Bulldozers Poems

Lunch on Third Avenue

Had lunch with a friend
And we sat in the shade
In a sidewalk arrangement
The restaurant made.

I live on the east side
And she on the west.
We meet to catch up 
At each other’s request.

The corner was busy
And traffic zipped by.
With sirens and buses,
I’m not gonna lie,

The noisiness level
Was blaring and loud,
Plus bulldozers rolled
As pedestrians cowed.

Construction just added
More rat-a-tat-tats,
With shouts from the workers
In safety-type hats.

My friend and I chatted,
Our voices both raised,
Delighted to be there,
New Yorkers unfazed.

MORE WILDLIFE MADE HOMELESS

We see but grey where once was green
As bulldozers now scrape,
Turning a joyful rural scene
Into joyless landscape. 

The area was green-belt land
With forest and pasture 
But as our numbers still expand
We will invade nature.  

And so that farmland must give way
To high profit housing. 
Farming that land has had its day.
Let the plunder begin. 

First rip up each ancient hedgerow,
Take living loam away. 
Make space for luxury homes to go.  
The wildlife then must stray. 

Nests and burrows can play no part 
As man now owns this space. 
The construction work now can start 
And big profits then chase.  

Soon building projects in full swing. 
The stream that filled the pond 
Diverted to concrete piping 
In culvert underground.   

Aquatic habitats destroyed. 
Frogs, toads and newts homeless. 
Many wildlife species now void. 
But man could not care less.

Replaced

Lumbering bulldozers grind 
and rip trees and shrubs
from the empty lots, competing
with gas fumes, the noise 
of trucks, and honking horns 
on the busy thoroughfare.

Two gracious houses,
once precious home to families, 
but long abandoned 
and fallen into disrepair,
smashed to kindling,  
hauled away for scrap

Just up the grassy hill
behind our senior residence,
we’ll watch another
commercial business go up.
Recent car wash on the corner,
now another bank? Fast food?

Alongside our apartments, 
in the past, a Christmas tree farm,
sweet smelling pines replaced
with roads and new homes,
manicured lawns and two-,
sometimes three-car garages.

Countryside eaten away
by ever-increasing population
with insatiable desire for the 
shiny, new, bigger and better,
for the quick and easy, 
immediate convenience.

Afternoon teas exchanged for
socially beneficial cocktail parties.
Casual-, even sports-wear, in
the finest restaurants, rudeness
and boorish comments the norm, 
“Gracious” suffering a slow death.

Generation X

Written By:  D. Collins 12/12/23


I'm noting how the new generation will not be fooled.
Lead into going all out in deep throating the Jews.
There are multiple ways and multiple avenues.
Which means, they see videos not on the nightly news.


After 75 years, they see all the hidden truth.
There's nothing more you can hide from the youth.
People are people and all of them deserve to live.
That's what all young'uns see in Palestinian kids.


They're saying if it happened to them, what about us?
If bombs and bulldozers turned our cities into dust.
They see children suffering slightly younger than them.
And, they don't give a damn about color or religion.

Ptsd

Staunch, spine straight as a flagpole
    Chin tucked into neckfolds of flesh
  Face itch, lips blubber incessantly... 

    Hips thrust forward... twin bulldozers
  Life expectancy, a speck in a sandstorm
    Rows of medals under gray sash, Iraq

Snow Ploughing

arctic muskoxen 
         carve out a niche in snowdrifts ~
                  natures bulldozers


Winter Nature Themed Haiku Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Tania Kitchin 
Howmanysyllables 5/7/5
12/08/22

Millennium Park

Millennium Park
a reclaimed landfill
once succumbed
to the deafening shriek
of sea gulls and bulldozers.
Now a rolling hill
gazing down on the skyline
of The City of Boston.
A blanket of greenery
laid over a once open sore
inviting the weary
to sit, to succumb
to the blissful stillness
as the wind sings
in the long-needled pines.


John G. Lawless
©2/22/2022

Childlike

recall your childhood
when you were so unaware of being a child
walking with swinging arms
babbling with chatter box like a brook
unencumbered by opinions, beliefs
unspoiled by graces and airs
unaware of age and wrinkles
when everyone was treated the same
open to suggestions, real and fanciful
unabashedly self-centered
used to be being spoilt and gushed upon
tugged like puppet on adult hand strings
so readily swayed by silliness and bribes
yet so hard to be shifted away from this to that
when tantrums popped-up to show displeasure
not ashamed to ask question about difficult things
never caring about the day and date
never caring about being early or late
when all was play, and being creative
with the simplest of things.
Imagining pirates and Jolly Roger.
playing with lumps of wood in sandpit 
seeing dump trucks, and bulldozers
play embellished with sound effects 
grins and smiles, totally absorbed.

Perhaps its time to bring back 
the childlike love of play, joie de vie
and the simple tiny-handed grasp of life
showing such freedom, liberté
devoid of consequences.

