work before them 
Greasing their fingernails in the
Futures of Oil Barons

The someday of overcoming fears 
Has come  and gone
The guides have taken the supplies 
And gone their way 
There is still plenty for the taking
As is love for the making of
The generations yet to come

I Stand Alone On a Hillside Barren

I stand alone on a hillside barren
Of trees and rocks, and similar thing,
Once they were lush with foliage green
But now they are stripped of everything.
Ancient mountains verdant ripped away
The price of greed more than evident,
By harvesting narrow top seams of coal
Crushing heavy equipment came and went.
West Virginia’s hills were once majestic
Grand and proud they towered brave,
Where I stand alone on a hillside barren
Saddened like standing before a grave.
     Coal barons who built a mansion near
     Must feel the pangs of injustice here. 

FIRST PLACE WINNER
Brian Strand's Sonnet Contest
July 21, 2021

SILVER MEDAL WINNER
"Where Have All The Mountains Gone" Poetry Contest
All Poetry - October 10, 2021

Our Homeland

When shadows fall across embattled land 
          Dusk creeps slowly westward over the plains 
     Comes a wailing, howling of the coyotes 
Searching for prey among the dry creek runs.
Thirsty animals, like humans, take risks 
     Seek out the sweet nectar of the rainclouds 
          Potable water, life’s necessity 
               This cracked earth, barren of tillable soil.  

               Given for our homeland--great Sioux nation
          And Lakota--once land of thunderbeasts!
     Our land carved from brokenness and hardship
For generations we courageous fought.
We will never surrender one acre
     To greedy Eastern oil-hungry barons
          Not one dried-up ditch for a leaden pipe
               Winding across our sacred tear-stained soil.

God Forbid

Perhaps most people would prefer a free and open society.
But God forbid that I should  DAMPEN  anyone's spirit
or  BLEMISH  someone's  VISAGE  by exposing some
PERNICIOUS   manipulations of a few fraudulent people.
Must I dare TREAVERSE  another's 'rights to indifference'?                                                            
Nevertheless, standing at the  SENTRY  post on yesterday, I observed                                                                                   
free  ENTERPRISE  in a most unusual way.  There were no hands barred,
a free-for-all survival of the fittest like 'robber barons' reinvented, or like                                                              
before anti-trust laws. Business transactions, 'the buyer beware type',                                                    
were being made by  ASTRAL  citizens "from somewhere out there".

102020PSCtest, Eight Word Challenge 11, John Hamilton.NA

Rose Petals In the Fire

Panning in frigid water, for a nugget called freedom.
The seed of the dream sprouts in the mind
deserts are brimming with icy coyote eyes
the mountains though lovely, grow higher
barely alive, the hopeful are battered
dust devil dreamers - roses tossed into the fire.

The worthwhile journey never has an ending
Tough miles gather like sparrows on broken fences
Cartels and sex barons thin out the flanks
Hope waning-wailing-chalk hearts in the rain
For the worthy, lady liberty patiently awaits.

Those with clean nails and fine fancy homes
shove barbed wire agendas down blue collar throats
Buzzards hover above-dreaming only of dead meat
Anarchist and pretend patriots bloody the streets.

Front page nuggets whittled down to fine print
Only rattlers and God know where dead dreamers lie
The masses become immune to imminent death
Dust devil dreamers - roses tossed into the fire.

The Stone

See-
a stone on which we people stumble;
a rock on which we all shall fall.

though they be lifted to kings
and sit on velvet thrones
still shall the stumble and fall.

though they be Barons who laugh and sing
they to shall stumble and fall.

and we, through struggle and trouble and tears-
we too, shall someday soon,
stumble and tumble
and fall

Delorean View

Flip the kill switch,
start the genocidal ignition
Hate is the fuel injected
into the lethal gas shark tank
Cull waters are on a
flux capacitor overflow
Anger accelerates the murderous rage glitch
Hydrogen fusion kaboom ~ Mushroom heat bloom 
tints the side window

DeLorean view
sits temporal pessimistic 
Mass graves asphalt attitude — 
Reverse gear evolution
is a back-to-the-future condition

Prophetic voices from the past
forewarned 
of apocalyptic events to come

Tragedy on the dark side horizon:
Red barons steer the cattle
into the path of the metal beast
Covetous bloodlust sparks the battle,
evil trying to get the stealth treadmark drop on the good

Flip the nuclear kill switch,
start the global homicide acceleration
Strangelove gives a drone missile kiss,
hawks preying on the doves
Terminator technology
be Stone Age moral philosophy
written on a Blu-sabertooth, blank DVD disc

New DeLorean view
sits temporal optimistic
Firmament final destination ... 
the future recedes
in a golden exhaust hue

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