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Punches Full of Peace and Phones Full of Tomorrows: Two poems by Fred Voss
Punches Full of Peace by Fred Voss Fist-knockshave replaced handshakesin this machine shopinstead of squeezing palms we hold out fistsand bump knuckles in the airbetween usI guess it is a way to say we...
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Beer Foam Resurrection and The Job I Don't Get Paid For: two poems by Fred Voss
The Job I Don't Get Paid For by Fred Voss The machine shop manageris taking the new-hire around the shop showing him the machinesand their operators“This is Fred,” he saysas the new-hire shakes my...
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May Day poem: Looking For My Brother
Looking For My Brother by Fred Voss When I stepped into the steel mill the first time it felt goodto holdonto the handles of the cutting torch machinethe steel sparkerI squeezed between my thumb and...
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Whippoorwills and Welding Rods
Whippoorwills and Welding Rods by Fred Voss When I first started in a machine shopI didn’t even know how t use a file“Didn’t anyone teach you how to use a file Fred?”the foreman from Texasasked mewhen...
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Stone Age Jimi Hendrix
A message from Fred: Here is my latest poem, I'm reading it this Saturday 16th September at Page Against the Machine, a democratic socialist left-wing bookstore on 4th St. in Long Beach, California....
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Trying To Go Home
Trying To Go Home by Fred Voss “I’ve got a Bridgeport milling machine in my garage”a machinist would sayand another machinist would nodand say he had a Le Blonde engine lathe in his garageas they...
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Timeclock Mount Everest
Timeclock Mount Everest by Fred Voss All our lives we’ve made it to the timeclockKA-CHUNKwent the old-style factory clock when it stamped the old-style timecard we dropped into itor “enter”flashed the...
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Halley's Comet Burning Over Mark Twain's Head
Halley's Comet Burning Over Mark Twain's Head by Fred Voss I didn’t have to go to war in Italy like Ernest HemingwayI just walked into a Los Angeles steel mill and picked up a cutting torchand found my...
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A Machinery Handbook Will Never Solve This Problem
A Machinery Handbook Will Never Solve This Problem by Fred Voss A machinist is hired and rolls his rollaway toolbox down the machine shop aisle and parks it beside a workbench and steps upto a...
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Midnight Boxcar Poetry
Midnight Boxcar Poetry by Fred Voss Sometimes I feel I should tell all the men in this buildingI write poemsabout themtheir smilestheir hammers their larger-than-life laughs bouncing offthe...
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