27 Comments
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A.P. Murphy's avatar

All the critters chewed

by the combine recombine -

a giant made of mice

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Honeygloom's avatar

That is a story I want to read🙌🖤

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Richard Blaisdell's avatar

International harvester, Deere

Mafia mobster monster

No cement blocks please.

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Honeygloom's avatar

I remember my cousin, who was really into tractor companies, telling me all about IH being run into the ground, but I have to admit that’s all I remember😅

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Dylan Delgado's avatar

Reaping at light speed

discriminates food from chaff

and flesh from bone (ow!)

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Honeygloom's avatar

Oo great imagery and I love the comparison 🖤

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erniet's avatar

A clogged conveyor

The matted straw cleared by hand

Lost to driver's haste

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Honeygloom's avatar

You might appreciate this… I found it while researching🤦‍♀️

https://www.reddit.com/r/JustGuysBeingDudes/s/CLo1zYm7Ws

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erniet's avatar

😂🤣😂🤣

Dear God, good thing no one ever showed me that when I was a kid or I would've done it!

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Honeygloom's avatar

Complete insanity. That just has to go wrong one time☠️😂

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Theresa Greene's avatar

I live near farmlands

You hear it on news a lot

Machine kill our men

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Honeygloom's avatar

So dangerous! I do kind of wonder what the injury rate was with scythes though, it has to have been high.

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Chris J. Franklin's avatar

A metal menace,

Robbing farmhands of work, and,

Farmworkers of hands... 🚜👨‍🌾😎👨‍🌾🚜

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Honeygloom's avatar

Ha! Farmhands! I see what you did there🖤

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Chris J. Franklin's avatar

Haha! It's always fun to slip in a bit of wordplay, if possible... 😎

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Chris J. Franklin's avatar

Wow, that's amazing. I had no idea they had all those different parts on them and did all those things. They definitely must have put a lot of people out of a job! 😎

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Honeygloom's avatar

Yes, but I do kind of wonder how well manual labor in agriculture supports large populations. Would be interesting to know if population booms trigger mechanized labor of if it’s the other way around because of the food surplus.

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Chris J. Franklin's avatar

That's a great point, yes. A higher demand for food, would require a quicker way of processing it. And it could also be linked to the fluctuating prices they're getting for their crops, too, and the need to find cost savings through mechanisation... 😎

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Gloria Horton-Young's avatar

The International Harvester combine harvester, a machine of metal and gears, rolled across the fields like an inexorable force of nature. It did not ask permission. It did not wait for applause. It simply arrived, and with its arrival, the old way of life was swept away like so much chaff in the wind.

Once, the land was tended by hands—rough, calloused hands that swung sickles and scythes, that knew the rhythm of wheat and rye, that toiled under sun and rain for a meager wage. It was not a good life, but it was a life, and it had its rituals, its laborious communion with the earth.

Then came the machine, hulking and indifferent, with its cold efficiency. Where once there had been crews of men, laboring side by side, now there was only the combine, a monstrous thing that cut and threshed and cleaned in a single pass. The need for human hands, for human labor, shrank to almost nothing. A single operator, perched high in the cab, was all that was left, overseeing the work of what had once been many.

Tens of thousands of workers, those who had relied on the rhythm of harvest, found themselves rendered obsolete. They drifted to the cities, seeking some new purpose, some new means of survival. The fields, once full of voices and the sound of scythes, grew silent, save for the relentless hum of the combine. The machine did not mourn the loss. It never does.

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Chris J. Franklin's avatar

Wow! That captures it beautifully. Because it isn't just jobs that are lost, it's a whole way of life and all the camaraderie that comes with it. Of course, it's happening again now with AI, which is almost certainly going to take work away from a lot of people soon, too... 😎

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Gloria Horton-Young's avatar

Life is constantly evolving second by second.

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Songsterfunsterhamster's avatar

A harvest promise

Lies bleeding in the field with

Barley-crossed fingers

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Honeygloom's avatar

Amazing imagery, and I love all the possible stories here🖤

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A.C. Cargill, Author's avatar

No escape from Fate

Chews you up, grinds you so fine

You're better after

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Honeygloom's avatar

Just some fertilizer ☠️

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Gloria Horton-Young's avatar

in the style of:

1. metal god awakens

fields tremble at its approach

harvest ritual

- Jane Reichhold

2. cosmic reaper

swallows stars and spits out chaff

universe shivers

- Matsuo Allard

3. iron beast stirs

dreams of grain and endless fields

time bends to its will

- Roberta Beary

4. alien monolith

crawling through golden waves

devouring summer

- Michael Dylan Welch

5. teeth of the old ones

grinding reality's fabric

new world emerges

- Deborah P Kolodji

6. dimensional rift

combine crosses the threshold

reaping other worlds

- Jim Kacian

7. eldritch harvester

whispers secrets to the corn

ancient pact renewed

- Fay Aoyagi

8. quantum combine

probability fields collapse

futures crystallize

- Ferris Gilli

9. chrono-harvester

reaping moments, sowing myths

history reshaped

- Stanford M. Forrester

10. dream-eating machine

childhood memories its fuel

adulting begins

- Garry Gay

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Honeygloom's avatar

These are so cool! I love the theme! Probably #5 is my fave, but so hard to choose!

Also my poetry TBR list is getting so long😅😂

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