Bend the horn to find the note/
In the depths of the universe, you find harmony and rhythm, spinning planets in jazz sync, a cosmic dance with Sun Ra/
maybe he can set us free/
the jazz riff rises and resonates deeply/
It’s sound ready to take hold/
In the gut, where the soul finds its voice/
jazz might take you to a heavenly place/
man, what’s jazz anyway?
will you dig It till you die?
chill and cool out, let the music take you higher, like Sly and the Family Stone would say/
Blow, man, blow, let your passion show, set your spirit on fire, and don’t let go/
The trip through gigs, under neon lights, jazz club shows, ignite the nights, man, that’s show biz/
street corner magic, in self-discovery, playing our truths, setting our spirits free, House parties buzzing, the basement alive, flatbed jammin’, where creativity thrives/
anywhere, we find our place to be, In the freedom of jazz like It outta be/
For in every note, every beat, every radio play/
we discover ourselves in the jazz of the day.
Categories:
flatbed, spoken word,
Form: Spoken Word
Inside an archaic framework
she fetches a pail from the fields,
the bucket on her hip is full of
broken eagles.
Wind turbines churn in the distance.
He takes the mangled birds
plucks them,
puts their heads on poles
loads them onto a flatbed.
His dour darling fixes fixings
with a rusting air-fryer;
plaits her hair with chicken wire.
Drones mourn like doves in the evening.
Rattling pods spread
their dry seeds over abandoned crops.
Bald feathers flap on
a black-booted scarecrow.
A morbid factotum arrives
deposits clods of earth
from out the back of
of a fly-specked hearse.
Horse heads turn
on a squeaking wind vane.
Inside a slow burning barn
Unstrung fiddles lay at rest
in their open coffins.
Categories:
flatbed, poetry,
Form: Free verse
I didn’t expect to be enlightened
on the 5
passing Dodger Stadium
north-bound, but-
A flatbed load of Styrofoam had spilled
and was dancing on the road
in small bits and huge chunks.
We drove through them
like they were nothing,
bouncing all around
off the windshields
and hoods and sides.
Wisdom flooded through us
radiating an immediate encompassing bond
as we passed this universe
of nothing.
We were, of course,
the spaces between particles,
the answer to physics.
The answer to everything!
The mystery was revealed,
The mirages understood.
There are no barriers.
Only those we put there ourselves.
The sun-glassed man in the flatbed
nodded at me and then
off he went-
the 2 North.
Categories:
flatbed, life, mystery,
Form: Free verse
If I had a red flatbed truck I would….
Load up my house and take it for a drive, to see the sights.
Help Santa and the elves deliver gifts on Christmas Eve.
Move Mount Everest to my neighborhood in Kansas.
Take it to the moon and pick up a crater to show off.
Haul the next alien spaceship to my sister’s house as proof.
If I had a red flatbed truck.
Categories:
flatbed, 10th grade, 4th grade,
Form: Light Verse
She was a less-than-truckload lady
Who’d signed a contract for the long haul
With the interstate driver she married.
But that trucker kept a bogus bill of lading
And a logbook full of lot lizard flings.
So now she’s rolling down the big slab
In her hubby’s bobtail bulldog,
His gooseneck flatbed stranded in the wings.
She’d just renewed her CDL for diesel;
Her unexpected dispatch wasn’t forced.
Her old man was a cracker-headed weasel.
She left him feeling semi divorced.
Semi divorced, like a rider unhorsed.
She took away his way to keep on trucking.
Semi divorced was the judgement, of course.
He fooled around with fire and got a f*cking.
What you say?
I say, he fooled around with fire and got a f*cking!
We hear dat.
