Best Rebar Poems
Black-blue paint bleeds from within the cracks of crumbling cement walls,
Crushed skeletons infused within limestone erode,
exposing nameless sorrow hidden behind faceless grains of gypsum,
while a forgotten galaxy's celestial ceiling peers through a decaying thatched roof.
Misguided souls reach out into night's void,
screeching repeated sins into feverish gusts of wind,
tethered to each rusting rebar that's barely holding what was once their haven together,
unable to let go, doomed to relive past grievances.
Weathered spiral staircases lead towards nowhere.
Bleakness suffocates while hope is snuffed out,
like the wick of bitter candles drowning in their own wax.
Spinning surrealistic scenes melt into intangible realities,
each soul writhing in agony, trying to break free of abject cycles,
yet punishment clings like the smell of burnt tobacco,
unable to separate the scent from the fibres of existence.
Disembodied voices find no reprieve,
only more excruciation
at the hands of cruel judgement.
Morning coffee, read the paper, brush your teeth and make the bed
Start the car up, drive to work with endless chatter in your head.
Rhythm’s just a decoy, really, structure faked for social poise
Must pretend, must feign an interest. Wouldn’t want to lose the toys.
Just ignore the yearning, silly, only fools have dreams these days.
Shoulder to the grindstone, Buster, don’t you know what really pays?
Over obligate yourself then hurry to the next event.
Don’t take time for introspection, musings never paid the rent.
Reinforcing concrete walls with rebar to protect from storms.
Cyclones of emotion dashed to bits before reaction forms.
Hold her steady, make the grade, ignore distractions, toe the line
Numbness is a good sign, keep it up and soon you’ll be just fine.
Can’t afford admission to tonight’s seductive shadow play.
Vulnerability and nakedness too high a price to pay.
Courage is for sissies, only children should be reckoned tears.
Safest bet’s to keep pretending that you’ve conquered all your fears.
Six days she lay beneath the rubble of concrete and debris,
Pinned down with little hope of survival, just faith that God would send help to set her free.
Six days and five nights, in total darkness, her weak voice called out but no one came,
A billion thoughts ran through her mind, but every thought ended in Jesus’ name.
Her faithful husband stayed at the site,
Looking, digging and listening, each day and night.
And on that sixth day, after many tons of concrete were moved away,
He heard a voice so weak, I’m here, help me, I’m O.K!
Still trapped beneath much debris, an after shock now was feared,
Much steel rebar and concrete still had to be safely cleared.
But with time running out, and few power tools at hand, the outcome looked so very dim,
Then like out of the blue, a U.S. firefighter crew shows up, and now the outlook is not so
grim.
Three hours later they pulled her out,
And gave her back to the loving arms of her husband who never had doubt.
Call it luck or call it what you will, but to me it was a miracle this woman got free,
Six days without food or drink, trapped beneath tons of concrete, it was truly a miracle
for all to see.
Two shadows where thousands of ghosts,
Saw their last moments so high up in the air.
Everything stopped, no one could move,
They couldn't speak, they wouldn't dare.
Few ran in as others ran out,
Many died in graves of rebar and concrete.
Too many were never found,
Too many never walked down that street.
Some say the world stopped turning,
For some, it seemed it had.
Too many felt the pain, too many cried,
More and more dead, the world was sad.
This is for all those who died on September 11, 2001 and their family members. You're in our hearts and prayers. Many people have forgotten and moved on but those who lost family and friends that day, it will never end for them.
Alacrity bespeaks entangled, entombed,
and entrapped Thai soccer team
diminishing strength barely allows,
but a whispered scream,
which rescue against all odds
(plucked out cavernous catacomb),
fast becoming a fading dream
vicariously agonizing to see
desperation and lads bravely brace,
helplessness predominating over initial
found alive break thru gain
promising grim destiny slowly doth erase
yet resignation impossible
to ignore written on every face
despite faux (cracking)
courageous front,
now severely testing grace
under underground solid state
rock geomorphology
necessitating stepped up pace
to rescue, sans race
against time encroaching threatened space
with predicted mon
soon meteorologists trace
with laser pointer predict
ominous incursion cave
at mercy of vulnerable flooding
worst case scenario, grave
nightmare predicament
in an attempt to save
youths with barely enough
strength to smile or wave
downgrading my own fear
being emotionally incommunicado
during prepubescence
pretending not to hear
clapping skeletal hands over each ear
to blot out hyper consciousness of glare
ring existence squelching
feeble effing dare
sputtering Nietzscheism at every turn
of the (ripped torn) page
airtight barricade against transformation
into manhood stage
fighting to the death
foaming at mouth dagger like
canine teeth savagely
evincing snarling rage,
no match for reinforced
rebar invisible cage
holding self hostage,
not enough money
to pay hefty ransom,
thus thine mental health
compromised, which
to this day still pay steep wage.
Redding Poem 4
“Flying Down Interstate 5”
We departed Redding at 3:45,
In the dead of an October night.
