Tag Archives: construction noise

Retribution

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They’ve been building a monstrous three-story house across the street for months, the noise level increasing each day, but yesterday, my neighbor down below also started power-washing his house. They’ve continued today, and in addition, my neighbors on the other side have had gardeners operating unbelievably LOUD leaf blowers and chain saws.  It really is unbearable.  Only just now did all the men stop at once for their lunch break, enabling me to plan my revenge while writing today’s poem. Perfectly timed, just as I am typing this last line of my introduction, the power washers have started up again.

Retribution

Brain jarring poundings and drillings and sputterings
give rise to my angry cantankerous mutterings.
Construction on one side, leaf blowers over there.
High pressure power washers shatter the air.
From every direction, I’m besieged by noise.
It’s destroying my brainpower, shredding my poise.
No brilliant solution tops up my mind.
Sabotage is illegal and murder unkind.
I’ve turned up the music, closed windows and doors,
but still I can hear their mechanical roars
and grindings and crashes and rumblings and banging.
I contemplate suicide. Pills, gun or hanging?
Why aren’t my neighbors disturbed by the clamors
of chainsaws, cement mixers, trucks and jackhammers?
After all, it’s their property where men are working.
Yet none of my neighbors seem to be lurking.
They’ve probably all gone away for the day—
finding a quieter place they can stay.
They’ll return in the evening when noises decrease
hungry for dinner and a little peace—
and that’s when I’ll open each window and door,
turn my music amps up and even the score!!!!!

 

Prompt words today are hungry, cantankerous, brilliant and tops.Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/rdp-tuesday-hungry/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/04/09/fowc-with-fandango-cantankerous/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/your-daily-word-prompt-brilliant-april-9-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/tops/

Loud Music in the Rainy Season

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Loud Music in the Rainy Season

Up above me, such a din!
I feel my patience growing thin.
Cross fingers that they do not fall
as workmen scamper over all,
balancing on domes and peaks,
replacing roof tiles, sealing leaks.

They’re taking the old surface off
all my domes and drainage trough,
putting membrane down and goo
that will not let the water through
in June when rains beat hard and steady,
although, alas, they’ve come already!

The dogs are sent into a tizzy.
Looking up, I just get dizzy.
In this world that I love so,
down here in lovely Mexico,
now the grinder joins the din.
In a noise Olympics, it would win!

My thoughts all center on escaping
this chipping, drilling, pounding, scraping.
How I’d like to leave this all
for relative quiet at the mall!
But, alas, I must remain
a martyr to construction pain.

Ear plugs having no effect,
before my sanity is wrecked,
I turn up music to a SHOUT
to let Bob Dylan drown them out.
Now Caitlin Cary croons and sings
that she is “Sorry” and other things.

Eliza Gilkyson’s rough croon
is over oh too soon, too soon.
The silence that her true love speaks
replaced now by the sander’s shrieks,
I turn the iPod on again,
full force, to drown out all the din.

I’ve no sympathy for the neighbors’ plight.
Their damn dog kept me up all night,
and if my eardrums are to be shot
I would rather that it’s not
by machines like those above,
but rather by a sound I love.

The prompt word today is “thin.”