Best Warehouses Poems
Feeling the desolation, of smothering air
Hemmed in by crowds; the obliqueness of fear
Throng of the city and no sight of the sun
Incessant noise and the desire to just run.
And I drive.
Arterial routes clogged by metal and wheels
Schizophrenic drivers living others ideals
Neon and lights sizzling the sides of the streets
Marketing signage, greed’s consumer receipts.
And I drive.
White picket fences, roses, and manicured lawns
Ridiculous box housing, erected for ludicrous pawns
Playgrounds, big supermarkets, cafes and parks
Sprawling suburbia with its pools built by sharks.
And I drive
Warehouses dispensing the needs of the hordes
Industrious factories like cash castles of lords.
Sawmills busily feeding more desecration of land
Refuse collection sites completely sterile and bland.
And I drive.
Ten-acre barons on frivolous bundles of dirt
Escaping urbanity in the unproductive outskirts.
Postage stamp fields supporting ponies and kids
While toffee nose parents sit in ultra posh digs.
And I drive
Paddocks of cattle dispersed through productive farmland
Shiny new tractors with men toughened and tanned
Marshmallow hay bales pimple the face of the ground
Irrigators urinate on earth until drowned.
And I drive.
Magnificent mountains covered in beckoning trees
Clear running streams and whispering breeze
Wild flowers gently waving as robins flit all around
Radiant true colours and smoothing calm sounds.
And yes I am home.
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 brewers in sheds
I sink a few beers
To wet the heads
of our engineers,
From flat cloth caps
to matchstick men,
I will see the collapse
of pushers of pens.
To bakers, tailors
I wish you well,
To the soldiers and sailors
who fought and fell,
From doctors, nurses
to hobnail boots,
I will give your purses
to thieves in suits.
To the grieving docks
I drink a toast,
To tackle and blocks
and shipyard ghosts,
From warehouses, workshops
to fishing trawls,
I will flick my mop
in empty halls.
To union dues
I shake your hand,
To cleaning loos
and farming land,
From railway gauges
to industry,
I will turn the pages
of history.
To factory lines
I raise my glass,
'Neath abandoned mines
of times now past,
From overtime
to austerity,
I will frame the grime
for posterity.
To the silent mills
I tip my hat,
To what ever ills
and this and that,
From a steelworks spew
to a builders hole,
I will stand in a queue
to draw my dole.
To finance, the city
I bow in awe,
To show no pity,
to flout the law,
From sellers, buyers
to pickets and strikes
I will slash the tyres
of your matchstick bikes.
© RJVHorton2016
... but first we must establish one thing:
What kinda box are we talking about here?
If it's the pizza variety then no thoughts necessary!
Just dig in and put off consequences 'til later.
Though afterwards you might be hugging your gut,
saying, "I think I ate way too much!"
But hold onto that thought!
(before you lose your lunch)
Were you thinking outside the box?
I truly don't believe you were,
otherwise you wouldn't have gone for seconds
even as your face was turning blue.
(what did you eat the cardboard too?)
If it's a chess set you had in mind
I'd be mighty impressed it you DIDN'T
think outside the box.
... are you really that intelligent
to plan out the whole game before
you even take off the lid?
Now that's just crazy talk!
Course maybe that's not it either.
Perhaps you were thinking about
that Japanese number game.
(Sudoku... is that what you mean?)
Though to be honest 81 boxes
makes me feel a bit green.
The possibilities are truly endless it seems;
cubicles, board games, pizza shops,
warehouses, super markets,
(Heck, you're living in one, by God!)
So next time you bring up such a topic
you would do well to not be so vague.
It seems were all victims of this obscurity
... with origins more unknown than the plague.
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, ENGLAND
Half-Scot, half-English and ill at ease with the past,
Newcastle is sooty black from its coaly drama,
And the breathless town was always in a hurry to grow,
Narrowly avoiding destruction of its past or leaping over it.
Up on the plateau, industrial power-engine city:
Its earlier Norman Castle and Black Gate narrowly missed
By the frenetic hammers of eager Victorian builders.
Elegantly-proportioned Grainger Street and Central Rail Station
Pause unwillingly to admit the Scottish-style lantern-spired
Sandstone cathedral with its delicate shade of sooty industrial black.
Down at the riverside - an earlier town of shipyards and arms factories,
Quayside warehouses with watertight flood-doors,
Its precipitous narrow old port-streets carved into the gorge walls
And pierced by cold winds from the North Sea,
Is leaped over by a platoon of high-level metal bridges.
