Best Labourers Poems
Once I was thinking of building a shopping plaza, just along the Gaza strip
But those Israeli's being what they are I thought my sales could take a dip
So, I thought I'd build a set of tunnels, starting from just beneath my feet
The guy from Hamas came and thought my tunnel plans looked quite neat
I employed a load of freeloading Egyptian labourers I got 'em on the cheap
I paid ‘em with unwanted skull caps and a load of knocked off kosher meat
We built a cafe' serving up falafel and played loud music to cover up the din
And, it must have worked as the locals never seemed to have heard a thing
Took us over 3 months to reach the darn Israelis wall of concrete and steel
Damn; if they were not waiting for us, shouting, are you lot for flippin’ real
They sent all of us back to Gaza; with a rocket launcher up everyone's ass
Shouting; you ain't getting in here sunshine’s, not without a flaming’ pass
The Egyptians were not very happy, but hey that's not so unusual for them
Thinking of employing us to build another tunnel, well, you can think again
We then all arrived back at the Syed café; just to find, it had shut up sharp
Apparently; there had been a 100% sale on down at the bazaar super mart
The Egyptians; looking a ghostly white from months of working in the dust
Suddenly disappeared; they had all absconded outta here, on the local bus
Sitting on a dusty chair down at the Syed cafe; I watched as Gaza did burn
While totting up the jukebox to the sounds of, The House of the Rising Sun
O' a Palestinians’ lot, is not a happy lot, of this, you can be more than sure
Just ask anyone from Farah to Beit Hanoun, they all know the bloody score
The guy from Hamas reappeared, saying those tunnel plans looked quite neat
Have a thousand unwanted skull caps, and a load of knocked off kosher meat
Well, the Palestinians’ lot, is not a happy lot, but in the end we will not be beat
So I opened a local vendor stall, just a stone's throw at the bottom of my street
Selling a thousand unwanted skull caps and a load of knocked off kosher meat
Lulling the days when a guy from Hamas thought my tunnel plans looked neat
Categories:
labourers, humor, uplifting,
Form:
Couplet
The Harvest Is Plenteous*
Written: by Miracle Man
1-9-2020
In chasing filthy lucre, notoriety, or fame,
We allow these to take us out of God’s game.
We accumulate earthly goods, all timely spaced,
And in this pursuit, allow God, to be displaced.
But nothing in life comes without affixed cost,
Shouldn’t we be witnessing, trying to win the lost?
Of what importance are earthly things we pursue?
When the harvest is plenteous but laborers are few.
As I look at prophecy I believe time is short,
Until God’s declares time finished and HE’LL abort.
Don’t let other things suck the air from the room,
But watch and pray for the return of the groom.
*Matthew 9:37
“Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few;”
Categories:
labourers, god, heaven, life,
Form:
Rhyme
Grapes slumbering; on..'
Leafs shading, yeast patina'ed fruit..
Sun-downers tonight..!
Grapes ripening on..'
Vine gripping seasoned trellis.
Purple skies..' ( thirst )
Grapes burgeoning on..'
frame groans; the labourers gains..'
Andean moth drinks..!
©Joe Maverick 15-5-2012
Categories:
labourers, allegory,
Form:
Haiku
Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge movement, the leader Pol Pot,
Killed twenty-five percent of the population, a fact most people forgot.
To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss,
That was the ideology of the evil boss.
Buddhist monks were killed and religion was banned,
No one was safe with this beast in command.
Children placed in labour camps, civil rights were abolished,
Schools and hospitals shut down, homes were demolished.
People getting shot for wearing glasses, laughing and even crying,
And if you spoke a foreign language you were definitely dying.
Slave labourers dying from overwork, malnutrition and executions,
While the U.K. gave the Khmer Rouge plenty of contributions.
Minority groups were targeted, Thai, Muslims, Christians and Vietnamese,
But they explicitly targeted the ethnic Chinese.
Millions of pounds from the U.K., millions of dollars from the states,
All working together in terror, they were the best of mates.
What Nixon and Kissinger began, Pol Pot completed,
And none of them ever showed remorse for all the people they mistreated.
Categories:
labourers, conflict, history, people, political,
Form:
Rhyme
MY NAME IS KAIZEN
Bullet oiled with knowledge
Hearts smitten with purpose
As a thin of air, we marched into the street of kaizen
The harvest is cream and green.
