Best Grinders Poems
A grey cloud in holes
flew in the sky alone,
headed for its dole
all the time along.
Brilliant sunlight spots
fell onto the ground.
Jumped as little balls,
run as a greyhound.
With the insects brittle
rushed along the meadow,
an’ there a May beetle
made another circle.
An’ sounds everywhere
rang out as in a jungle,
the guests in the air
lavishly got jumbled.
Fondly dandelions
crowded all together,
organ-grinders – flyers
played in fair weather.
Suddenly black clouds
gathered in the sky,
blew away round dance
in the near dry.
Soared in the bounds
of the vault of heaven,
the cloud on the ground
fell to form forever.
Light is sweet and good for the eyes to see the brightness of the Sun,
For if someone lives a thousand years, may they rejoice in all of them.
But let us remember, for a thousand years in the sight of the LORD are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a night watch in the night time and that the days of darkness are many and everything comes to vanity.
Rejoice, O you young one, in your youth, and in your early years may your hearts do you good, walk in the path of your heart and the desire of your eyes;
But know that in all these things God will bring you into judgment, that you may remove the anger from your heart, so that distress may leave all your parts.
Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the difficult days come and the years arrive when you say, "I have no pleasure in them"; before the sun, light, moon, and stars are darkened, and the clouds leave after the rain; in the day when those watching the house tremble, and the strong one are bent over; when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through windows have dimmed eyes, and the doors on the street are shut, and the sound of grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of birds, and all the daughters of song are brought low, when they are frightened of heights, even the terrors along the way, and desire fails, because you may go to your eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets.
So remember your Creator before the cord of silver is snapped, or the jar by the
spring is broken or the wheel at the cistern crushed.
The dust returns to the earth where it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
Remember who you are and who's you are in your youth before it all becomes vanity in your sight.
Reincarnated, I will come back as a mustached and bearded Italian organ grinder,
I will live in Rome, Italy and play my home-made barrel organ in the streets,
My pet spider monkey, Shark, will happily grab up silver coins, as a reminder.
And we will make the beautifully-dressed Roma gypsies jump and laugh and squeak.
I will grind out the best songs, and Ellen will discover us and want to put us on TV.
Shark and I will be flown to America, where we will be applauded and approved.
We will play romantic music for everyone, and be as obnoxious as we can be.
We will be a hit with no one on that plane, people who are boring, and not easily moved.
We will be offered millions of dollars, to leave our wonderful streets of Rome.
But we will make our escape, not caring about the fame or the money,
For spider monkeys and organ grinders know the beauty of being in their home,
And we have a cozy nest, with our llamas and our elephant, named Honey.
i hope you don't mind
if I wander in through your front door
and reset your clocks to headlight savings
life requires humor he said to the lens grinders
as he rode his all terrain moon beam to heaven
where they were eradicating stupidity with fairy tales
same **** greater magnification was basically it
slipped on their own icy hearts
applying one clever artifice after another
but after all one wants to hasten
the modern world along clippity clop
impediments to traffic flow were to be shot
what happened next is not in the dictionary
which is fine don't get me wrong
beats the nuts off hunger
but the world is not nice anymore
isolated pockets of rebellion perhaps
out in the bleak lizard sands hanging from a tree
but the rest stuffed with foam peanuts
that could turn you to ballroom dancing
your narrator being the test case
for daisy picking the numbers the samples the statistics
I love you just the same she whispered after the operation
the entire ABC unit was called in from the chalk mines
and the XYZ crew was called in from the slate quarry
but no amount of preparation could have warned them
of the melancholic yet piquant sagging of standards
his mind had turned upon itself out of shame and envy
he had an entire city in his head
that wasn’t in Architectural Digest
honkings sirens gunfire breaking glass
spasms and outbursts and phobias and anxieties and
compulgings and obsessities and hallucinotions and
mysterias and distortoons and damplifications and
twitchings and itchings and may I add bowel flux
we haven't even begun to look at his libido
which had shrunk from a blacksmith's forge of intensity
to the vague expectation of an afternoon nap
better than living the prelude to a beheading
you decide if hiding in the bushes permanently
like a grinning jack in the box with a message
is the same as dancing through the forest
dressed in leaves and emeralds
pantomime after all is deception
random at first then shapes intervene
there is no random he said over and over in proof
they say the devil spoke Hebrew
and Popeye smoked his spinach
a contemporary exercise in
signal location
From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon
Artist Portfolio: http://walteralter.byethost32.com/
I took my periodic stroll through the local antique store today.
