Back of the stockyards, over 100 years ago
Immigrants were easy prey, as many now know
Landlords would slap paint over rat-infested dwellings
then twirling their moustaches, they’d begin selling
Those dilapidated structures with four-color brochures
hawking them as 'visions of paradise,’ sure to allure
Prospective buyers, trembling ‘greenhorns’
all too soon shorn
Of their entire life savings, only to find ~
that ‘rent’ was just half of what for they had signed
(Precious hearts robbed blind)
Juveniles are likely the ones to do something stupid when the police are in pursuit. Climbing on railcars, parked where the lumber yard and stockyards are served, on a late spring evening as a self-imposed dare is something fun to get away with. But when your friend reports that the cops are coming and you scamper towards home, the adrenaline surge fuels stupid maneuvers. An abrupt U-turn at the edge of a building, I swung my left leg and made full-throttle contact with the rolled edge of metal feed trough resulting in a bone-deep gouge along my knee cap. I limped home, lifted my pant leg to see the blood stream being soaked up by my sock and to my surprise I rather calmly announced to my mother that I needed to go the hospital.
Dan,
Dan is the man that tells all.
He lets us know the world,
is upside down, and turned around.
He lets us know it is on fire in one place
and flooding in another.
Dan walks the beaches and the parks,
the places we love in our hearts...
to soften the blow,
that leaves a glow...
burning like a bright light in the night.
Evil is taking the whole world by storm,
and only a few have bothered
to buy umbrellas.
The rest are watching as the clouds approach,
pretty lights flashing, like fireworks.
Most are asleep,
and running on empty... fumes.
They have no idea there is a cliff ahead,
and have not bothered to read,
even a single sign.
Dan the man keeps preaching.
He keeps teaching economics to us all.
He leads the lambs away
from the stockyards
and tries to set them free.
Dan is a warrior,
a modern-day soldier at arms.
His videotapes are his weapons...
They linger long after they have been watched,
and shared among many.
They make the darkness...
more afraid of the light.
(Dan is a YouTube newsman.)
The tracks long abandoned now
weeds growing between their rails
tracks that once brought sheep and cows
thousands of workers with lunch pails
The stockyards closed 'bout seventy-one
technology spelling their doom
Buried beneath those acres of grounds
stories of blood and guts and passions bloomed
A spectacle they were to see
Their niche in history sure to be
LIFE AND LOVE - double
the stockyards
a hoard of brown steers streaming
such trusting innocence
this outrage in the dust
i want to cry
then this
love moment
a fated brown beast
catches my eye
Dave Austin
You never think what is to come.
The little kid you smiled at
is a well-known author now,
a thousand miles away; you found
the trash-filled lot you didn't care about
is now a church—
the nicest one around.
The old stockyards are gone.
Your young best friend is dead.
You think: that was the life I led,
my very own behind my third-grade eyes.
And is the village park still there?
You'd settle for a journey back
across those 70 years—
with jackknife probe, dig up a marble,
still intact, and now
three inches down. You lost it once;
it was a shooter (big one) and
you couldn't understand just how it got away.
Poorer when you went to bed that night—
You'd traded off six glassies for it...
Yes. The blue and white.
It's got to be the one.
You knew the grown-ups wouldn't care—
no miracles for them,
just irony; a kid's old rusty knife
could never be the tool
to resurrect their life.
The little park may still survive
upon a ghostly plain, you thought,
and not the marble, but a part of you
have lain there underneath the years
not quite forgotten,
yet with some bewilderment
to see the sun again
~
the stearn bear
ate the bull
as meat unto idols
(the idle mammals
of mammon
on fence road)
the bags of king Midas filled
as offense rose
the comstock lode
dropped
bovines into stockyards
and the slaughterhouse rules
(u.s.) Pavlovian fools
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