GETTING TO WORK

On By poems of garden gnomesIn Uncategorized

Today is known as Labor Day. A day when we honor the working men and women who contribute much to the world through their efforts. Today’s task is easy. Write a work or labor poem. It could be your specific job or function. It could be your dream job. It could be a poem about “going into labor”. Whatever you choose to write, make it work!

WALT’S WORK

LOVEWORKS

We struggle to start,
with a passionate heart
and no idea how a plea of insanity
can render all of humanity smitten,
as if bitten by the love bug.
Any amorous slug would suffice,
and never look twice when the first glance
will cover any chance you have
to topple heart over heels.
You will know how it feels
when your mouth gets dry and try
as you might, you can’t fight the urge
as others delight in your plight.
Your hands will sweat, and you will get
tongue tied inside. You will quiver
and shake; make a fool of yourself.
Stutter, stammer and throw glamor out
the window, it is not pretty.
But anything worth while in life is
worth the effort. Make it!
Take it as it comes; accept a little shove.
And above all else, love is work.
Keep working on love.
***

It has been decided that Mondays will be our prompt day, with Friday being our Form exploration. Special discussions and Poetry Projects can spring up when the mood strikes, so please stay posted!

28 thoughts on “GETTING TO WORK”

  1. Not Working

    I tried til my brain fried
    I just couldn’t make it work
    the words would not stay in place
    they spilled over the page
    in a race to see which one
    could get to the period first
    the worst kind of finish
    syllables tripping over each other
    and rhymes stepping on the
    feet of meters
    I tried to make this poem work
    but vowels went on strike and
    consonants refuse to
    work alone
    my muse will just sit idle
    until some agreement can be penned

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  2. Pingback: Labor of Love | echoes from the silence

  4. JOBS WEAR NO COLLARS

              “Eager to Create Blue-Collar Jobs, a Small Business Struggles”

    I love to work.
    But, it is always work.
    Hard, demeaning,
    satisfying, trying,
    seemingly endless.
    Cutting like a hot knife
    through spoiled cheese;
    stinking to high heaven.
    I’m thinking about how my father
    would come home from his clerk
    position at the steel plant roll shop.
    Yet, I can’t recall if his collar was
    white, or blue or chartreuse,
    (there’s no use thinking too deeply)
    All I knew is we were never without,
    food, or clothing or shelter
    from his sometimes helter-skelter inebriation.
    This was our life station. Children
    of a once-steel town. Not down on our luck,
    just lucky to be. We could see up from there
    and that became our fervent goal,
    to leave my heart and soul to the hometown
    and expecting to escape with the rest of me intact!

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  5. Pingback: JOBS WEAR NO COLLARS – THROUGH THE EYES OF A POET'S HEART

  6. Rosemary Nissen-Wade

    United, Not …

    The Chilean composer (Ortega) wrote a song:
    ‘The people united will never be defeated’
    based on a shouted slogan for social change
    under the great Allende (three months before
    he fell to Pinochet). It was the time
    of uniting classical music with popular
    melodies and the instruments of folk.
    The American (Rzewski) then created
    a piano opus: thirty-six variations
    on the theme. And now on Labour Day
    in Australia we shout the slogan, changed:
    ‘The workers united will never be
    defeated!’ – although the fact that
    Labour Day happens on different days
    in different States makes you wonder
    if Governments are making us
    subtly disunited, or maybe not so subtly
    when you think about many other
    things that go on – like tax breaks
    for huge corporations, like …
    well, so much (attitudes and rulings;
    erosion of wages, safeguards and conditions)
    which in the end, gradually, without
    bloodshed, make us feel bloody defeated.

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  7. There’s too much looking on bright side, she says. She has long black hair and a Russian accent that makes me nostalgic for Boris and Natasha because not everything was bleak and fatalistic during the Cold War, and then I realise that I’m right there looking on the bright side. And she says, lots of people, (not knowing why I’m looking at her with a things-were-better-back-then grin), worked very hard but were paid very very bad. Not enough money for nice breakfast or bread and dill pickle with dinner. And then she explains that her childhood only lacked for what she didn’t need, and I realise my childhood was much the same but she was raised with Khrushchev hammering his shoe on a desk whilst I hammered chalk dust out of the classroom erasures as punishment for talking during lessons and disturbing my neighbours. I did such a fine job of clapping chalk dust that it became my permanent job after school all during 4th grade. It was my first poorly paid job, you might say. And then she asks if I’ve ever been to Coney Island — says she was there once. On Labour Day while she visited her cousin in Jersey. A person could get lost in America, she says, and no one would miss you because no one would know you’re lost.

    a wafer of light
    it plays loose across your hair
    days stretch green as grass

