Long Hauled Poems
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You Never Do
You say that I am skinny but you give me nothing to eat.
You say that I am quiet but you don’t come and talk with me
You say that I need a friend but you leave me vulnerable in
The open guts of the enemies. You say that I am stink yet you
Give me no soap to wash my body. You say that I am working too hard
But you send no one to help me.
Here I am in the open space looking closely at the race, with noise around and a bunch of vagabond surround me with hearts packed with stones and a conscience unknown .Filthy hands and stirring the dish and their head beating on the concrete and washing the dirty dish.
Hypothetical sound playing in the ground and they are walking around
In long gown, with the religious pants dropping underneath their bottom
and hands sliding into their gowns for a pocket that is not found
oh how I loathe this disposition. I watched the eyes looking up and down for a word that cannot be found and the crown with its punitive
weight moving from side to side in the middle of the day.
You stand and watched the philistines descend upon me, you watched them hauled and pull me on the ground, you did nothing to help and then you say that you are heaven bound.Oh yes your heaven is up there
But my heaven is right here on earth. My heaven gives life and it comes with many years of sacrifice. You play the music loud to break my eardrums but I let the sound pass right through and filters in thin air.
Your mountain is getting low and you don’t have much further to go
You watched them mocked me when the vagrants unpacked on me but my spirit drives them back to their destiny. They run like wolves down
the street erupting the cities heart beat. I am here and you are there
and I have nothing to fear. You cannot mix religion with business that is hypocrisy in the third degree and you will not get not one more penny from me. I cannot be wooed y some religious song, and you will be hanged like every bad man and your accomplice will pay their dues with you and I want to tell you that you cannot do.
Knock, knock.
I ran to the door and flung it open. Marcus stood there, holding my sister by a heavy chain. I looked at her, blind in one eye, a thumb missing, and felt nothing.
“I’ve come to beg forgiveness,” she rasped.
“Don’t,” I said, my voice cold. “I know about the occult. I know you opened the Golden Door and murdered for what was behind it. Now the door won't close, and you’re looking for someone to pay the bill.”
She lunged at me, looking more like an evil spirit than my kin, but Marcus jerked the chain.
“You bargained for gold,” I continued. “But you never asked where the demon would find it. He showed you my life points in coin and you took them. You had everything, yet you wanted my life too. I won't pay your debt. I have no interest in your soul or your portal.”
Behind them, a black carriage waited in the shadows. After thirty years of running from her, the end had finally arrived. Marcus hauled on the chain, dragging her toward the horses.
“Your time is up,” he growled. The door of the carriage slammed shut.
My grieving heart is powerless to quell
the rigors of life in this world that I dwell
haunted by hate for having loved too well,
I don’t know what this journey will foretell.
And now I suffer a fate worse than hell
To love passionately and dare not to tell,
While my damned demons howl and yell
these benumbing fears my voice curtail.
Pursued by spirits of darkest night may impel
before long my poor soul will be hauled to hell
that no harrowing abyss on earth can parallel
and no wizard can break this most awful spell.
Did I turn my eyes away from God that I fell
into this accursed abyss, this bottomless well?
Henceforth, with a heavy heart I bid farewell
to find a higher plane for my soul to dwell.
~Contest: Pick a Title Vol. 2 Rhyme
~Sponsor: Edward Ibeh
Water and Gold
by Michael R. Burch
You came to me as rain breaks on the desert
when every flower springs to life at once,
but joy's a wan illusion to the expert:
the Bedouin has learned how not to want.
You came to me as riches to a miser
when all is gold, or so his heart believes,
until he dies much thinner and much wiser,
his gleaming bones hauled off by chortling thieves.
You gave your heart too soon, too dear, too vastly;
I could not take it in; it was too much.
I pledged to meet your price, but promised rashly.
I died of thirst, of your bright Midas touch.
I dreamed you gave me water of your lips,
then sealed my tomb with golden hieroglyphs.
Originally published by The Lyric
We walked slowly along the busy road
My tiny hand slipped into yours
I clung tightly on to you
Whilst my sister skipped off with her friends
My brown leather satchel hung from my shoulder
We arrived at the entrance to the school
Not a word passed between us
Suddenly the silence was broken …
DING A LING A LING A LING
My class teacher Mrs Kempster stood in the doorway
She was ringing a hand bell
Even after all these years I can still picture her so vividly
She was a large hard faced woman -
The exact opposite to my petite mum
We were ushered into the classroom like little lambs
Mrs Kempster’s 10-year-old son Nigel joined us
He had earache and was not going to school that day
For some reason his mum left the classroom
She asked Nigel to keep an eye on us
Nigel started running round the room…
About a dozen of us followed, we thought this was fun!
Suddenly, Mrs Kempster burst into the classroom
She was shouting at us, absolutely furious!
Nigel sat down quickly - he had a huge smirk on his face
Only three of us were hauled up in front of her
Mrs Kempster went to her desk drawer
She pulled out a large black gym shoe
Then hit us three times on the back of our legs
Tears welled up in my eyes
I couldn’t wait to hear the bell ring
DING A LING A LING A LING
Only then I could go back to the safety of my mother’s arms
This has been very cathartic to write - is a true account of my first day at infant school. My mother complained to the headmaster … but nothing was ever done
Contest – For whom the Bell Tolls – Sponsor Debbie Guzzie
07~27~15
They’ve hauled me into the parlour,
secure in terracotta packed with soil,
to sit awhile before my ritual humiliation.
Soon I will be baubled,
showy, gaudy, tinselled –
the court jester who will keep them
smiling through their feast –
and burdened with things that dangle,
like a tart’s cheap earrings,
and those little wooden reindeer,
hand-painted, made in Korea.