We the labourers with our intellectual machetes,
Made and manufactured by functional knowledge
Battered and butchered the dreaded monster called ignorance
The battle line is drawn
We are drunk of knowledge
With planks, nails and hammer,
We nailed a coffin for ignorance
The funeral of the old order
The emergence of the new order
At the cascade of kaizen,
We drank into stupor,
Stupor because we think and act outside the box;
Bullying the status quo
With the incisions of the God factor on our guts
We danced round the camp fire of books
Booking appointment with great minds
For in the opening of books we discovered we have wings,
To fly above illusory limitations
At dawn we chart and chant lyrics of hope for mankind
With the amulets of insight tied rounds our hearts;
At the echoes of the night when nature
Exact snoring on *****sapiens,
We labourers give ourselves to improvement,
For when lazy minds snore, active minds think
awoh kingsley
Categories:
labourers, dedication, education,
Form:
Lyric
Tell me again
This wealth you gasp and clamour for
This strategy you wield
From the invincible substratum
Where the hunt pursues the frenzied heart
And the congestive traffic of arteriosclerosis
For what do you deal
The long evenings swinging on the green and
The soul's sanity again?
I have checked for definitions
One say it is production from the land
And I hear in it engines
Ripping out the earth's red heart
Another say it is a product of labour
And I imagine a weary mother
And the pains of dystocia
Besides you own no land
Where concrete does not mushroom
Into skyscrapers
And dirt abominable in the atmosphere
And I guess labor is not physical.
Some say it is a measure of value
Of what you own
Was that the members of my body
For I pay tax for
Is a mere rental, not mine.
Easement only entitles me
To brown paper bags blowing in the gust
And the oily wrap of hamburger papers
I never bought them
They just fell where I bare the cost without the benefits.
Men who own revenue are rich
You say it is policy
That the labourers clock in at eight
I say its power
That make men to make wealth
They give away for the pittance of wage
All morning I have watched them
As they check their assets of grief
Before getting to security at the gate
Grief is suspicious you know
Only terrorists have grievances.
We bring our last resolve to work
The heart like a derrick
Grappling with the weight in the sky.
It is all your wealth
His mother phlegmatic coughing
And asbestos dust
Thickening on the lip of the child
I have no love for the Midas disease
For still its free
The open air
The sun cracking nuts in a tree
And the wild shout of cataract
And below me the immense gorge
Where the water trickles
Under the dam
Irrevocably to the sea.
Categories:
labourers, on work and working,
Form:
Free verse
On weary feet I walk the fallow field
Hearing ghosts from another time
The ploughboy’s labour filled tread
With horse drill long straight furrows
Women clad in sackcloth and calico
Scatter saved seeds on hungry soil
Then came the chill rain of spring
They kneel in sodden clinging clay
Thinning the frozen beet and turnip
Standing only for the Angelus bell
Giving thanks to the Almighty God
For what they did and did not have
End of golden summer came fast
We played in chaff at harvests end
The labourers washed the year away
With drink and music and silver coin
No mirror reflects the toil worn face
Or tears of acceptance of their lot
I leave the field of olden memories
And stumble back to the other side
Across the way the lonely bell tolls
With wisdom of past generations
Telling me that I should leave now
Go---go---go, the old ghosts echo
Categories:
labourers, nostalgia
Form:
Free verse
Kiss of Judas, Translation of Pierre Emmanuel’s Le Baiser de Judas by T. Wignesan
In our century where one sells father and mother
Husband his wife and wife her husband
And who doesn’t with ease dispose the only brother
Gives up yet two scorched by blade and fire
Of course breath comes hard to him who thus
Horribly heartless sacrifices his friend
But efforts turn to Nought before man comes of age
Who without remorse at first is forced to vomit
Disembowelled in one’s own mummified body
No one’s spared by the multitude
Which draws us into it all like an epidemic
Each is smothered in the crowd as in the prison cell
All become lambs : who’s to be betrayed first
Under constant surveillance yet others to victimise
Each spies within the circle surrounding him
His soul lives stuck to the peephole
And if while in their midst they catch him in the act
To punish him they give him up to the Law
Thus every man in the steps of an apostle
Seeking to be approved worships the Law
The great one-eyed lady
The arrogant goddess
Whoever stands for such justice demeans his spirit
And creates in us a vile and villainous heart
In the name of the men of law and the public force
All functionaries like you and I
In this Darkness where Emptiness reigns supreme
I mete justice out to Judas
What he did he did for me
So that I might in turn do the same
Kissing the forehead in good faith
To such as he all over the earth
Every day umpteen times I vow
The mecanical anger
Of the labourers of the Law
(from Pierre Emmanuel’s Les Jours de la Passion)
© T. Wignesan – Paris, October 11, 2014
Categories:
labourers, jesus, judgement,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
Ask ourself this one Question,
Do you need the Greedy rich to rule your wide world?
