Mill Poems | Examples

Cider Mill

Eating donuts until we are full.
We take our time, picking our haul.
Apple pie, jam, and cider.
We hear a cute barn cat purr.
We see farm animals too.
Goats climbing, like they do.
On this sunny, fall day.
On this bench, I wish to stay.
But we must go before the rain.
Holding my bag, the trip was not in vain.
At home, we feel the storm.
Inside, we are nice and warm.
We heat up cider.
And I feel my cat’s fur.
We always said we should go.
To the cider mill before it snows.
Today, we enjoyed the fall breeze.
Relaxing on this day of ease.

MILL TOWN

In town of Holy Face, now Halez Fax 
Are rows of back-to-backs in terraces 
Between the mills that spill their thick black smoke.   
Industry now dominates hill and dale.     
Manufacture is master with muscle.
Sulphuric fumes poison the once green hills
Turning the trees to charcoal skeletons.

The peaceful sound of silence that once was 
Is killed by loud clatter from textile mills
And clogs clomping up the steep cobbled streets
With steel segs grinding on the granite setts  
As folk trudge to-and-fro in day’s routine,
Between the terrace rows of back-to-backs
In that old mill town known as Halez Fax.

John Stuart Mill

English philosopher John Stuart Mill
His social and political theories are practiced still.
Utilitarianism thinking today -
Is it always the most moral way?

Mill Wheel

The Mill Wheel is half-buried.
Did time submerge it or
did the weight of the wheel,
defy the burden of time?

A young child skips-by,
jumps over the stone wheel.
Tall grass parts for her heels,
waving in the breezy air.

The hub of heaven is there,
turning a gridding rock
into a light dance once more.

The Old Mill Is Gone

The streets are filled with crying men,
filling the gutters up with tears.
As we walk from our final shift,
that’s fed us for a hundred years.

Eleven hundred jobs vanished, 
like a leaf caught upon the wind.
And Canton North Carolina,
will never be the same again.

What’s in store for us tomorrow,
no one can ever really know.
When your faith is already gone,
and any hope is next to go.

There’s no money left to buy things,
that it will take just to survive.
Wondering if it’d be better,
if I would just lay down and die.

They tell me these are better days,
than how it always used to be.
They sure got a long way to go,
before they can prove it to me.

Because I still don’t have a job,
or any money left to spend.
So please don’t give me any bull,
how this country is on the mend.

Even the drunks on the corner, 
are gone but it’s not what you think.
They all have to get sober now,
because they can’t afford to drink.

Dont Sell Your Heirloom

They’re free to swallow it like bitter pill,
All take it as an interposing hill,
Already, the four do, as they stand still,
At their mum glaring; they could her just kill!

“You sell nothing, until I change my mind,
Though I doubt if I have change in my mind.
Anxious riches the sober casts behind;
A grave bond should noble children bind.”

She had her kids raised with cash from the mill.
If they now fling it away scored bare nil.
Youth for the trendy to prized heirloom blind;
Faster one continues to wristwatch wind,

“Accumulate debts and die with fat bill:
You’d better you touched not what gaps fill.”

It’s some old voice from a new window sill.

Foundry and Mill

Larks are ascending funnels of sky,
songs smoke from enteral chimneys.
In an industrial park a fine Autumn light
burns bright.

Shoes fill with walkers,
we are out and praising
the clanking machinery,
for we are all leaves 
in the same furnace.

What we suppose
to be sleep and decline
is a wooded factory, a whittle and grind
gearing-up for an over-spilling,
a bundling color-filled season,
one that will in time
hammer snow out of spoilage.

The Larks are trilling,
they rise to the top of their voices.
Conveyer belts of cooling hymns
are ready to be parceled and sent, 
addressed graphically:

'Return to Sender.'

The Mill Town House

Grandfather's house, knocked to the ground - to dust:
The windows wept when the bulldozer came
Timeworn and dirty and wheezing black smoke,
Just like the drab mills where grandfather moiled.