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  8. Pingback: Haibun for Gnome Poems – The Journal

  9. connielpeters

    Caregiver

    Care for childlike man
    Nonverbal who says a lot
    Cookie—one clear word
    Plays songs on a vacuum hose
    Leaps about at loud noises

    Writer

    Paint pictures with words
    Create people and their worlds
    Inspire with insights
    Dig out treasures from Scripture
    Tickle with fun anecdotes

    College Student

    Give myself pep talks
    Write essays, questions, comments
    Inspired by works
    Put to sleep by some others
    Plodding with eyes on the goal

    Housekeeper

    Relentless cleaning
    Squeeze it in when I have time
    Aim to make a home
    where folks I love love to live
    Wish I was Bewitched

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  10. Labor Day 2017

    Stop to honor those who came before
    who opened the door to the great West.
    Who trudged the long miles over endless prairie,
    across almost insurmountable mountains;
    paying the high price, even with the lives
    of their families, to settle this land,
    to build the railroads, bridges, and highways.
    Despite the hardships, heartaches, and tears,
    they endured so that today we can sit back and say,
    “Happy Labor Day,” to one and all.

    May we never forget, nor fail to contribute our labor,
    to the great gift given us in this place.

    Note: On this weekend in Kansas City, we celebrate SantaCaliGon Days (short for Santa Fe, California, and Oregon trails) where the wagon trains left from Independence, MO to begin their five month trek to establish new homes in the 1950s and 60s. A friend, Theresa Hupp, has a couple of great books on Amazon.com about this period in “Lead Me Home” and “Now I’m Found.”

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  11. You asked for it.

    Chas. Bukowski Works

    This is the way I imagine it. Charles
    Bukowski is still writing. He’s sitting
    on the floor of his hotel. Called the Great
    Eternal Flophouse it is both heaven
    and hell. Which, may depend on the plumbing
    on your particular floor. Bukowski’s
    room has a wash basin and a closet-
    sized space with a toilet and tin shower
    but no door. That doesn’t matter: no one
    visits. The bed with its sagging springs sees
    no action. There’s a dresser in the room,
    with a blank frame where its mirror hasn’t
    been replaced. An eternally dusty
    faded red armchair waits by the window.
    Bukowski sits on the bare wood floor. Back
    against the wall, a yellow legal pad
    and a new yellow pencil next to him.
    Pack of cigarettes and a souvenir
    ash tray in the shape of a sombrero.
    Bottle and glass. Because it’s Labor Day–
    the American version of May Day–
    Bukowski, like Whitman down the hall, like
    dos Pasos and Steinbeck and Hemmingway,
    Dorothy Parker–it’s a big goddamn
    flophouse and I could go on–is writing
    to honor the American working
    man (and woman). The floor hasn’t been mopped
    in three months of Sundays. The housekeeper
    slipped on a broken step and shattered her
    right kneecap. Surgeon who fixed it said that
    the pieces reminded him of a wooden
    puzzle map of the Lower Forty-Eight
    that he used to love when he was a kid.
    Bukowski’s brain is on fire. All the words
    pertaining to the great American
    worker are up there like sheep in a pen.
    To be their shepherd, he thinks, is good work.

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  12. flashpoetguy

    WORKING CLASS FATHER

    My father never missed a day of work
    In all his years of labor: from dishwasher
    When he was a teenager new to this land
    To welder at the Curtiss-Wright plant
    In Woodridge where daily he inhaled
    The noxious fumes that in the end proved
    The cause of his sad passing.
    We sons and daughters learned from his example:
    Pretend we were too sick to go to school?
    Why, we wouldn’t dare!

    He was a fine man of principle who refused
    To follow the work antics of the sheepish crowd.
    “I do what’s right,” he’d say. “To hell with
    who likes, who doesn’t like! Remember this:
    Give an honest day’s work for an honest
    day’s pay. Don’t look to fool the boss.
    He’s a worker too. You want him to be fair?
    Then you be fair with him!”

    My father conducted his life strictly
    by the rules. Into his 80s, he still walked
    straight as a soldier, his head lifted high.
    That man was unafraid to stare life in the eye.
    He taught us there’s no shame in hard honest work;
    Still, he encouraged us to go to college
    So we would earn more, working with our minds.

    “In your success,” he’d tell us, “never look down
    on those who work with their hands. We workers
    built this country!” and you could hear the emotion,
    the pride, choking in his throat.
    His voice would tremble when he’d say,
    “In the walls of every tunnel,
    down in the dark subways, all those miles
    across every single bridge,
    you’ll find a piece of us. God bless the working class!
    We made America what she is today.”

    #

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