Of course not!
With the advent of Computers and Satellites we have possible
communications between every family on Earth to
vote on how the new order should work, 5 billion poor will rule.
Reset time:
Get rid of dollars etc ...world credits for every family.
All on the planet to have the same fair credit.
Swiss bank accounts opened and shared with the planet.
Everyone to have meaningful employment.
Volunteer people on world credit wages.
Every issue to be voted on by the majority rule!
No class or sex distinction, same wage, same page.
NO exploitation of the poor for the sweat of their brow!
No child labourers no-how.
When everything belongs to the majority Hive,
When its so cool to be alive,
Man's potential has arrived,
This future has no shroud:}
People Power to make us proud,
Utopia isn't snide...
Don Johnson
Categories:
labourers, adventure,
Form:
Ballade
A restless night, another hum-drum day,
Resolve to take a pleasurable walk;
I make my way towards St Mary’s church.
Across the street, a sixteenth century home –
Maltravers Manor, testament to time.
I’m heading for the ancient Hollow Way
Where towering beeches shade the wagon route.
“The Hatchet” standing at the crossroads, empty !
Bereft ! No pints are pulled here any more.
Along the High Street, past the Corner Cottage
Perambulating slowly now I pass
Refurbished “Childrey Stores” and Chapel House,
The Primitive Methodists’ former home.
And next, the Childrey pond comes into view --
It’s guarded by a dozen angry geese
And to the right the Old Post Office stands –
No stamps or letters, now a family home.
Beside the bus-stop here’s the “village” hall
In red brick builded by Victorian hands :
The Working Mens Club And Reading Room
Where farming labourers were wont to meet.
Next a modern non-conformist chapel
On the site of earlier Methodist Hall.
Then looking West a high brick wall contains
A cedar, vintage, sixteen forty six,
As high above a noisy rookery sways.
We now fork right by Rampanes Manor House.
Set in the wall, a dedication plaque
Records the founding of the Old Schoolroom,
Of seventeen thirty two, for local boys,
Established by the knight George Fettiplace.
Along Church Row we pass Cantorist House,
Originally the Chantry House for priest,
Three almsmen, to assist in singing mass
For the soul of Sir Edmund of Childrey.
Enter St Mary’s by the southern door,
Then down the aisle, I’m heading for the chancel
Where ancient brass recalls five hundred years
Of folk who lived and died in Cilla’s Rill.
I’ll leave as campanologists arrive
To ring the changes loud across the land.
Through the serried ranks of slate and marble,
I weave a path towards a wooden bench,
And here I’ll rest, below the old Scots pine,
To watch the setting sun across the fields.
Categories:
labourers, history, journey, travel,
Form:
Iambic Pentameter
IF EVER I HAD A COUNTRY: LXXVIII
for Suzanne DELANEY, in appreciation
(Prelude: CAN THE WRONG MAN BE RIGHT ? ABSOLUTELY !
If only he were NOT guilty of the self-same crime !
For instance, here in Europe, acceding to « nationality»
status can be quite ludicrously irrational: those migrants
even "totally ignorant" of the host country’s culture
and official tongue obtain their "citizenship papers »
sooner or later, while clinging desperately to their
own culture and country to the exclusion of their hosts’- some more fortunatethough enjoy « dual nationality » and therefore DUAL rights to LOYALTY ! And talk tough once they take over responsibile positions in society. And the
ones on whom the latter prey most of all are precisely
those « other» less fortunate migrants at their mercy !)
IF ever I had a country, a country NOT « wholly" put together by
either IMMIGRANTS or REFUGEES, you see, but by conquering
IMPERIAL ENSLAVERS on the backs of blacks and
on those fleeing from hunger, from religious
intolerance as "indentured-labourers », mainly, you’ll agree
WHERE the indigene was routed and rounded up into
RESERVES through superior "fire-power" by the
COLONIAL and local ARISTOCRACY
AND where TAXES and LEVIES imposed by the « Foreign Power »
drove the locally-born MASTER to revolt against the MOTHER
COUNTRY
Until the whole CONTINENT united « nation » after « nation »
to become the foremost mid-twentieth century « COLONIAL »
SAVIOUR of the WORLD country
Only to find its internal structure and economic power usurped
by other NON-NATION constituting ethnies
AND one-by-one take over from the original WASP founding PATER
FAMILIAS confederacy
Yes, then, I’d keep the NEW-COMER from wagging his/her tongue or
shooting his/her mouth tout azimuth - despite the legislative mandate -
as though he/she were the backbone of the nation or from attempting to
take over my « dear » country as if it were their « god-given » patrimony
Even if I never ever had no country stuck together with spit and elbow-grease to look like a pyrotechnically-powere Bollywoodian jamboree
(c) T. Wignesan - Paris, July 22, 2019
Categories:
labourers, america, anti bullying, betrayal,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
Oh lord! Please answer to my questions
Why is there sorrow everywhere?
