They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
...
I
I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel
...
1
Dear ghosts, dear presences, O my dear parents,
Why were you so sad on porches, whispering?
What great melancholies were loosed among our swings!
...
Still,
I would leap too
Into the light,
If I had the chance.
...
In the naked bed, in Plato's cave,
Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall,
Carpenters hammered under the shaded window,
Wind troubled the window curtains all night long,
...
Creatures of the Night
.
iron grates over the street drains
roofs for the poor
...
I sit beside two women, kitty-corner
to the stage, as Elvin's sticks blur
the club into a blue fantasia.
I thought my body had forgotten the Deep
...
.
Did a dry run to see
if I could drive at night.
Joe didn't think it was such a good idea
...
The telephone poles
Have been holding their
Arms out
...
They stood, almost blocking the pavement,
As though at a window display;
The stretcher was pushed in position,
...
I am no longer myself as I watch
the evening blur the traffic
to a pair of obese headlights.
...
This poem bleeds dysfunctional desire,
Blood stains through the dirty streets
Mark the paths we trod,
Urban avenues of despair,
...
Pumberly Pott's unpredictable niece
declared with her usual zeal
that she would devour, by piece after piece,
her uncle's new automobile.
...
I
A night the half-moon was like a dancing-girl,
No, like a drunkard's last half-dollar
Shoved on the polished bar of the eastern hill-range,
...
It is the season of new beginnings...
Spring removes her winter robe
And fades into rainbows of hope;
The sun shines its headlights into April-
...
Loaded on beer and whiskey, we ride
to the dump in carloads
to turn our headlights across the wasted field,
freeze the startled eyes of rats against mounds of rubbish.
...
I. Kempton, Pennsylvania
Perhaps the last of the light
...
Let’s not...
Everything’s ghostly-
the blank windows watching,
the snow reddening behind the stoplights of the cars.
...
Mist lingers on the surface
of stagnant tea-brown water.
The flat bridge spans a mile,
a sea of spatterdocks.
...
1 he apples hung until a wind at the equinox,
That heaped the beach with black weed, filled the dry grass
Under the old trees with rosy fruit.
In the morning Fayne Fraser gathered the sound ones into a
...
'Could I get a beer Annie? '
She had her back to him
She froze...panic gripped her soul!
She wilfully ignored the request
...
Making lies
Breaking society,
Straining strings
Lost sobriety;
...
I thought my tire was flat.
But it was my heart.
...
I miss the cinema’s comfortable sofas
At the entrance and outside the screen rooms.
I miss sitting on them, curled into you, ‘cause
We were kids and had nowhere else to go.
...
I put my hand into your fire for you,
flames are squelched
roses flow from mouth to mouth
soft petaled
...
I
I am cold. Transparent Spring dresses
Petropolis in verdant down.
...
Gypsy Moon Glowing In The Sky
With Caravan Of Clouds Passing By
Thru Leaves, Shivering, Like Tambourines
In The Wind, As It Wanders, And Softly Sings
...
would make his bed,
If he could sleep on it.
He would make his bed with white sheets
...
Darkness, coolness,
Overcrowds our happy universe,
The moon looks amused,
The stars peek fondly on
...
No sound was sweeter than you singing the song 'Mandy, '
Caressing, embracing tones,
In perfect pitch, we never felt alone,
Stable jockey with blond hair, blue eyes,
...
1
Are you still Chinese yellow?
Are your blinds still drawn
...
Coach, Chumly, and Maria
moved into the Snake Pit
in June having bought it from
Tony who was an 88 year old
...
It finally snapped!
It had become tighter
over the years.
He pretended he didn’t notice
...
It is always the dispossessed—
someone driving a huge rusted Dodge
that’s burning oil, and must cost
twenty-five dollars to fill.
...
I write a poem, cross it out
write a song with no melody and hum
to myself and make up a story
where a character steals the sun
...
2AM boulevards
Bathe me in lonely headlights.
My soul is broken
Like the crumbling pavement
...
Rabbit in front yard
Car headlights chase from behind
Rabbit runs for life.
...