Across the Tyne, inelegant, they grab the opposite bank and bind the city to England.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
NOTE: 1 Newcastle is situated on the north ( = Scottish ) side of the River Tyne.
The town was an epicenter of the Industrial Revolution,
with coal, steel, chemical, engineering, and shipbuilding
industries, and was also a major seaport.
2 Norman Castle, Black Gate are remnants of a pre-medieval past.
3 Grainger Street, Central Rail Station are 19th century redeveloped areas.
4 Cathedral (St. Nicholas) dates from 14th century.
There is no envy
of where we live:
rundown apartment complexes,
dangerous housing projects.
Poorly zoned business districts
whose warehouses cut through our landscape
like the tombstone's of giants,
sitting tagged and vacant
from a boom that never happened.
We are a single community
divided amongst ourselves;
a dozen or so quarter mile barrios.
Each fiercely guarded
by angry, misguided youth.
They bleed to protect something
that’s worth absolutely nothing
for reasons hardly above reproach.
This is the land of concrete and graffiti;
broken knuckles and broken hearts;
the place where flashes of light
break the night and sometimes,
we die.
This is the crazy west side,
the youth wrecker,
the damager of all who dwell.
This is home, where the guns go off.
The smell of leather,
Stirs the Auschwitz warehouses:
Leather reminders.
___________________________
Inspired by the Auschwitz Shoes
-
Drones abound the London sky
Search lights stray and flick to something and nothing
The bicycle dings its bell every sixth house
As the warden swishes his front tyre left and right up the empty evening street
The council house drapes of black and brown are shut tight regulation tight
He's coming he's coming tape up tape up she shouts
Don't want another fine for light
The grub is ready at the back door for a quick dash to the air-raid shelter in the night
Sirens whail and bellow and bomber engines humm in ever louder melts
Fire fire and the engines leave the call centre and head the regular route to the city
God bless em souls the dear old lady calls as she stirs the black current jam
Whistling bombs and Stucker dives throttle and hurtle a miss
But they land too well and devastate the docklands and the strip
Hell's fire rages along the wharfs as fire-ships spray the warehouses
Brave soles are they who stay out amid the descending droplets of terror
Face the wrath of Germany's luftwaffe who continue to pour water and pull souls
And morning cannot come fast enough for to French shores a retreat
Arrival of Dawn and the last bombers chug away hasseled by the RAF
And down descends a lonely Tommy ace one of our own bewildered lads
Parachute wrapped and Tommy sitting on Sally's polished red front door-step
Here are her two prides of joy: One sitting on the other; the live one her brother.
(One of her biding memories of the London Blitz)
Night time Bombing raid in London's fair City during Second World War
Future time; is unknown
and has custody of our dreams,
Present time; the transience
of a bestowed moment,
Past time; varies
and warehouses our memories.
Masters of theft
Morally retarded
With devious stealing methods
For people, today they steal
From them, tomorrow they steal
Skewing the popular concept of morality
The execuTHIEVES among rodents
Leading players in series of shocking scandals
With gross misconducts running the gamut of vices
Devious financial dealings and embezzlements
Shall I compare thee to rats?
The societal rats in human clothing
Faithless shipmates, residents of trash heaps.
Even candidates for public offices
Stripped grain warehouses
Eaten entire field of tomatoes
And other vegetables
Waves of tree climbing rats
Have stormed orange groves
And devoured the fruit
Roof rats have descended after the dark
To nip at sleeping children and adults
The then 'holy' one,
So easily stoop to thievery.
Wallowing in wanton moral filths
Manifestoes are less important
You only appear to take a satanic
And moronic relish in splashing thy vulgarities
Into the face of the public
Unless thou anchor thy knowledge to moral foundation,
The ultimate result will be dust and ashes.
Dust and ashes that will bury the hopes
And monuments of men beyond recovery
Apparently, they ruled with an iron fist
In the chilling jaws of Terror
Of men intoxicated for the kill
Salivating for blood of kindred
Free for the rape and extortion
In the bastion of Kismayo, Port City of Somalia
The crooked reasons of eating oneself
In a serial bloodbath of a nation
Usurping its nationhood
With straps of IEDs on their back
Women and children convinced duty-bound
To kill themselves for their innocence
And live the glory abound
But never to taste the fruits of their sacrifice
See, what has remained of the Port City
Except for the glaring ruins
Battered to a city of Charcoal Warehouses
For the shanties to scorch in the sun
In a neighbourhood of orphans and widows
And the maimed bearing the signatures!