I stumbled over things and stepped 'round clutter to make my way.
I looked for clocks, found none, but saw many things I could do without,
And those are the things that I propose to tell you all about.
There was an old buggy wheel - I could see no use for that.
I saw horse collars, washboards and someone's stuffed Angora cat.
On the wall was a photo of a Victorian guy glaring back at me.
Also displayed was a chamber pot and a scraggly Christmas tree!
What use have I for a manure fork or hubcaps for a '47 Dodge,
Or a shaggy buffalo robe or shriveled scalps from an Indian lodge?
Displayed were coffee grinders and old Prince Albert tobacco cans,
A portrait of Napoleon and a hood ornament for a '37 Mercedes Benz!
Hanging on a clothes rack was an old soldier's moth-eaten uniform.
I have no need for a hornet's nest that once held and angry swarm.
Though I found many things I could do without, not so my spouse!
She bought a cart full of gimcracks and trumpery to clutter up the house!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(c) All Rights Reserved
First Place in Black Eyed Susan's "Antique" Contest - May 2014
The mill wheel would not turn until the spring,
the ice, springtime, thawing, now showing bling.
The mill, now in motion, mill pond, full spate!
Hark, the grinders grind flour for bread, can't wait.
Fickle the weather, the water freezes,
hard frost, the mill and pond, motion ceases!
What grain was ground, sold, fresh bread, cakes baking!
Rumour has it, the mill, now old, shaking.
Whispers ran through the town from door to door,
their mill, it's state, condition, bad, yes poor!
The bank was made aware and did declare,
with help, it would contribute, help repair.
All helped, a vast sum did accrue, delight!
Work started twenty-four hours, day and night.
Ice melts revealing secrets, the wheel creaks.
Across pond, two otters swam, leaving streaks.
The wheel was stopped, for one whole year, no bread.
To the delight of all, the otters bred.
Soon left, the wheel, their home, fixed, mill started!
Fesh ground flour to all homes was carted!
One, nine, sixteen v3.0 Poetry Contest - Sponsored by Viv Wigley
6/25/18
In rabbit’s fur I find you
touching it you come to mind
can’t stop feeling the memory
your alabaster pink thighs elicit
Horses on the right gallop away at full speed past me
lions on the left hungry are always looking for prey
my heart screams as the lamb quietly eats
unaware the lion approaches
In the warmth of your smile the sun runs and hides
you look beautiful tending the fragrant gardenia garden
the one you cultivated with your caring hands
always singing beautiful melodies to them
Your tongue plays with your lips
I crumble like an Oreo cookie in milk
my anxious heart crushed
I lay myself like a tame animal at your feet
Organ grinders! Grind that love song
the one we made love to on that sorrowful night
in the winter of her death
that soon after brought loneliness and old age
I cry not for myself
but for the beautiful love we shared
memories we shared are inculcated in my soul
filling the many notebooks I wrote of you
Those passions stirring in me don't won't die
overwhelming this old man's mind to tears
I recall endless seasons we frolicked loving for hours
talking about our wonderful future that lay just ahead
Did we know our time together was finite?
No, we did not
We were too involved with each other to notice
Young people never notice the dissipation of time
My advice to you young lovers
the urgency is now to make each embrace last a lifetime
love and treasure each other
and kiss as if each kiss was the last
Don't look at your good fortune and feel your love is everlasting
because you are young and found love, it is not
time is cruel it knows not love nor youth
the devil can pop up anytime
Youth in love cares not what tomorrow may bring
but tomorrows of constant toil and anguish, loss and sacrifice
missing now are surreptitiously hiding
lurking around the corner and are nearer than you think.