Off Highway 106
At Cherrylog Road I entered
The ’34 Ford without wheels,
Smothered in kudzu,
...
It's not funny
To die for the liberty
For the freedom to speak
Freely without fears.
...
In the yellow time of pollen, in the blue time of lilacs,
in the green that would balance on the wide green world,
air filled with flux, world-in-a-belly
in the blue lilac weather, she had written a letter:
...
Why did we do all that? What were we looking for
When we stood conspicuously outside our cars on summer nights
In our madras shirts, white levis and loafers without socks
Along the parking diagonals in the median lane of Balson
...
Travelling for miles, and miles,
Through the dark;
In the distance a flood light appears, upon a hill,
Pulling the old house and barn back together;
...
As ghosts and ghouls descend on the U.S.,
I offer a November Showcase, nothing less.
[I was referring to our Halloween festivities,
which (witch?) are not among ALL Americans'..............proclivities.]
...
Headlights glare,
The bold white stare of paper!
My mind will not reorder
Words to suit a song.
...
When the sun has gone deep
And the moon emerged on the horizon
A caller called me to follow in the wee hours of the night
Like a deer chasing the musk I followed unconditionally
...
A mother worries about the choices that her son may make.
She knows she has let him make decisions for his own sake.
As sirens scream, a mother sits in darkness choking back tears.
She prays that her boy is safe and calms her doubting fears.
...
As the dawn begins to break, I see headlights
The farm is just a ways down the road
I wonder if she knows, I'm coming
And I wonder , if she is there alone
...
Walking at midnight
Fragile in the rain,
I watch the streetlamps sway
And the headlights gleam
...
Rustle of feet in the roadside grass,
Trample of horses' hoofs, and - Hark!
Blast of an anxious horn! Hounds pass;
...
***
When I entered the room, she opened the window. I didn’t utter any word, but I was glad in my own self.
And the self gets out through the window, I can hear it falling on the black metaled bonnet of my volkswagen. After the impact, the headlights turn on.
...
Hello.
My name is Anani.
Anani Moss.
I am 17 years old. Senior.
...
People never know what they want,
they don't know what to do when to do it how to do it why to do it or who to do it with.
the world carries on begrudgingly wondering
where the hell has all the love gone?
...
I saw them walking
Along the forlorn street
At night against my headlights
Hand in hand together
...
He danced and waved in the drizzle and wind
The man who can’t retire
Headlights shone on him
Like bulging eyes of the night
...
Hollow-eyed shades
of human beings,
human beings
...
the orange is your heritage
a mash of old easy days, the old edges
of the photographs,
rusted bicycle wheels,
...
Driving home one moonless night
On a country road the only light
is from the headlights of my car
beams of light that reaches far
...
Once we had a car,
that was the colour of silver grey.
Now this little car, who we called our jam jar,
just loved a rainy day.
...
A lamp post, dark, dismal, barren street,
waiting in anticipation for the dealers wheels.
Tattered clothes, stiletto heels on weary feet.
...
Our headlights push the darkness through
the s-shaped coils of pavement
threading through the sawgrass flats
across the mangrove estuaries
...
Two months of winter have passed.
Air temperature is rising and rains are falling.
Strong winds weave the strings of falling rains.
Heavy rain drops keep pouring down fast
...
she ran out of the building with tears streaming down her cheeks
wondering how could she be so stupid to marry a cheat he was her everything her one and only true love
'why......why' was all she managed to say
...
As if you actually died in that dream
and woke up dead. Shadows of untangling vines
tumble toward the ceiling. A delicate
lizard sits on your shoulder, its eyes
...
Sitting here
During lunch
Sipping on my drink
It's fuit punch
...
I interrupt your usual monotony, to bring you
a story with less than a beginning...
The feature presentation is brought to you, courtesy
of my humble life:
...
The headlights raced; the moon, death-faced,
Stared down on that golden river.
I saw through the smoke the scarlet cloak
Of a boy who could not shiver.
...
I love to get a dance right.
When a dance does go wrong
makes me laugh uncontrollably.
I hold my sides -
...
From the sixth floor of a building on a river bank
I see southward flow of the wide and long Susquehanna.
