Ohio is right here, and the rattling gold of
earth-born corn is here.
All over creation the sky is wide open
and the green and yellow stalks are swaying
right here.
Here the wind-songs are rough and ready,
yet they are as holy as any prayer.
Over there a stand of trees
where the olive frocks of summer
sway and shimmy.
The mud and dirt here is as good as any,
all just as rich as anywhere else
and the grubbing creatures in and upon it
are our wealth
These fetched-up farm fields
are sure-enough an atlas,
the roots of heaven rise below us,
time delves and sprouts here,
the sky descends to till the soil.
This is the land beyond the great river,
the sun nests here, and the stars appear
reflected in up-turned eyes.
We are the unrolled map, we are rural Ohio,
come walk over the world here,
rest on a wayside bench, linger long
or stay - right here.
Never Give Up
Miracle Man
11/20/2024
Each person is given
an allotted time from birth,
We use this time, dubbed life,
trying to prove our worth.
Many will become famous
accomplishing great things,
While the disadvantaged
dreams of living like kings.
Many face daily laboring
in the days scorching heat,
Grubbing out an existence
without shoes on their feet.
While the affluent thinks daily
of a menu’s choice of meat,
The impoverished is questioning
whether or not they will eat.
Each person does the things
of which they’ve been made able,
While one dines like a king
the other, crumbs from his table.
But each is held responsible
for the things in their cup,
Many can no longer persevere
and just simply give up.
money-grubbing relatives
oozed out of the woodwork and the shadows of greed
when Josephine’s death was announced
distant cousins she had not seen for centuries
demanded to know if she had left them anything
their audacity was irritating to those close to her
who had been taking care of her for years before the end.
A building is not a home,
Because it’s got a nice foam:
There has to be some blood ties
One can feel their truths and lies
Or man and woman with rings
That control their reckless wings…
A building is not a home
For looking like ones in Rome:
It has to be rather safe:
The skins there should not just chafe…
You get to like Homes caring:
The best place for child-rearing,
Children strict ideas grabbing
But for soon sniffed ones grubbing…
A building is not a home
For its finished top like office:
The White House is an office
Don’t in your home office fix.
It is time to get fresh America,
to be plucked wriggling out of that shining sea,
a fresh baked humanity, moon-beam buckled.
Pass no more pay-day-loans
into the purses of the pawn-shopping poor,
give no witness nor evidence
of city shame, and house crud.
America, you can do this.
I am a being from across the world
I am from the ***-end of times,
my transformation, a promise of our mutual destiny,
rampant & manifest, our fate falters
let us be unbridled from
both the prideful and the lackluster,
un-arrested and unmolested
by the land grubbing snipes
or the false-fronted back slappers.
We are better than this blare of ourselves,
and if not
we can make a wooden wagon wheel
from all our legendary days,
It’s not too late, wipe your ass America,
wipe your dirty face. the dusty empire is crumbling
yet our first day is not yet done.
I am ready, ready to soar out of a hundred landfills,
a prismatic dodo embossed upon a tarnished coin
my downy head newly scrubbed of old-time blood.
I heard a ‘dillo muttering,
a-traipsing and a-bungling.
I could not make out what he said,
a-chattering, a-sputtering.
He started rooting in the bed,
a-grubbing and a-burgling.
Then all at once, he up and fled,
a-prancing and a-scuttling.
Was glad to see him go.
Again! my pillow, rustling,
a-chattering, a-sputtering.
It filled me with a sense of dread,
a-shaking and a-shuddering.
And now he’s underneath my bed,
a-grubbing and a-burgling.
I woke, my heart a-fluttering,
a-racing and a-thundering.
I think I’ll read a book instead,
These dreams are weird, you know?
Your wealth could work against you
When those around you are there for it
Your early death is of inordinate benefit
They then serve to facilitate the ending
Those around are usually partners
In a life where one lives in communities
Siblings, relatives & partners stay around
Especially when the body gets weak with age
When those around fail to be true
You become source for money-grubbing
Even after they promote early earthly exit
Your legacy gets traded to sustain cupidity
"The Maid's Kid"
The boy saw his mother grubbing on her knees,
Toiling like a mouse to get hold of the cheese.