Those tumultuous streets were morgues then,
As we raced to the deserted Interstate 5,
Zooming across the snoozing Sacramento River,
Going at a constant speed of 85,
Passing the snoring cities of Red Bluff, Chico and Yuba City,
Slicing through the darkness of early morning,
With the tule fog scratching over the countryside,
Shrouding the distant lights like blinders on a roan.
One city after another, my speeding treads arriving
In dark sleepy Sacramento in two hours.
With the sun not waking yet, but stirring,
The internal beast passed Stockton as a blur in time,
With other speeding drivers merging onboard,
As insistent captains of their own landlocked ships.
Then looming before us, the San Joaquin canvass;
A devouring flatness five hundred miles long,
Of faraway farmlands sleeping overtime,
The majestic surreal banality of Central California,
Magnetizing us, hypnotizing us to the hastening flow,
Of southern currents and windy traipsings;
This caravan of one, this golden fueled protrusion,
Of the nomadic heartbeat; the inertly-moving soul search;
This final journey to the rapids of my youth,
Where undead ghost boys still climb the rebar rungs,
Atop the old tower on the water’s edge,
Still spit into the blue, slow-paced river below.
I still walk your streets
for the untended curb,
the flattened can,
the half-opened shade.
I am in the dark,
unspilled light,
uninspected.
I am caught
in the city of cautious regard.
I am not violent
but I wonder what it would take
to crack the cement
and bend the rebar
to let a man out.
It is the only time we get to laugh at black
So de rigeur at funerals and stogy old photography.
Take Dixie Land at home in New Orleans
Parading back of happy brass from marble sculpted sepulchers.
A mansion in mirage, a wavy misty rambling of rooms.
Their mirrors: windows to another, conjured world.
An agitated specter's greasy lipstick pleads.
How silly in its backward gibberish.
Flies frozen in some floes of ice cube trays
Or eyeballs docked adrift along a punch bowl rim.
In morgues, contracting muscles practice sitting up.
Fingers twitch impatient to be dressed in Sunday's best.
Around grave yards are cemetery stones
Jauntily askew, a sporty take on plumb
Due to a lack of rebar steel or poured cement.
More foundational than wood and bone alone.
Masks flash from unknown alley ways.
Our innards struggle up inside our throats
Suffocated quiet, still, we ache to catch so thin
A claustrophobic breath to be made so easily afraid.
Catholic
Stern but saintly Father Meissen
scolded the parents for not having
their baby boy baptized sooner.
It was April, 1952,
inside the stained-glassed catholic church,
ensconced on sun-split Newlin street,
avenue of pink oleanders and cracking sidewalks.
According to the chagrined mother,
she was told that delaying this pivotal sacrament
for three complacent months,
after the boy’s birth on January 11,
was unequivocally unacceptable,
and that waiting so eternally and unendingly,
actually jeopardized her befuddled baby’s soul.
For if he had died, say in March of 1952,
unbaptized,
then his eternal soul, because of original sin,
would have been mercilessly subject
to the inscrutable tortures of hell,
and the lake of fire.
As per destiny, this glued-on scenario
was not realized, and instead,
the boy received the abundant graces
of a head-turning God that day,
as the boy’s shiny oblivious head
was gently and sanctimoniously doused
with priestly-blessed holy water, fresh
from the rippling baptismal fount,
anchored dogmatically with rusted rebar,
deep below the shadowy sacristy,
among the obstinate urns
and the dark-voiced Dominus vobiscums.
But now we hear his older, wiser voice,
undulating like a lark’s-heel after the begging,
hiding the treason of a reprobate mind,
fondling the prayers of ten thousand children,
crying silent astonished tears
into the cold marble baptismal fount;
A groping wet madness firmly set
among the kneeling statues, and the holy linens,
encrusted with fool’s gold and trusting threads.
What kept these stilled voices unheard for so long?
Why did they not speak before this somber time?
Why did they bend, roll over and
close their eyes so cooperatively?
So reverently?
No one can possibly speak
about the unspeakable, for
Father’s holy, righteous indulgences
were unequivocally unacceptable.
But it is too late now.
Mine eyes can clearly see now
the crying sunken skull at Golgotha,
turning its furious eyes away.
your face polaroid happy glowing not half so distant.
walking over to grab the shovel and rain filled
bucket near the gravel driveway.
i watch your hands digging quickly
pouring seeds out as you go.
we bury them together, in rows just like the way
my mother used to.
infant tie. .... tile back to the time we heard all those
simple things. when we played in the dirt and grew simple
things like arms and legs, eventually even a mouth.
but first came the eyes yours seem brighter
than usual today.
now we rush to bury the rhubarb and the turnup's
next to the south side of the house where you
planted the carrots the year before.
it is foggy outside and the ground is cold.
your hands are muddy with the dark soil and you
are talking about how you used to go to this
abandoned armory along a sandy grass filled
jetty near the tip of the puget sound.
you said it was a safe place for you and
that it was always foggy just like this morning.
you look up at me with a look that makes me
feel very still and introspective.
i wonder am i that armory for you now?
can i be that body of metal and cement
not cold but alive.
can i regrow simple things, simple arms
and legs that care for you.
is it to late to bury a little hope at this time of year?
rebar ribs crack to the touch.
i take a deep breath in and look
over at the back yard.