Karnnifa Leaf And Beyond
Karnnifa Leaf lies wrongler to the westermorn of Liquida Barga
Cool brushing blues, calmingly decending corner wedgefords
In delinquinada rolling ragers fire lavala redlings, there a ring begun so hot
Jellying through mystification morphus above the blue
Just-toola eastly of roada low and up from there-abundancies creelowing
Wayla is the daughter quested with amblins and shards vestitures
Found them cutterlin and bleedingly profounder on irony ware there
Wilds on the Barga tramplina, wildest sojournaling and purelificing
When nilda drack and drungeon came upon the groupulence
So many then, Lurchin, far beyonda Karnifa Leaf, lefting red and again
No pestilencers remained wonderlate or crackling crack in waste
Not now or laterlinga dayly dayly on morphus morn
Came Wayla spleedling slashalactic and meandermindering
She takes then the monstrella girla down giagantling higher wire crier spree
Returnabout to Karnnifa Leaf proudoler, prodlinging, no timer grinders we
Popularizationer came awaying with Wayla, and yes!
Rained heavywonder browling soundabouts
And Liquida Barga settlering comfortingly to the lighter sighterscene
Quietler minder, nilda drack, smilling to a crawler, happerstance and crowning
Quarkly firing into skylinger endlings of the Leaf, solar bound
Above Liquida Barga, there Wayla lovingly suspends it
To that end begins
This poem was inspired by the interviews by Earl K. Pollon and S. S. Matheson conducted with native Sekanni peoples who were negatively effected by the flooding of their communal homelands by the building of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam. “This Was Our Valley” tells that story of injustice. 640 square miles of riverfront and hunting territory would be flooded to form Williston Lake. The Sekanni peoples were driven from their ancestral homeland in northeastern British Columbia, Canada and dispersed.
The Shopping Cart Injustice
People, place and spirit
All were our relations
Biopeds, quadrupeds, winged or finned -
River language told us so.
Fishing rocks spoke the run
Where the riffles and the rapids talked.
Ancestors, dead and alive, told living stories where
Running the river banks, the children played.
The land was a book written in forms.
We made our mark with love, community
Fishing weirs, aspen dugout canoes,
Hunting trails, camps and sacred sites.
Always traders, we traded furs with
White settlers when they arrived
On the rivers Parsnip, Finlay and Peace at
Finlay Forks, Fort Grahame, Fort McLeod.
We added pack trains, teams of pack horses
River freighters, flat bottom ‘longboats’
For supplies and for mail delivery.
It seemed that we could live together.
Then one day a government agent said
That shopping carts were coming
They would flood our world
Water rising everywhere
Shopping carts with electric can openers
Full, fast to check out,
Shopping carts with electric hair blowers,
Full, faster to check out,
Shopping carts with electric air conditioners,
Full, fastest to check out
Shopping carts with electric stoves.
Check out, check out, check out.
They would make our rivers into a lake
We would move or drown.
Our elders did not believe it.
That was the only consultations!
Soon Saskatoon berries all under water
Next, the banks sloughed back to graveyards
Next, cliffs crumbled, and banks fell into rising lake
Houses of the villages slipped and floated
Coffins, bones and bodies strewed the shore
Where tangled trees, debris and more
Eddied with flotsam in the wind.
We wept for our ancestors!
We weep for our children.
We had to flee the destruction
Caused by tree grinders, D-9 bull dozers
The dam construction.
Now they want to take more
Another dam for more shopping carts.
Please stop Site ‘C’.
Vietnamese Tiger Bone Paste
How can it be? That a magnificent tiger gets turned into bone paste? I never knew it was possible. The email I got confirmed it was. Sign the petition they asked.
I did.
It's in Vietnam. Here the tigers are killed and then processed. I don't want to know how they do it. Or what it's used for. I thought it was only the Chinese who did things like this.
I was wrong.
The people who kill the tigers don't care they're endangered. That only a few are left. Their belief, rightly or wrongly, in the tiger paste and its uses will keep them doing their heinous trade.
Will the petition change anything?
I don't know but it's a start. Maybe corrupt officials and greedy hunters and bone grinders will think twice next time. We can but sign and hope. For the tigers and all the other endangered animals.
It's up to us to do something.
We are pelted daily on television by some brassy tout,
Hawking useless stuff we're told we can't survive without!
"Not available at your local store - the price cannot be outdone;
Order now and I'll send you two for the price of one!"
A pastime as American as baseball, barbeque and punkin pie,
Is touring yard sales! Mercy! The myriad of junk you can buy!
Neighbors hold sales displaying useless gimcrackery,
To rid themselves of whatchamacallits and other knickknackery!
Antique stores are a haven for cast-off falderol galore.
The shelves sag with stuff folks have no use for anymore.
