#hitchhiking
Great stone dragons,
Teeth like knives, wild eyes,
Guard the steps.
Thin women in black,
Solemn as mourners,
Watch us from the gates.
A guide in a tall hat
Welcomes us, bows low,
Palms against the sky.
We’ve travelled far
By boat and rail to reach this place,
This mysterious jadegreen land;
Yet even here, where many-headed gods
Once had such silent authority,
And even today the lizard Antiquity
Slithers and crawls,
The McDonald’s on the corner
Is crowded with Americans.
Jan 12
Jan 12, 2026 at 2:54 PM UTC
We’ll hitchhike to mars
on a rocket not a car,
so say your au revoirs.
We’ll steer towards Polaris, the north star
right through the center of the milky-way-bar.
See, the universe is dark and chocolatey.
Stars that glitter like multi-faceted gems,
are just shiny, yellow, peanut M&Ms,
take a handful, if you’d like, they’re free.
We’ll dodge the silhouetted moon,
which is made of enough coconut macaroon,
to make a French confectioner swoon.
As we go streaking, like a comet’s tail,
drag a finger through Saturn’s rings as well,
those are made of marshmallow.
We’ll pass nebulae made of cotton-kandi,
and here’s a fact Einstein would have found handy,
the speed of light doesn’t apply to candy.
.
.
Ramble on by Toni Jevicky
Jun 19, 2025
Jun 19, 2025 at 11:25 PM UTC
Sweet unction, resolve
And in a heart's stare, the pining of salt
Has found me, the ruse and the finger of all
Sincerity is such a chaste hero, with joy for fault?
Poise to venture a laugh, were we the voice of simplicity?
Cause curious, or the vows of dismay, in the way
Have we the each, a realm to better asking, a silence...
See and prove, the march of time in the name...
Of powers poor enough
To wait on silence, once upon an eye
Here is your avidity, taken to fate still aloof
Since you do, am I a wish in the past of could, I whine?
Spoken and told to sleep well and fair, I know you
With the cares and veracity, we dote is a memory to youth
Where waking up to the point, is still a history we should
With noble lips, and reasoned kisses, that complete the truth...
Soul's with a biding, a presence of mind
That look and that music, of estranged desire, come home
For a salty wish in the name of more silence than kindness
Shall, the sojourn to yet and overt, is the only way to love them...
May 31, 2024
May 31, 2024 at 8:50 PM UTC
I’m not lonely
But these roads are
Teeming with ants and birds soaring above
I drive on by, past them all and the clouds too
I’m not lonely
But this car is, this heart is
I miss the days when it was the other way around
When I had someone to chauffeur me
I dream of you
Standing in the tall yellow grass
Thumbs up and a cheeky grin
I don’t drive on by
I dream of letting you in
You laugh at the CDs I keep
All by your feet
But you like the music anyway
I ask of you, “Where you headed?”
You just laugh
And my cheeks turn red
But it’s not because of the summer sun
I sing with you
And you love the lyrics
To these old rock and roll songs
But we don’t part ways
I kiss you
Maybe not then
Behind a grimy windshield
But eventually
We don’t part ways
Instead, we keep each other company
In this dinged up white car
On grey-blue lonely roads
But you don’t exist
Not outside my mind
Not outside my heart
Not outside my words
So, I implore you,
That when we meet
I want our story to be
Of a happily ever after
And not a Twilight Zone episode
So,
Mister Hitch Hiker,
Do you reckon I can give you a lift?
Jun 20, 2019
Jun 20, 2019 at 10:06 PM UTC
He’s been on the road
coming home
from
Arizona flagstaff
wearing his
jury rigged knapsack
with plastic
and cloth bags
strapped together
by an orange cord.
Sixty something,
tan skinned,
and missing teeth,
I find him
on the off ramp
as I head out
to work.
Sign says Springfield
but he is trying to
get back to
Chicago.
I almost pass him by,
but I remember
a younger guy,
the good man
I used to be.
He asks me to be
kind again.
I tell him
I’ll drop him
halfway there,
but he offers
a traveler’s perspective
and excellent conversation
so, I take him as far as I am going.
We roll in
just in time
for him to miss
the storm coming,
and part with
a handshake
and goodwill,
I forgot how good
that feels.
Jul 1, 2018
Jul 1, 2018 at 11:02 AM UTC
I’m here to capture birds!
Exclaimed the hiker in the back
We’d made the call to pick him up
Along our dusty track
He spoke at quite a volume
And his statement had me fear
Just what kind of character
Was riding with us here
And it was with due concern
We were alone it did occur
As upon our exploration
Of the great outback it were
What does he do with birds?
I thought to myself and friend
By her glance I saw that she’d
Considered the same end
Perhaps he’s meaning humans
When he speaks to us of birds
Playing time to make a strike
Misleading with his words
We best get to the bottom
I don’t like the sound of this
And who the hell captures birds?
There is something here amiss
Tell us more dear hiker
For we don’t understand
Do you mean your taking photos
Of birds in this great land?