Mostly it's just gluing bones together
ones found in a well furrowed field
a scattering of empty joints,
undetectable until tripped over.
An iron-age rebar
can be dug for
it will girder one socket to another.
The framework reconstructs itself
emptiness becomes whole
yet still see through.
There are sharp edges and blunt sounds,
they will clang like cowbells if not polished
into a ringing voice.
Sneak up on yourself,
rattle an echoing skull until teeth chatter
in a free-floating mind.
Whatever tumbles out of that
will be a loosely connected osseous process -
dead on arrival of course.
Pull the invisible strings - make it dance.
your bag of bones just nailed it
but what is it?
In savage streets it’s hand to hand
once shrapnel rips the air that’s damned,
no sin of ego in this land.
Baptismal bloodshed echoes
through rust and rebar ghettoes.
There’s bullet swarms and rocket rain
but infantry must hit terrain,
forget I’m sane and rupture veins
with melee-trench-knife flashing,
the bane of peace doves, slashing.
I wear their red of death and drive
my blade abuzz in hellish hive
to stay alive! Yes stay alive!
The apathy of killing,
and twisting morals willing.
My heartbeat kept, a victory,
it pounds just like artillery
but prized, despite the misery.
A witness to destruction
and holy soul’s corruption
and christened by the selfishness
of presidents with negligence,
we soldiers march with evilness.
The narcissistic leaders,
the preachers and the breeders
of rhythmic spates in drumbeat hate
unfurl their nation flags and fate
in bloodlust war… while heads of state
stay combat clean in bunkers.
I witness gurgling utters
your last and bloody gasp for “mama”.
I grasp with greed my breath in chest.
Thought ricochets inside my skull;
I’m still alive! I'm still alive! I'm still alive . . .
A LITTLE LAUGHTER FIVE
Betty bring venom
Curly bimbo lemon thigh
Rogue queen Jacky Denim
Vague swoon droll, droll, untie
Ninja gnome Rebar watch
Makes ramen bacon olive sushi pizza
Spoon vying maple onion grass gumbo-bauch
Jimmy heard Kathy cryin meets munch
Liter laugh fived break bread
Quick syrup cocoa sweet drink
Betty think droll vying slide lauch dariN girls
Jacky, Kathy party broil eatin twist candy stink
Water crush years later heart dance
Eatin drink party piece gnome release
Every vague swoon droll human unite
Ninja gnome,Jimmy, Betty, Jacky, Kathy, Rebar watch
Liter laugh fived break bread
2/19/18 2018©
FOR CONTEST: A LITTLE LAUGHER FIVE
SPONSORED BY: Edward McCall
I wanted to find myself, so I got lost in the woods,
Turns out life’s easier without all the shoulds.
The rhythm of steps was a meditation
Twelve hours a day in God’s lovely creation.
Even when I was tired, wet, hungry and cold
I didn't get jaded; nature didn't get old
In the south, high blue ridges, flowers orange and red.
Mist drifted over meadows, clouds moved overhead.
I got thin and other-worldly, though grounded too
It felt odd to pass day trippers, same trail, different view
Both epic and mundane, the trail was short and long
Resupplied at Vernon, Conway, Marion band played a country song
Five months later, with unexpected friends, I reached the end, the North
In the "hundred-mile wilderness" we chatted, but it finally spit us forth
We camped in Baxter Park, ten miles from Katahdin’s floor
At 5:00 AM we rose, headlamps on, eager for more.
The climb began easy, but boulders got large.
We grabbed rebar to haul ourselves, still pumped for the charge
Hills were tinged with gray and pink, a rising sun showing:
summits of gold, a world silent and glowing.
Walked onto the tableland, then to the last rise
There was the wooden sign, the goal and the prize.
I hugged the sign, then a cold wind drove us past.
Wherever life takes me, the memory will last.
Back in the city, strangers pass like ships in the night
Who knows what memories keep their spirits alight.
Some live epics, some live tales half-spun
If you pursue the far horizon life will be more fun.
Gray clouds open for business at five
Pour out concrete with rebar rusted
Along with asphalt for a nice touch
Steel never felt so good under construction
Building a better tomorrow on solid nothing
As guard rails pile up on each side of life
Something hard is falling from the sky
Fallen bridges, highways paved in gold
Covered over by weak foundations
Infrastructures fold like a deck of cards
Collapsed houses and trees snap like twigs
Concrete fills in every hole in nature
All mistakes and imperfections paved
Including oceans, valleys and little fishes
Birds are covered in heavy coats from rain
Become crushed by the weight of flight
Along with cars, trains and yellow buses
Trying to avoid the toll booths up ahead
The Earth becomes one big parking lot
Another pavement made from cosmic dust
Minutes away from everywhere on a road
To success which is always under repair
Under construction going nowhere fast
On rush hours overpass moving slower
In a strange rain on an overcast day