Earlier this morning, light snow fell
Now, rising temperature turns snow into rains.
...
It's very early in the morning of the first December day
Dark blue sky is clad with glittering stars.
On the hill, the hospitaĺ(*) is waiting for a new dawn.
Fallen leaves scattered late Autumn blue along hospital lawns.
...
by Zhu Zhu
(translated by Denis Mair)
Returning late one night
...
Come walk with me
On this midnight boulevard,
I’m by myself and so afraid;
Passing headlights are few
...
The most humorous
Car wreck I witnessed
Was on the old coast road.
I had returned to my cabana at dusk
...
An Assault on Obscurity is what i desire most
Be thankful for tomorrow may find you at your last
moment on Earth and at that moment
May you feel completely alive
...
Now that no one looking at the night—
Sky blanked by leakage from electric lamps
And headlights prowling through the parking lot
Could recognize the Babylonian dance
...
Memories scream at me, talking in
an emotional tongue.
Good memories; bad memories… Which is what?
Some memories are great, but
...
This northern city with headlights-eyes
Has buried me in its cold and gloom;
You'll see this place in a dreadful guise
And once sweet home will seem a tomb
...
Pause
A room filled with empty silences, lost words and now gone urges. Awkward sentences forced through what would be clenched teeth and zipped lips.
Maybe it would feel different a few days before. No forced smiles or inhaled conversations. No wondering what's going on in each other's mind. Is the grass truly greener on the other side? Or is it only greener where you water it?
...
Among the green gardens and charming, spacious house with doors
Made from diamonds, never exist in this world like my house
...
Looking into your eyes
is like looking into Medusa's eyes
I turn to stone
I am like a deer caught in headlights
...
Conversing in starlight
In a night of a thousand dreams,
We were laughing a midnight
Watching the headlights flicker by
...
Big sports weekend…
in a coupla hours, Wimbledon,
or to local residents, Womble-din…
...
In some last inventory, I’ll have lost a season
through the occlusion
of summer by another hemisphere.
Going there
...
Our city is golf cart friendly and now that we’re retired we thought, “Hey”
There’s a green way to get around and I can take it to work each day.”
So we drove to the golf cart showroom thinking, ‘How expensive can they be? ’
...
It's early morning. This is the "before,"
the world hanging around in its wrapper,
blowzy, frumpy, doing nothing: my
neighbors, hitching themselves to the roles
...
A sweet little girl,
born on the 18th of October.
She was new to the world,
so everyone charished her.
...
I'm all alone,
It's dark in here,
And for some reason,
I'm filled with fear,
...
The skyscrapers of New York will never know the coolness that comes down on Kifisia
but when I see the two cypress trees above your familiar church
with the paintings of the damned being tortured in fire and brimstone
...
Just like Christmas lights
The street lights turn on and off every second
The night guard of the bank has fallen asleep
Hiding his eyes behind those big eyeglasses of his
...
These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
...
I watched you go,
slide down the waterfall,
your headlights leading
perky
...
Lost in a dream
Walking a rainy boulevard
On St. Valentine’s Day,
I’m singing a woman’s name
...
I have a sense of desperation because
the next turn on this rutted road is blind.
I'm unable to control my direction, or destiny.
...
Pencil character sketches drawn on napkins,
greasy finger prints on doorhandles.
with the smell of diesel
in the vest of the stations attendant,
...
Flashing lights and neon signs
Pollute the darkest night
By lighting up the cubby holes
Where shadows go to fight
...
Sleep lies caught up in the curtains, in day times;
Curled in on itself, against the brightness of the day,
Squinting among the abandoned dreams from last night,
Still lying scattered, like discarded New Year's decorations.
...
You in the high-walled fortress of sleep
I on an island of wakefulness
bird-haunted, trapped by mist
...
AM NOT AFRAID TO DIE
I Guess We are who we are
Headlight shine in darkness
...
In the distance the bus stop waits
Married houses empty at dawn
Blinds open, doors open, the day starts;
Men and women walking down streets
...
I am the hare caught in the headlights
caught tight like steel noose around neck
bad timing no escaping impending roadkill ending
...