Best Laid Off Poems
Art Gallery. Museum. Parks. Zoo.
Cultural Events.
Glazed like raku pottery
In charcoal rainbows warbled all dark
On pidgeon necks
Like hell’s angels, dumbed,
Blowing smoke through your mind
In a haze of dreams
The city is made of a giant fractal wart
On a witch’s cheeks there’s blush.
Movies. Games. Bars. Clubs.
Cultural Events.
Maybe she’s singing a hymn
With forked tongue
The green fires burning gold and money
Into the skies pitch red
Flirting and skirting sale-priced
Fashion iconography. Architecture
Sophisticating the simple desires.
You’re lost.
Foreclosure. Lawsuit. Divorce.
Cultural Events.
Emblazoned with some valor
Flags of the dead days
Killed like a haiku short-lived
Plopped one by one
Your teeth fell.
Bankruptcy. Fired. Laid off.
Cultural Events.
Brightly darkly the shiny sheens
Of sweat they bubbled in blood red and iron
In that champagne of success
Guilt. Acne. Alcohol. Headache.
Cultural Events.
The feather dust flies and the smell of tar
Rubber in your face
We have drug solutions for your
Unhappiness.
Cancer. HIV. Vaccines. Death.
Cultural Events.
Beer gardens, beer babies, beer bellies,
Beds, homes, and wined babes
Pretty victims and voices they make
Cultural Events.
The city life careened my poetry
Towards those
Crazy wronged right fools
Still swimming the street in search
Furtive, arms afire just fighting
Firing, fleeing into those chains.
Claims. Refrains. Drowned Voices.
Cultural Events.
The busted fire hydrant on the corner sprays water down like rain.
Water gushes down the dirty gutter, relieving this humid pain.
Sipping iced tea in their air-conditioned houses on the hill or in high-rise,
They don’t know how the streets burn little feet, or pretend not to realize.
They call us poor white trash, no charity we are shown.
I can virtually live on nothing when nothing is all I’ve known.
College I finished on top of the class. How far did it get me?
I have nowhere to hang my hat or wall to hang my degree.
The streets teach lessons of a hard knocks life.
You learn to survive despite hunger and strife.
You learn how to rob Peter in order to pay Paul,
And that stale, day old bread’s better than no bread at all.
You quickly find out just how warm the newspaper can be,
As you hold a cardboard sign, begging change from society.
Laid off from your job with no severance pay,
It doesn’t take long ‘til you’ve got nowhere to stay.
No family to help you when the chips are down,
You find yourself walking the mean streets of town.
How will you turn your whole life around?
Get a job and regular pay when you’re sleeping on the ground?
You need more than a meal and night’s stay in a shelter,
You need society to give a damn and be a real helper.
Quit ignoring the problem. Don’t look the other way.
Do something to help. That could easily be you some day.
So many crooks like old Madoff
From trusting folks they get paid off
The economy fell
Yet their pockets still swell
and as for me, I am laid off
Showing off the ultimate bathing fright,
worked all winter preparing a delight.
Laid off the usual beer,
summer now finally here.
His Speedo package outrageous and tight!
*For the battle of the bulge contest. It only takes one Speedo to ruin a day at the beach!
It was you from the moment I seen you.
I knew in my heart I would be the one to rescue you, but in the end you ended up saving me.
I see in your eyes the pain that lingered inside.
From your past relationships your pride was on cloud nine.
My theory was to put your fears aside.
You feel like I am like all the rest, so you continuously put my love through a test.
Why won’t you let me love you?
My love is a virtue, forever lasting external statue.
It was you my handcrafted imbue tattoo I cling to.
If you only knew how I truly feel about you.
I was sculpted only for you my sahib, I am your rib.
You’re a reflection of me desperately wanting love, but scared of the many risks that come with it.
Love should have come with an asterisk.
You’re my only weakness causing infectious affection.
It was your personality that spoke volumes to me, showering me with chivalry.
Persistency kept me where I wanted to be.
Let me be the one you need, all you need is faith as tiny as a mustard seed.
Abundantly this love will be an adjustment for you, and me.
If you should have a nightmare just know I will be there.
If you’re hurting and need to cry, I will be the one to wipe your eyes.
For my love only identifies.
I fell in love with you, not for the things you’re able to do.