But for now they seem
to contemplate my noble nakedness,
their eyes detained by something
unplumbed in their reality;
and they are silenced, for just an instant,
by a notion, perhaps, of distant green,
a timeless forest that impinges
on the periphery of their awareness,
seeing me as I would remain,
could they but permit
such an insult to their tradition.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The windmill groaned before the dawn,
her hands already chapped with dawn-tasks,
his fingers practicing Braille lessons on the kitchen table~
both stiff-backed and deliberate,
both heavy with the weight of wheat and words.
Fifteen names,
each one dug into the earth like fence posts:
Clarabell, Dulce, John, Stanley,
each syllable hauled up from the well
with aching shoulders.
The schoolhouse smelt of ink and sweat,
of small hands learning Braille and
the shape of silence,
while their own children ran wild
between rows of corn,
half-feral, half-holy.
Drought years gnawed at the ledger,
but the well never ran dry~
only deeper,
only darker.
At dusk, they counted heads by lamplight,
his thumb brushing her cracked knuckles,
her voice a rasp of hymns and harvest.
They buried two.
Thirteen grew tall as sunflowers.
The Kansas prairie took what it was owed~
calluses, sweat, sleep~
but left them standing,
left them leaning into each other
like split-rail fences
in a wind that never stills.
We lost our “UMOJA”, the basic concept and core value of our being “We, therefore, I am”, at the time of our history that began some 300 years ago. We didn’t step on the soil of New World with a dream like many others, but hauled on the ground like a cargo as merchandise. We were each treated individually as a unit but not tied as a family or group bonded together by the same dialect.
Misery was the food we’d been feeding to fill our empty stomach, agony was the water we’d been drinking to quench our thirst, depth of our footmarks were the weights we’d been carrying, our lives were trial after trial of thorny path. No matter how hard we worked, our baskets were empty. No matter how much we labored, returns of our toils were unbearable lashes. No matter how humbly we begged and ardently prayed, God always turned His face away from us.
But all those detestable days are gone as second millennium faded away. Shackles of curse are removed from our neck and wrists. Our burdens are removed from our back. The reward of our day’s of labor is reasonable wage. Why don’t we embrace one another with joy because only thing remain is our determination.
As daybreak sun is rising from yonder horizon, our darkest day has passed; for daybreak light is brighter than ever and pleasant as spring breath, we have good reason to celebrate for a moment. Nevertheless, don’t prolong the time of festival because it may make you stray from reality and to dwell in farfetched world.
As long as you don’t fold the wings but spread wide and keep flapping them, though sometimes encountering high wind, you can fly higher than the highest ridges of a mountain. If you keep swimming upstream, though you may confront falls and rapids, you’ll come to your old home where your parents risked their lives to spawn and enable you to hatch from an egg one day, and rejoice overflowing water in the ocean to gladden your life. If you dart with a swift gallop not abandoning tomorrow’s dream, no matter how immeasurably vast is the wilderness, you’ll reach the horizon before sun sinks into the other side of the world.
It’s the time to restore our “UMOJA” a laudable custom once we lost during our darkest days, recover “UMOJA” our ancestral heritage the good moral standard to sustain “I as us.”
God of Abrahan, Isaac, and Jacob,
God of the White Man and Indian,
You are the God of the *****,
who created all people of one blood.
You are not divided; you are One God.
The ***** was made in your image,
and crowned with glory and honor.
He is superior or inferior to none,
but by your design, equal to all.
Our fathers were hauled from their homeland,
huddled into the hull of ships like cargo,
and transported across the oceans.
They were sold into slavery and savaged.
Then they cried to You in their affliction,
and you showed up and succored them.
Those who enslaved them became slaves.
They worshipped mammon and spurned You.
Their hearts became hard as a hammer,
and their consciences were corrupted.
Our fathers found in You all they needed.
You were their joy in sorrow,
freedom during slavery,
comfort in times of grief,
and strength when they were powerless.
In the crucible of chattel slavery
and the furnace of forced labor,
You forged the ***** into a strong,
Spiritual, resilient, and resourceful being.
Like a Phoenix, he has risen from the ashes,
with a passion fueled by the fire in his bosom,
and a purpose piloted by the pain of the past.
With Your help, the ***** has taken his place,
as an equal among the people of the world.
But alas, success has turned many away from you.
They claim to have pulled themselves up with their bootstrap.
Like their masters who worshipped Mannon,
they are educated, their pockets are full,
but their hearts are lonely, and their souls are empty.
They have arrived at their Promised Land,
and discovered a barren wasteland,
watered by lust that never satisfies,
and proffering pleasures that pauperize and pain.
Black Man, turn to your God.
*****, acknowledge your Creator.
Without Him, you are a shell of a man,
a figment of your imagination,
a fraction of what you were created to be.
Value the virtues bequeathed by your fathers.
Build on the foundation they laid.
They trusted in God and He helped them.
They discovered that the God of the Hebrews,
the God of the White Man, and the Indian,
is the God of the *****.
There is an emptiness
between Hemingway’s words
A hollow sound
that slides off the page
The space creates distance
as the Old Man wanted
From the reader
and voyeurs of pain
“Distance between himself and the day
he hauled in that great fish
“Distance from that last great battle
calling out from beyond his reach
“Distance from the arena, where the
horns got close but death got closer
“And distance from the many women
he tried to love and failed”
No matter how far he lived afield,
be it Paris, Havana, or Ketchum
In no place was there distance enough
or where his words could be safe
The separation and memory loss
became deafening and finally too much
As he gave in to the distance
—one last and final time.
(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2016)