Retribution- -

Speaking to the world 
up closer
 never knowing what to say
 getting far away
 running from the bulldozers 
malicious Humanity 
and when it's all said and done 
and while I'm still yet under the thumb
As they reach for their Arsenal
 I reach out to the one who comes 
In his name is 
He whom is the nameless one
 and His Fame is famous
 and his name is Jesus 
and he will rescue us 
you and I
 for God is forever and ever
 Among Us 
and He will free us from our toils 
He will free my filthy soul
For He's never late he's always on time
He's allowed his son Jesus to wash me up and to make me whole

11/6/19
Written word by James Edward Lee Sr  2019

Razing My Spirits

Five brownstones lined up on the corner
Have been there a hundred plus years
Until demolition equipment
Knocked them down, once they got the “all clears.”

The tenants had somehow departed,
Perhaps with a buyout of cash.
I wonder if they were there watching
The bulldozers hammer and smash.

The neighborhood’s losing its status
And certainly lots of its charm.
Replacing those brownstones with towers
Is surely a cause for alarm.

We’re squandering history’s treasures
And also big chunks of the sky,
For greedy developers hover
And space is in dwindling supply.

I mourn all the relics we’re missing
For with every toppling of bricks,
The city succumbs to the sameness
Of others, just part of the mix.

Building a Wall

I'm writing this poem in the last days of 2018. The government of the United States is shut down in a fight over the building of a border wall. I am reminded of another border wall that was erected during my lifetime.

In 1961, East Germany built a wall
Of concrete, barbed wire, and steel
Ninety-six miles around East Berlin
At the cost of a bit less than four million dollars
And a bit more than 200 lives.
Intended to stem the flood of East Germans
Seeking freedom to prosper in the West.

A young and inexperienced President Kennedy
Didn't comprehend why East Germany
Needed a concrete wall
When it already had
An Iron Curtain.

In 1989 the Berlin wall was torn down in a frenzy
Of sledge hammers and bulldozers.
Only remnants of it now remain - mostly in museums.
East Germans celebrated and rebuilt their lives.
The reunited Germany flourished
And joined other nations in a united European future.

Why do we think that our wall will have a different legacy?

Stains of Chlorophyll

Creak, creak…snap, whoosh, thud!
Helpless sound of suffering echoes through the forest
penetrating the inflicted silence of fear and diminishes.

Twigs, branches and trunks crashing upon one another;
together they stood as trees, now fallen on the ground.
Chlorophyll stained chainsaws and axes busy chopping off.

Moist eyes of a robin over shattered nest with broken eggs.
Hive burning into smoke as bees gyrate with singed wings.
Squirrels scurry away, their crushed offspring left behind.

Soothing greenery - a natural shade, shelter and air filter
all uprooted by terrifying red bulldozers with a final touch.
Nature's ancient glory will soon turn into decayed reliquiae.

Duty calls for development hired by ruthless avarice
that wants to rule over this planet on concrete thrones.
So here it goes again…snap, whoosh and thud!


Date: 10/30/2017

Note: For the contest (From My Diary) by Broken Wings.
          *Placed Second*

In a Childhood Zone

I grew up as a child
near a freeway construction zone
Took many an afternoon naps
lullabied by the sound of machinery drone
And to this very day
when I hear the sounds of construction going on,
my eyes get heavy
and my ears take flight into the childhood zone
It’s the peaceful sounds of machines
playing the freeway song
Hypnotic sounds of machines droning on and on:
Jackhammers ... pounding drums staccato style
Drills ... metallic violins heard for miles
Bulldozers ... cymbals crashing ground piles
Dump trucks ... horns blasting engine shouts
Sweet transformative sounds,
slinging me across the vale of time 
Young freeway dreams
taking me faraway to a future yet unseen

Stopping By the Shaldraman Bushes

Stopping by the Shaldraman Bushes...
----------------------------------------------------------

Here this young gujjar is singing aloud some sweet song,
In this Autumn's lonely afternoon.
Beating with stick the bottom of a bowl
Under a walnut tree.
Watched by his little sister sitting on knees,
And heard by the hairy goats sitting flocked by the tent.

There the white horse is waving its tale
In the sloping pasture ,
In the giant shadow of the blue mountain .

Priceless are these holy glimpses of Nature o soul,
Amid bulldozers ,computers and concrete everywhere .

Dust

There was a dust mote in nineteen twenty
Who got tired of floating around alone.
Sat down in Kansas with friends aplenty,
Decided to make that his permanent home.

He stayed for a year or a little more,
Then he got bored and decided to roam.
He told his friends that he wanted to soar,
And to see this land from mountains to foam.

The mote said,"Let's see this land together.
Pass the word to all your friends and kin."
And the word passed from mountains to heather
As the dust rose high from where it had been.

The dust mote was amazed at what he saw -
Dust covered the Plains and buried the crops.
They seemed to have broken some normal law,
And people moved west to where the dust stops.

He was embarrassed at what he had done
He settled in Texas near a mole hole.
Bulldozers  leveled his friends every one -
Farmers smiled as they ended the "dust bowl".

3/21/2017

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