It doesn't make sense to clutter my attic or spend my dollars,
On such stuff as antique coffee grinders or old horse collars!
Even my computer is not immune from spewing bodacious bunk,
Displaying a litany of unsolicited emails called "junk!"
Some guy in Liberia promises millions if only I'd send some cash.
Others with deals too good to be true - Lord, spare me this trash!
Alas, our house is crammed with stuff bought over the years,
At flea-markets, yard sales and from babbling auctioneers.
Most of it is useless, collects dust and takes up space.
Come to think of it, a yard sale might be my saving grace!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(© All Rights Reserved)
why dont you go eat Sardines?
Stupid coupe, Cupid poop
dandalion wine, hmmm...
century's past
AProved uh by uh me
Hidden, Stricken, Chicken, Picken
my el camino..., blast OFF!
Sad And blue
bruiser
chosen by Lester (AKA The melester)
whats the deal with carnivores and gonads? (like Seinfeld)
Partionally everything
Feeler's And Grinders
The Quick And Deadly
Almost like an Alien
check the perimeter
Nothing ma'am.
They wanna be like Shotgun holders and shiiitt
girl, that's right.
what is Project implant zero? (like jeopardy)
Die living
Single Parent, Apparently Single
weight Watchers
introducing Air
you coulda guessed it
Romance with you, Grander than the heavens
my outlook is my Disease
Disaster Relief
ill teach you lines and colors
Kurt Cobain
smoke bombs and tazers
Run around in circles till you puke ( NO WAY )
what i say is Gone
Laying down all night thinking.
Jingle in
yeah, big Air
intruding fools ( i was one of them)
u no who im talkn bout miss thaang
if your reading this your eyes are open
123Floor
456Seven
8910Friend
it happend once, itll never happen again.
wierd timing
however ODD, it ws Shortly lived.
The Meat Grinders
Everyday thousands of Americans
are being sued for their student loans
sweet child,
can you see them lined up at the court house
like zombie, I can't do anything about it droans
as the puppets file their liens
against many who live in poverty
thousands that could not find decent employment
all suited up and educated, they shatter
when they find harsh reality and disappointment
left behind to do what ever they can find
with no energy left to shout
today they're getting sued
buy their government that was supposed to
check these schools out
line them up
garnish their wage
they're to dead to feel any rage
and those who lined their pockets
are far from the stage
where their lawyer puppets dance
how challenging their job must be
the've never lost a case
I don't think there's even a chance
might as well just shut up and struggle
and admire the size of pens and shutes
that they've constructed for all the cattle
soon to meat for the rustlers
who won the battle
long before it began
they wrote the rules
and for heavens sake, they need to loose
but they can't
"Education is the key to our nations future"
seems the president was in on the scam
and their next scheme's around the corner
all well thought out and put together
by those willing to rape Mammons damned
Greed , negative, stubbornness, vanity, the arrogant
Paranoid , revenge, suspicious, jealousy, the extravagant
Ten words form a cold word,
Human like hidden tongue, come out in disorder
The deep well is dark, the grinders sound, the tea house calls.
The Words are healing the wound thoroughly.
A ray of sunshine flowed through the spring
On this land. Someone has taken out the glasses
The north wind of the horseshoe, the horn called the flocks and herds
Drive the horses and the wolves to pass through there, from here
Just pull the straight bamboo pole.
The remains are turned into mud and dust.
The fire of this time ignites the old totem.
The sunken ship of the sea was surrounded by blue
The explorer picked up the handwriting of China
And the original coin, clear sea.
The weakness of the dagger is with people
The next day, when it was thrust into the distance, it was in front
Proximity, but the truth is not completely revealed.
~ To the tune of:
'Where Have All the Flowers Gone?' ~
Where have all the comics gone
Long time passing
Milton Berle and Alan King
Long time did their thing
Where have all their insults gone
Long time passing
Don Rickles and Groucho Marx
Echo in empty parks
Where has all the slapstick gone
Long time passing
Larry, Moe, and Curly Joe
Gave way to milquetoast shows
Where have all the tap dancers gone
Sammy Davis, Donald O’Connor
Bumpers and grinders of today
Do the greats a dishonor
Where have all the comics gone
Georgie Jessel and George Burns
Gone the way of Romantic poets’ poems
~ Like Keats’ ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’