Oh no! but wait,do you rely on your unborn for a future?
We've heard all about the stockpiling,
the toilet rolls, lettuce and beans,
but secretly more of this is going on
unnoticed, and behind the scenes.
The Government, in our best interests,
(which translates they take us for mugs)
have warehouses scattered all over the place
in which they are stockpiling hugs.
They've seen that we haven't been using
our quota of hugs for a year,
which normally we all quite freely discharge
as a greeting, or after some beers.
Close facing embracing, a clinch is a cinch,
but all of our arms unemployed,
since in this pandemic the orders are strict
and so hugging we haven't enjoyed.
So we live all our lives by the orders
the Boffins have said is our guide,
we greet with a bump of our elbows, but then
our arms all hang limp by our sides.
And while we all fight for survival
and live by these laws as we must,
all heaped up in stacks on their pallets, on racks
are the millions of hugs gathering dust.
But soon, when we're all vaccinated,
and hope we're not killed in the rush,
our arms will rise free, full of hugs, then we'll see
loved ones short of breath in the crush.
No longer will hugs be illegal,
as torsos are all gladly squished,
our arms will flap up like an Eagle's
making up for the hugging we've missed.
Korea’s Ticking Time Bomb
North and South Korea at arms race heaven,
a massive number of weapons all waiting to be used –
tanks, guns and bombs.
One war was enough but nearly fifty years have passed
and so it’s time for another.
North uses Migs and howitzers, South uses F-16s
and cluster bombs all stockpiled at warehouses and airbases.
Have these people lost their minds?
Making law with the barrel of a gun
thinking that they are gangsters at an international level.
This is Korea’s ticking bomb,
with North being the explosive and the South the fuse.
Turtle spawn can be placed very deep and vertical in glowing colourful beds. But Atlantic highways stuff their coffers with gold and thus adorn the paths created with magnitude of sparkly stench. Extra moving ignorance is the ejaculations from a large wide mouthed frog. Bulbous eyes. Spotty dresses and vests deny vested interests and instead self multiply like amoebas. It is wise then to create some watery road works. For nothing new can join a row of inter related fake fantastical made up regurgitation. Dancing symmetrically. Words delivered in patterns. Placed. And a demonic sweep. Radiuses' are akin to boxes in warehouses. All the same. Nothing escaping. And nothing entering. To bring forth change is to ask Mr whale to breathe over the piles and poles whose only purpose is to stop change. Entertainment energies exploding erotica exotic experience explained. When the pan joins the show. Boil with randomly spaced ingredients. Tell a star to leave or alter it's ways. And perhaps there will be then an avenue for ascent once more for the free form flowing fragrances. Good. Musically mystifying moving monuments. Good. But before all that. Bake 99 eggs in a circular pastry and add sage. Then curtsey to the oven. Whose heat is replenishing the start. Journey. Cosmopolitanism z
As I watch the sun descend from view,
cast shadows across the land anew,
Floating warehouses engulf the sky
thus the shadows never die.
The drones which fill the evening air,
aren’t drones of old to thus compare,
but silent, programmed to communicate,
delivering goods and never late.
The chip implant within my hand
is my identity, you understand,
encrypted with a micro currency
for transaction approval of efficient fluency.
The robots, just like silk to touch
for which nothing is too much
parade the house, each play their part
like humanoids devoid of heart.
From cars that fly to boats that hover;
with 3D printers, everything’s on offer,
from building houses, making repairs
to all items in need of spares.
We sleep in pods with medical guile
monitoring organs in high tech style.
Ageing, now a long lost plague
of a distance past so acutely vague.
The cell phone, an archaic relic
now holographic, almost psychedelic,
run your life, in complete control,
total dependency with no parole.
Vacations restricted not to Earth,
so choose the planet of your birth,
Venus, Mars even the moon
places you will visit soon.
But species die out day by day,
we can do nothing else but to pray,
for nature’s habitat must prevail,
not advancements which the humans hail.
we buried our beating hearts in sordid soil of this urban wasteland
while the acid rain burnt holes in them quickly
one hundred factories blew sick green clouds out and you took me by the hand
through forests of chimneys breathing deeply
diving in cities of decay and filthiness there's no need for futile words to speak
our countless phobias are just burlesque of pain
dazed we walk down the streets of distant memories through days so bleak
and wish naively that we could run away
staring into the howling voids of desolate warehouses makes our minds hurt
that's why we ramble along the cold rails
and dream about sea air instead of smoke and dream about concrete jungles that burn
burn burn burn alone in their sinful ways