Again he answers loudly
Cameras are no match
Birds don’t sit still, so with his eyes
He considers it a catch
Things become much clearer
And I feel somewhat a fool
He’s just an honest birdwatcher
Doing it old school
And he’s from a foreign country
Dutch I hazard the guess
Are you from the Netherlands?
He replies a booming yes!
The man has quite the passion
He’s travelled very far
Just for our birds, first by plane
And lately in our car
But we are in the outback
What on earth brought you here?
Twas by the train with a few stops
For rare birds that I could peer
This hiker most impressive
Tell us more of what you’ve seen
Speak of rare birds you’ve captured
And places that you’ve been
I have been to Epping!
Loud and proud he is again
I stayed with a friend
And caught your fairy wren
I have been to Capertee
And nothing could be sweeter
Than spotting a rare endangered
Regent Honeyeater
I’ve been to Lake Menindee
Full it’s quite the site to see
But pretty rainbow bee eaters
Are what appealed to me
Outside of Broken Hill we were
When our paths converged
We to spot rare flowers
Him to capture birds
We reached his sanctuary
And dropped him at the gate
Sorry that we couldn’t join
The day was getting late
We made for sculptured sunset
He waved grateful, on his own
As we drove off, we wondered
How the hell would he get home?
Jan 26, 2018
Jan 26, 2018 at 8:57 PM UTC
Standing at the edge of a pulsing highway, thumb extended, a lighthouse beacon under an early sky, raining hues of blue. A meadowlark stops to chirp, waiting for a ride on the next gentle breeze to somewhere. Grass whispers to the pavement. Gravel crunches under foot. Speeding cars drift slowly by on this never-ending road to nowhere, leaving their noxious gases floating, polluting the stillness of the morning air. Getting from here to there is a gas.
license plates fade
into the horizon...
dusty shoes
Dec 2, 2017
Dec 2, 2017 at 1:12 PM UTC
Droplets of sweat flattened on our foreheads under the weight of a mid-August sun—flattened into ovals of sticky sodium, catching specks of stray dirt swept into the air from the passing semi’s and transport trucks, whipping the wind into torrents of chalky highway dust.
Pressed high against the skies curved plain, we used our thumbs to browse the passing cars like pages of an anthology enclosed by a narrow spine of asphalt.
But when one pulled onto the shoulder and we approached the passenger side window, we too were ****** with the expectation and appeal of a library—mutually eager in the labour of conversation for the currency of experience.
For a moment, as the prairie receded in the side mirrors, our car became the baseline of a frantic cardiogram, crowded by the landscape of rising granite walls and low-hanging canyons, and the space between our separate lives closed like parallel lines drawn by gravity to a magnetic core.
We pushed our destination west, as far as it would go, safe on the heels of expectation. In motion the passing towns crackled like neurotransmitters firing signals over axons of black asphalt. But each time the car slowed to release us, one more they faded into a rancid stasis, that, once more, we aimed only to depart.
Sep 16, 2016
Sep 16, 2016 at 7:41 AM UTC
The man beside me, he spoke in staccato sentences – as if his lips had forgotten the shape of words.
He said he’d been walking a long time, with a hungry thumb stuck out into the road, grasping for the wind beside passing cars. With tired eyes he watched them move on and blur into the faraway horizon.
He’d spent many days out there beneath the meat-eating sun, hoping to find himself in the shade. By night, he slept beneath blankets of stars and dead leaves.
A ghosted-out drifter upon the loneliest roads, appearing only in the transient headlights, and then gone.
I asked him where he was headed; he said it wasn’t what pulled him, but what pushed him instead. There was no beckoning light. He said the shadows, they snapped at his heels, and there was something in the deep lines upon that weather-blown face, like country roads – and I believed him, and kept my foot down upon the pedal.
He said a lot of things, in that strange, broken way. He said a lot of things for the longest time, and then for a longer time still, said nothing at all.
I’m not sure which was worse.
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 6:59 PM UTC
When backpacking, there are certain
rules that everyone knows like
take less than you can carry;
you’ll pick up things as you go.
Be careful when hitchhiking;
follow your gut instinct. Always.
Stick to your budget;
you don’t wanna run dry in Kansas.
What no one actually tells you is:
Don’t fall in love
with a town or
with a boy in a town.
Oops.
A boy who is settled and nestled in a town is dangerous.
The other roaming, free-loving boys are fine, because
they understand and you understand
that, like a Lynyrd Skynyrd song, your
both freebirds who must be traveling on.
These boys are easy to love and set free.
Townies, on the other hand, are like rose-colored poison
which seeps into your every thought,
but then you don’t really mind.
They show you that their quaint little town
doesn’t just look like magic.
It is magic.
They show you that there’s something beautiful in
greeting the mailman with
“how’s the wife?”
the charming town diner
where the pie is county-famous
the declaration of love on the water tower
written in red spray paint.
The boy shows you how to fall in love with a town,
and in the town you fall in love with the boy.
They should start printing warning labels on backpacks:
WARNING: don’t fall in love with a boy
who is settled and nestled in a pint-sized town
because he will clip you wings.
Oct 7, 2014
Oct 7, 2014 at 3:53 PM UTC