Why men gain superiority
While women shiver sheathless in the utter winter?
They say children are God’s angels
Then why do the little angels sleep hungry and clotheless?
They say God helps those who help themselves
Then why do poor labourers work hard day and night
And earn nothing more than humiliation?
Why do they starve and survive roofless?
They say God has his eyes on every man
Then why do the criminals roam free
And the innocent men are crucified?
They say God has justice in His court
Then why is there no justice for those
Who have done nothing but good to others?
Where is the justice to the one
Who fights for his own rights?
Why don’t you listen to the hands
Which rise not just for prayer but to help the needy?
Why do true lovers not meet?
Why don’t they deserve blessings and satisfaction?
Why does the child of a soldier,
Who dies during war, not deserve his father’s love and care?
Where is the justice in your court, My lord!
Please, answer to my questions…
P. s. This poem is mainly wriiten on the Condition of Indian society.
Categories:
labourers, children, men, military, philosophy,
Form:
Free verse
I stand here, grateful to God for calling me to be a teacher
enabled to be a life-builder by His grace and love
blessed to help shape grand future with His might
privileged to lead toward enlightenment by His wisdom
upheld to meet educational needs thru His guidance!
I stand here, humbled upon receiving “Teachers’ Day” token
from pupils cheering in bliss
midst students with their satisfaction-approval
along learners showing thumbs-up signs
in a crowd of disciples clapping with jubilant mirth!
I stand here, triumphant while singing with my fellow instructors
co-labourers in the pursuit of assisting children
partners for bringing out the best from the youth
prayer-mates every time mercy is besought in nurturing minds and hearts
brethren offering support when wearied because of discipline-stress!
I stand here, appreciative as I commend my mentors
exemplars of genuine servant-leadership
role-models beyond reproach by their fervent faith and good testimony
paragons of excellence in terms of sacrifice and contentment
who walk their talk saying, “Follow me as I follow Christ*, the Master Teacher.”
*1Peter 2:21 For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps.
October 12, 2018
Happy Teachers’ Day to all teachers!
Categories:
labourers, appreciation, faith, god, inspirational,
Form:
Free verse
Little Santa Helpers
Santa has outsourced his services to child labourers from Bangladesh they
fit zero-sized through chimneys much easier and the leaner they are the
better they share full of joy in the globalised feast of winter communion
Detached they are from ‘wrongful’ beliefs and so much happier for their distant
faithful relation to Christmas plus they are used to half naked toil with
loin cloths draped in native design and fig-leafed in the wider scheme of migrant
extortion minimum wage wasted on them but they might get some
tips from little children on other sides of divides if those can catch them in glee
But then there are milk ‘Ho Ho Beer’ and biscuits by the fireplace laced with
incense and Prozac not licensed for young ones maybe but the booze as willing
sign of cross-culturalization is surely inclusive and a Peace offering sponsored by
‘Alcohol Without Borders’ while the odd trace of Ritalin keeps ordered control
Santa is not really burnt out but neo-liberal delegation is the vogue of the month
and post traumatic stress drones and hoovers on his sick note nevertheless
as his bonuses and shares float on Panamanian waters and now he needs a lungi
as well instead of the red coat extra large without doubt as he burps in the sand
The Bangladeshis meanwhile chirp in silent frost bitten nights but at least there
are soot and ashes no sunburn sometimes carrots with broom sticks thereafter
almost a year of ‘social’ benefits homely rest recuperation free time for Mohamed
They scrub brush and sand their dehydrated skins by the Ganges until they come
to accept the ‘Terms of their Trade’ bow to diversity’s splendour and discern what
is dirt and what their skin colour and it’s the latter that keeps them employed
28th November 2016
Categories:
labourers, abuse,
Form:
Free verse
How far my friends in the west
How far my diaspora classmates
We are one in the race of life
For we are all labourers
So how far my good people
Of work and eat in the field
Of labour
School teachers how well
Can the pupils grow into
Elite podium
How well can the leaders of
The crown do as stars
My fellow trees of good fruits
How well can the apprentice do
Life is not about how far we
Have gone but how well
We are doing
Categories:
labourers, career, character, dedication, teachers
Form:
Didactic