She works around the house, cleaning all the dishes,
She sacrifices her nights to fulfill her child's wishes.
Panting breath, bearing the pains,
She does her best and never complains.
She believes that they are the drops of gold,
Her honesty and hardwork would never get old.
Seeing his mother in unbearable pain,
'You won't be a maid,' he promised again.
Wiping off her tears, she smiled and replied,
'No work is big or small, if you do it with pride.'
- Nairuti Thakar
I am cutting ties
that I knotted to a faraway soil.
Exiled no longer at the tiller
of a long beached fishing boat
that bobs only on the legends
of ancient waves.
Those fluent in soul-breathing,
the Celtic poets,
those wind-chiming lyricists,
are pulling me
to the bottom of Lake Erie
where drowned sea-captains still quote
what the Irish once wrote.
And here’s me, even today
caught by the mouth
from their linguistic fishhooks
yet cutting myself away.
I am a handmade citizen of a land
that is my own meat and gristle,
a subsoil am I
and my father and mother
the grubbing worm and the turtle dove.
Still Irish, but rootless
with no anchor in Galway Bay.
I have cut the trap lines
become a jobbing teller
of tall tales,
not a keeper of any traditions
planted by hands not of my own.
And if once in a while
I lapse into the sod and bog-speak
of my unlearned brethren
it is no literary affectation
of a better education,
for I remain this common creature
determined to be tied to a smaller rock
of my own choosing.
Life Is
Written: by Miracle Man
3/7/2020
Life isn't only wildflower picking,
but it's also about grubbing weeds.
Which flourish during April showers,
from seasons long past, and fallen seeds.
Each day is determined by the thoughts,
incubated during my Rem sleep.
I sleep approximately four hours,
probably why thoughts, appear so cheap.
“More important than what others think about you,
is your self image, and what God knows about you.”
Tom
Utility companies are unforgiving.
Relentless.
Mean.
Money-grubbing.
Nasty.
Then they add taxes.
Dirty coal tax.
Tuesday wash day tax.
Dog scratching tax.
Garbage day tax.
Always adding to your bill.
Never letting up.
I hate utility companies.
Others do too.
But can we eliminate them?
Apparently not.
It's my last day with the old giants
In mourning I hike the lost trails,
sniffing the aroma of the bark,
that cinnamon of the forest
Under tepees of wood
in a membrane of shadows,
I stalk the earth, its mammal traces,
its elusive tracks,
to sit on a fallen log
where spiders macramé,
moss sloping to my knees
unaware of invisibles within,
grubbing in their tunnels
A lizard taps my foot,
responding, I muse to its touch,
my thoughts like Indian visions,
And when daylight mushrooms into night,
and an owl hoots from cedar,
I still sit with a lizard on my shoe
Huddled with the ancients of the woods
It's my last day with the old giants
In mourning I hike the lost trails,
sniffing the aroma of the bark,
that cinnamon of the forest
Under tepees of wood
in a membrane of shadows,
I stalk the earth, its mammal traces,
its elusive tracks,
to sit on a fallen log
where spiders macramé,
moss sloping to my knees
unaware of invisibles within,
grubbing in their tunnels
A lizard taps my foot,
responding, I muse to its touch,
my thoughts like Indian visions,
And when daylight mushrooms into night,
and an owl hoots from cedar,
I still sit with a lizard on my shoe
Huddled with the ancients of the woods
Why am I drawn
to this scowling girl
selling her poems
in a Shinjuku underpass?
Every Tuesday she is here,
next to a Nikon ad,
threatening commuters
with her cyclostyled angst.
Busy people keep up
with the times,
do a tap dance
on their smartphones.
Only drunks buy poetry.
Grubbing for their last,
sweaty coins, they
mock her with every purchase.
First published in Eclectica Magazine
...a sun bounces off my shell
the rained-on attempt to hide
the damage the hurter from
inside my back is full of resin
and knots from a black apple
tree all the rivers show a new
face with old teeth and lips
that suck the failed light all
this makes me walk like a
deep sea diver grubbing in the
silt of sudden waves that soak
the drinking loam of a failed
birth as a sun bounces off...
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