Best Hobnail Poems

Matchstick Bikes 

To tinkers and toilers 
     I salute, 
From mending boilers 
     to weaving jute, 
Man and boy 
     for generations, 
I will unemploy 
     your occupations. 

To...

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I once awoke into a dream
And there I saw a sight.
Adrift, a draft of Daffodils
Breezed on a hard day's night.

Still looking up and at the sky,
A Dandelions nest, 
Shone down like rays of Buttercups
Alighting up my vest.

“Hello,” I bellied up to it.
And smiling like a...

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To Catch A Butterfly

I stand beside 
a wilderness
    to gaze upon 
    unfamiliar shores
where life once 
appeared so intimate
    midst the savage 
    lion's roars,

Yet I'm detached 
from this reality
   ...

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Three-Legged Table

As I drove through an old neighborhood, I spotted a garage sale sign. 
I pulled off to the side of the street. With impatience, I couldn't get out
of the car quick enough. Right in front of the drive sat a vintage,
small drop-leaf, three-legged, brass...

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“Quick smart struck onion!
You metronomous fishy tail!
You’ll not be taken in by me, 
you fraudulent legume!”

I seemed to have soundly unsettled her
Set her mind cross firing, flailing
But it’s not such a thing to be nettled for
No reason for wail and paling

“Quick, smart, lush young-one!
You’re melodious,...

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Sending the tending to an unfriended ending,
 yet somehow suspending from rending a newly offending recommending.
Logotype monotype linotype,
overripe stereotype,
 teletyped an unripe heliotype. 
Guttersnipe snipe,
 stipe snipe ripe,
 a wipe type a tripe, 
unleash a withering hype. 


Dip snip,
nip lip,
slip skip,
rip the apple pip
over a...

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(521 Australian servicemen were killed in
the Vietnam War.  Menzies = Australian
leader, septic tanks = "yanks", 
Queensberry = fair, as in the rules of
boxing, bonzer = good)

I'm Billy Bohane from Castlemaine - 
it's an Irish name, and rhymes with "pain". 
I was laying the planks...

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four star circus
side show of war,
thugs on a hillside
another killing floor,

greedy men squabble loudly
gulping down the poor,
coalition vacuole
futility galore,

sobbing children in the dust
silent tears like rain,
generation lost to time
born in tragic pain,

greener valleys stretch on out
blot out the crimson stain,
sons and daughters of the fist
hope...

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Antiques and Curios

A collection of Antiques and curios,
Covered in dust on a cellar floor.
Things once made for a purpose,
No longer of use anymore.
 
Record Player with wind-up handle,
Once sung out the old Seventy-eights.
A music box with broken spring,
Film scores of the all-time greats.
 
Gas mask,...

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How intoxicated I am with the swirl of armies, bodies and armor.
Trampled by those running away from or running to war.
But we're all hungry ghosts,
moving towards our deaths with a casual sense,
as if passersby to an accident.
I think of her and smelling her wrist,
whilst she...

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Cover me in feathery down,
warmth against winter chills and frozen  ground
leave me to sleep in deep refrain,
until tidal waves recreates my home again.

Step, step, stepping in deep snow,
Hobnail boot prints in trailing go. 

Full blown blossom,
tis Spring
Showers of rain
Drip, drip, drops
Filling open flower cups.

Fluttering...

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NORMAN
Norman was a character a funny man its true,
He was a country copper, till the force said bugger off blue,
He was there in Mungindi when two Squatters piddled on plants,
Grabbed onto ole Carruthers and booted him up the pants,
You cant do that said ole Loostrang,...

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Faraway Footsteps

How present
This past
Called memory

Hollow sole dragging
Hobnail boots
Caked with crud
Mud
And oil
Atop the landing
"Drop them greasy clothes"
Came the sometimes loving voice
The sometimes malevolent voice
But always his wife's warning
My mother's caring way

So many years past
When linoleum's impoverished sound
Is so remembered
Stepping from stove to table
Her laboring hands
Hefting the...

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Electroconvulsive therapy,
     a last ditch avail
able effort optioned, aye bewail
as desperation if standard
     psychological measures peter

     out leave ving paul tree
(paltry) choice, and blackmail
ling Doctor Frankenstein
     out of the...

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They were strong men of steel
In flat caps and hobnail boots,
hunger pains all they could feel
dressed in Sunday best suits,

poor diet of potato and marrow 
no more ships, unemployment high 
for folk in northern town of Jarrow,
work needed government did deny,

Petition signed by many thousands...

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