Children play in the intriguing debris
Where, once, children played on the garden path,
Where grandfather told stories of past things
And the children listened wide eyed, in awe.

The door remains standing, creaking, ajar,
As it yawns in the twilight of the gloom
And the children knock though no one answers
So, they run away for, why should they stay?

Abandoned now, no one, near here, comes by
Except myself in the patience of night
As I tap on the door, though softly now,
Grandfather answers and dolefully smiles.

The Beating of the Mill

The beating of the Mill,
we hear it down the hill.
It is the town's heartbeat.
No children on the street
already in the shop
to labor till they drop.
Sold to the upper class;
the mother needs the brass.
The father on the beer;
not working since last year.
The bosses own their soul,
their houses, so they toll;
boy, sister, young as four
stay bailiff from the door.
They; hardly off the teat,
meet quotas, or get beat.
Most dying all too young
from ailment of the lung
or bodies ripped apart.
No healthcare; caring heart
so poorer lose their health
while richer gain more wealth
on broken bodies, pain.
The workers take the strain.
Not distant, in the past
but present, and to last.
You think that things have changed,
you all must be deranged;
The Beating of the Mill
is calling us all still!



The Sweat Shop Poetry Contest placed 5th
Sponsored by: Kai Michael Neumann
Date wrote: 15th February 2022

Mill

Supposed there is a
hint on how to live well
supposed I asked
a question
" What is the north? "
or " What does it mean
to be a philosopher? "
or " What do you mean by 
a tea or lipton? "
supposed someone said
he/she wants to dig deep
and understand when
and how these things
settled here
and if possible can he/she
form a group or at least
a society like this one?
supposed it is right
to say that this colour
is green or blue
or at least something
to that effect
now is it not same as
to say that this colour is
white?
there is this saying 
that man is different
both in a day and night
I knew that there are 
dreams of my own
and no one sewer these
things for me.

At the Old Grist Mill

Water rises in damp clouds above the falls
Red from the old grist mill reflecting through
The backlighting sunshine causing ethereal
Rainbow-like patterns in the mistiness, while
I watch the gigantic wheel fling cold water
Downstream where it plunges into the murk,
Creating a deep hole not suitable for diving
And too dangerous for children to swim in, so,
I slip my bare feet over the moss-covered ledge
Dangling them above the stream’s updraft,
Watching them come soaking wet and clean
At the end of my sopping brand new jeans. 

written November 5, 2021

A Word Mill

I can't  please
help erase
nice biscuit's.
Memory
I once cracked
and crushed rat.
She said I
rolled it through
how, lest whims.

The Old Wind Mill

The old wind mill turns no more frozen in it's stance
haunted giant fan of rusting steel from afar you glance
Really never worked that hard even when the wind blew
lasted for about ten years and then it was all but through
A hundred birds a day it shred and at night it sliced the bats
made noisy pollution, all the land it stole now home for rats
A grave yard of giant skeletons across the horizon stretch
these old wind mills profits made for foreign interest fetch
Was it green it needed coal when the winds did not blow
Good intentions never last the old wind mill run out of gas

Mill

Weather varies,
and so latitudes,
and so butterflies,
and so questions and rainbow colours,
and so answers,
and so possibilities,
and so infinities...

Mob Caused By Rumor Mill

They come to peek, to point, to laugh and gawk.
They stand in the front, staring from my sidewalk.
I think what kind of weirdos believe every rumor they hear?
I have a feeling most will never call me “my dear”.

What are they saying now? I ask my neighbor Miss Mc Narrised.
You killed another one, she confides, acting a bit embarrassed.
Three husbands missing, one gone just a week or two, mob doth cheer.
Give me a break! I roll my eyes; I have only had a few men disappear.

Murderer! One yells; she is built like a cow that’s been on a diet.
She stirs up the others and they try to cause a full-blown riot.
“Break it up!” The patrol officers say, coming by quick and ready.
“Shhhh!” I warn whimpering coming from the wall. It’s my latest, Freddy.

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