It was simply you…
If you should happen to get laid off work, I will be the one standing in the door.
The only one you brace oneself for.
Your personal landing gear, I am whole heartily sincere.
I will be your rocking chair.
If the time comes and you begin to lose your hair, baby I will be your favorite barber chair your personal concierge.
It was you that introduced your love voodoo.
Only wanting you timeless déjà vu.
You made me love you; you are my lifetime band aid.
Now let me be your brigade, your right hand grenade.
You’re forever nursing aide.
The sharpest in your drawer knife blade.
The one and, only ace of spade your jack of trades.
Equivalent to money your love is symbolic.
A polished rocket you’re extraordinary, and solid.
Biologic process but simply flawless.
If I am getting off topic I might be losing conscious.
Thinking of you makes me forget my surroundings.
My heart starts pounding echo sounding.
I automatic start smiling, it’s simply astounding.
You knew it has always been you.
It was you.
I'm a laid back dope-*ss pipe hitting n*gg*r
You're a laid off broke-*ss wife hitting hipster
Men strive to be the
Best providers for their families
But it's a tough job when
There's many mouths to feed
Men are good role models
And excellent father figures
You younger ones will Know
What I mean when you get bigger
Yhey all carry their pride so high
But you can see the pain in their eyes
Working so hard only to
Get laid off with less pay
Struggling to keep their families
Together day by day
Men try to stay strong
But no matter how hard they try
You can still see the pain and the
Worry in their eyes
They give out so much
They'll do anything for love
They will give their hearts and souls
Even try to give you the heavens above
They will never show it
Forever they will hide
You can take a lot from a man
But you can never take away his pride
FOR OPPOSITE SEX CONTEST
With no shoes upon her feet
She searches for food to eat
In garbage cans and dumpsters too
Each day trying to get through
The brutal winter that’s ahead
Praying she wont end up dead
Leaving children to survive
Without a mommy in their lives
Because she could not afford
To pay for any room or board
Laid off from her part time job
Life just started to get hard
Curled up in a corner tight
Hugging children through the night
Fighting to stay nice and warm
In their clothes all ripped and torn
Looking up into the sky
You can hear her start to cry
As she says a silent prayer
Someone will soon find them here
And the other families who
Are living like this daily too
Forced into grumbling stomach and head throb
It is dark cold emptiness all around
first laid off and then dissmissed from the job
It is a blight on all our light and sound
The wrinkled hours on my both cheek sunken
Driven out from two rented rooms, roaming
Hope hearth home health heaven hell all broken
For food morsels with dogs in the trash bin
Fallen crumbled plundered you all despise
One of our two children is now missing
Wreckage breakage drainage in our void eyes
Moans and groans around the serpent hissing
With our pulverised waves and hungry soul
We are struggling to get back into whole
Vultures on our head and the end hems in
Of your poem, O life, we’re still dreaming
____________________________________________
23/10/2016
It's easy to praise
When you get that raise,
Can you praise when things go wrong?
You just lost your car
Your job is real far,
How will you sing a Praise song?
You never get sick
You praise God so quick,
Can you praise when things go wrong?
A lump you just found
Don't like how that sound,
Instead of praise, there's a frown.
Your son made the squad
Give Glory to God,
Can you praise when things go wrong?
No food for the kids
Husband on the skids,
All you can ask "God, how long?"
Your bills are all paid
So praise is relayed,
Can you praise when things go wrong?
You just got laid off
You're down with the cough,
This time your Faith is not strong.
For God's Creation
Christ brought Salvation,
We can praise when things go wrong,
It just comes to pass
Problems never last
We know to whom we belong.
R--Resigned or laid-off from work?
E--Every wish and prayer dedicated to job search;
C--Chopping unnecessary expenses,
S--Saving money for priotized spending__
S--Surviving the financial meltdown,
I--It was not easy to find money or food!
O--Our year of recession kept us busy with simple home jobs,
N--Necessary carefree routines.
chipepo lwele
Achievement, 1 of 2
—Time to share—
I grew up in a slum where the gang members,
at the risk of their lives, fight over their turf.
My lullaby was red and blue warning lights
flickering from dashing squared cars and ambulances,
and my bedtime story was the blow of sirens passing through
the streets and alleys between boarded up abandoned houses
standing in rows here and there.