Categories:
flatbed, allegory, divorce,
Form: Lyric
Just another African
Once full of sun and hope
Train to Venice from Milan
At the end of your rope
Horrors seen at just 19
Crammed onto a flatbed
Desert burning red
Human carrion in the sand
Oblivion near at hand
Beatings, rapes in Tripoli
Leaky tub on a rough sea
Peril all the way to Sicily
Papers - “political refugee”
Even so, two years of no, no no
Pain inspires disdain
Contempt and disgust
When migrants are discussed
No “ciao”, nothing so banal
Distracts from the icy canal
“Go home” they thunder
And film you go under
No Good Samaritan
For just another African
Categories:
flatbed, africa, boat, discrimination, fear,
Form: Rhyme
Flat pack Wobbler
Procured from mega shop, a straight-lined box amid a cardboard wall
Where jig saw chattels rise above the queues of flatbed wheelies
And underarm catalogues patterned with an iconic list of what they are
When the blocks are sequenced and affixed with laborious strife
A transformation takes place that gives the pack new form herewith
Long live the flat pack table and its tedious sway in frail chipboard
Seated upon upon a quartet of nailed on props that creak objection
It takes its varnished place in harmony with four bolted chairs that match
And for a while it serves to hold the plates and cutlery just grand
Until the careless etch of scratches weave marring patterns on its top
Forever to remain as though a work of scribbled art and wrinkled mess
No longer wavelets in the soup, a tidal wave is now the norm when the legs teeter
Today the food’s aslant and the drinks decide to slide and slither to the floor
The props have given way, they’re tired and now submit to glory
And the table returns again to flat pack with eternal gratitude
quartet of props
Categories:
flatbed, humor,
Form: Blank verse
I have relatives all over the USA, in one state or another.
Thanks to my randy great-grandparents who could not keep their hands off each other.
They had eighteen children, sometimes in two’s, and most of their children had ten.
Eight was considered a failure to the family, it truly had to be at least ten, back then.
Their tiny Iowa farmhouse was so ridiculously small, it was crazy.
But they raised nine fine sons, and nine ambitious daughters, and none of them was lazy.
We had our family reunions on an extensively long flatbed truck.
We went on hayrides, and we played with twenty-something cousins in the muck.
I have relatives all over the USA, in one state or another.
Thanks to my randy great-grandparents who could not keep their hands off each other.
Categories:
flatbed, grandparents,
Form: Rhyme
The green house is here!
The green house is here!
All of us ran out to watch the green house as it slowly made its way
Down the street about half a block, no make that a quarter of a block in an hour.
At last, it was on its merry way.
Thanks to our Auntie Vi who knew all about it, we had all heard
That you can move an entire house intact, and it was going to be moved on
Saturday, but none of us had ever seen such a sight until today.
By ten a.m. there were 59 people sitting in lawn chairs or blankets, or on the bare
Grass, watching the men with the powerful flatbed trucks move an entire house, a green
House, with lots of windows, and no front door, down our street, it was proud and tall.
Where are they taking her? A strange teenager asked my mother. She did not know, so she
Shrugged her shoulders. This is Midwest Iowa talk for “I don’t know, and don’t ask me again.”
I shrugged too, having no idea at all.
But this was a once in a life time experience,
and I have never forgotten it,
and I suspect I never will.
Categories:
flatbed, 10th grade, 11th grade,
Form: Free verse
My father’s timber array arrived on an
overloaded Diamond Reo flatbed.
It dumped oak scraps, leafless dead-woods,
inspiring last metamorphosis to
warming fires come winter’s weather.
Empty, truck leaves then heaves
into a scrubby alley
squeezing by barely.
With its narrow fit made
it disappearing through a backyard gate
into a cloud of its own making
belched from two shaking
upright tailpipes.
Bark cull, coppice slats, saw food pilled
to near roof high. This sawmill refuge awaits
stacking sequent, once cross-sawed
and set to a suitable size for stove fodder.
I am father's volunteer; I am the master stacker
of wand-wood. With my bow-saw in hand,
I look not on labor of hours nor days, but eternities.
In the eyes of evolution's lies I see ancient youths,
countless fellows of ten-years-old like me
and leap with them to the task of cave dwellers.
Categories:
flatbed, life, work,
Form: Free verse