My mother, though loved me dearly,
happened to be a high school dropout
and single who brought this world to me at her teens.
She was a minimum wage earner, therefore, her life was
nothing but struggles, kept body and soul together in misery
between laid off to employed to laid off, between paycheck to welfare
to paycheck that is thinner than a sheet of paper.
Although under educated, she was a pious woman,
and that is why her keen desire was not her son to follow
the steps of her mistake and suffer like his mother.
Her wish was to raise her only child to be a decent citizen
with a noble profession and thereby add some value to the community,
return some good things to the society.
Apart from mother’s great expectation, however,
I was a disobedient rogue child, a kind of problem kid
on the block when I was a lad. I got into bad company
and led astray by them, was irregular in attendance to a school
and cut classes whenever I felt like.
Until one day I learned of my mother’s tragic death
on the way back home from her work,
she was struck by a stray bullet
in the midst of gang members cross fire.
Prowling predator in a starless night.
No one knew when it began.
Have we forgotten all the lies about Vietnam,
the predatory newspeak from Pentagon deception?
Prowling predator in a starless night.
Do we recall a lying president dispensing
cocaine jingoism, driving the war in Iraq,
codifying the surveillance state
complete with GITMO torture?
Prowling predator in a starless night.
While all the eternal secret wars are waged,
no one sees how our language is infiltrated,
no one knows the infection of our tongue.
Overseas drones just cause “collateral damage.”
Everyone is suspect, a “person of interest.”
Prowling predator in a starless night.
No one gets laid off when corporations merely “downsize.”
Cutting vital services won’t matter with “government austerity.”
The “minimum wage” is a living wage while you starve on it.
Mass incarceration isn’t a problem in “correction facilities.”
Immigrant children are not caged in concentration camps.
Cages are not so cruel in “detention centers.”
Prowling predator in a starless night.
Devolving American imperialism reached its crescendo
with its devolving dystopian democracy
giving birth to the criminal president,
the nihilistic tyrant
rubbing salt in our wounds.
Published: Dissident Voice September 19th, 2021
“Mr. Edwards please make your way to the managers office,”
James could picture her pimply face as she expressed each syllable from her orifice.
The twenty that walked down the isle to his office were laid off,
A young blooded manager was reducing the work force, his name, “Mr Scoff.”
How Ironic,
Sitting in his flashy office drinking Gin and Tonic.
James walked the death row isle,
His colleagues faces staring helplessly, none with a smile.
Architecture was his life and this was the end it seemed,
His pencil would not draw another success for Designer Beam.
The old carpet’s familiar crunchy sound,
Under his shoes many happy memories of the now ghosts that paced up and down.
The walk seemed longer this time, then he paused at the door for a while,
He briefly turned to see the head peaking over the partitions, none offering an
encouraging smile.
James faced the door, cleared his throat before knocking and with a bowed head he
went in,
Faint murmurs were heard outside as if debating a his fate for a cardinal sin.
Mr. Scoff’s scornful laugh was heard through the door,
Then absolute quietness, nothing was heard any more.
An hour later Scoff walked down the isle,
With his briefcase in hand daring someone to smile.
Fifteen minutes later, James quietly came out
Everyone looked at him questioningly, none knew took place or what it was all about
He turned and removed Scoff’s name from the door
And replaced it with Mr. J.C. Edwards Lotto winner, say no more...
O love! Tell them, the good men,
In your own old melodious tone:
Let’s again—Return to Nature.
Whatever little or large is left,
Let’s re-adorn her.
And if they won’t!
Let’s—You and I.
Hand-in-hand walk away of the city:
Biharis stay by the smelling slums;
Laid-off-addicts stand in long queues; or the clerics kiss the petty politicians on brows.
Where monsters: War-weopens, Jingoism, Globalization, Modernity, and Machines,
Have spread havoc!
And find our abode, there,
Near the breezy woods, in the calm country;
Where well! I can meditate,
And you’ll have all that childish fun…
Running after the flies, or fighting with the bucks,
Dancing in sultry summer’s bursting rain,
Or mimicking a singing bird.
(the poems is the introductory poem of my poetry collection "TELL THE OLD LADY WAIT AND OTHER POEMS")