"blacktop" poems
dedicated to all the better poets here...
don't know much about a quatrain
don't know how to write a refrain,
surely could not compose a
courtyard elegy
maybe after
and still untilled,
I been buried,
'n checked out
the neighborhood competition...
as for limerick,
that is Dr. Seuss
and Ogden Nash's shtick
with whom, eye,
a believed descendant,
cannot compete...
Oh dear me,
no ode node-ed within,
as for a pastoral,
kinda hard to feat,
where I live,
a pastoral is grass cracks
surviving under,
breaking through to the other side
of concrete and blacktop rulers
Maybe one of you
will haiku,
send us a senryu,
send off, see ya!
the doc once diagnosed
a severe case of inflamed iambic pentametery,
with antibiotics and a diet of Hamletery,
was cured most satisfactorily
this silly pen-man-sinking-ship
ain't capable of dat,
boy how 'bout
an epitaph
for a graveyard stone,
should be plenty of room...
as it will be plenty short...
all eye see and all eye know
is vignettes that birth in me
walking down the street,
that's my bread and butter,
my soul's delicacies...
and moments that recorded
here, for a posteriored posterity,
as noted in my all my living
testaments,
drinking and spilling the vin,
from the uninvented igniting vignettes
that consecrate and connect our
knowing each other though odds are
we will never meet...we can yet
drink together
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Don't know much about the French I took.
But I do know that I love you,
And I know that if you love me, too,
What a wonderful world this would be."
May 3, 2015
May 3, 2015 at 7:50 AM UTC
Well I drive the speed limit,
When I'm on the blacktop,
Because ya ain't gonna know,
If yer gettin eyeballed by the cops.
When I see the gravel,
Comin' up around the bend,
I turn the corner, hit the gas,
And my tires start to spin.
I get my get 'em up stuck,
In my pickup truck.
The gravel gets my guages,
goin' up, up, up.
In my pickup truck,
Ain't no slowin' me down.
I love my pickup truck,
Kickin' up dust clouds.
If it's rainin', you're complainin',
About the mud and the muck,
But ya know that I'll be playin,
In my pickup truck.
I get my get 'em up stuck,
In my pickup truck.
The mud gets my guages,
goin' up, up, up.
In my pickup truck,
Ain't no slowin' me down.
I love my pickup truck,
Throwin mud around.
When your rollin' around,
On the ice and in the snow
Sittin' in the ditch,
your car don't wanna go.
Who's the one ya call,
To get ya unstuck,
Ring-a-ding-a-ling-a-ling,
Ya need my pickup truck.
I get my get 'em up stuck,
In my pickup truck.
The winter gets my guages,
goin' up, up, up.
In my pickup truck,
Ain't no slowin' me down.
I love my pickup truck,
Haulin' people 'round,
Time to move is here,
And I back up to your door.
Packing out your things,
Until my truck can't fit no more.
I get my get 'em up stuck,
In my pickup truck.
Helpin' friends gets my guages,
goin' up, up, up.
In my pickup truck,
Ain't no slowin' me down.
I love my pickup truck,
Helpin' friends movin' 'cross town
I can't get enough,
Of my pickup truck.
If I had to do without it,
then my life would ****
Ya know my life would ****
Without my pickup truck.
I would feel like half a man,
Without my pickup truck.
Oct 24, 2010
Oct 24, 2010 at 4:55 PM UTC
Blacktop, soft top, foot upon the gas
Highway, my way, miles of haulin' ***
singalong, bringalong music for the day
iTunes, my tunes, soundtrack all the way
sunshine, fun time, havin such a blast
drivin, arrivin, trading poetry for gas
Top down, drop down time for us to chill
Line up, sign up, still got three seats to fill.
Aug 26, 2010
Aug 26, 2010 at 12:08 PM UTC
Plip plop
Raindrop
Sliding down the window pane
Time doesn't stop
As it meets the blacktop
This liquid substance we call rain
The minutes they pass
Life's funny like that
How the world just keeps on turning
The moments, they don't last
Regardless of their impact
The clock keeps ticking, this I'm learning
Feb 4, 2016
Feb 4, 2016 at 2:59 PM UTC
There’s a distance, an echo
Of hollowness
Upon the blacktop
Asphalt concrete
Sidewalks 3 in the a.m.
I am more than
This
Heaviness
Like the iron bars
Of prisons.
Your faraway
Song, an echo
Of hallowed
Be
An Infinitesimal touch
Of infinite
Within the heart,
Fully filled by
Sublimity
Overcome to tears,
At dawn, like the sun’s
Brilliances.
Life
As evidence
Trillions all
In benevolence
Seeing
The light…
“I am more
Than this
Heaviness of
Emptiness
Within
My soul
I am
More
Than this …
shallow
Shadow’s
Hollow.”
I am ...
Aug 6, 2018
Aug 6, 2018 at 5:55 PM UTC
sleep walking through you
dead brain with a hard ****
a man
all pretense
hiding behind your skirt
who hurt you like a cold razor bleeding
and who was hurt by you
like a bullet in the chest
your charms killer ray guns
making me collapse from the inside out
like a house in flames
screaming
left out of your dreams
oh dread
an empty shroud
with a charred mouth
who twisted your heart out
a man with a winter corpse for a soul
short ***** and dead tree eyes
who ravaged your bones
and ate your marrow with belligerence
crushing your fragrant garden
my feet pebbles and stones
trampling your bed
while you sped by me
in your new man's muscle car
sneering
you
a laughing hot *****
wearing cold silver sunglasses
and flaming lips
that ***** hearts
blacktop down
in a red fast car
like a rocket with fat Dunlap's
spewing
mud in my mouth
like me
he looked at other women endlessly
like rows of sprinkled cupcakes
for the eating
loving their form
imagining their slick glide
and wet kisses
insulting your tenderness
so you would believe in nothing
until you where an endless black pit
until i found out i needed you
and it was to late for us
your absence a lesson
that your presence could never teach
like snow in the summer
in youth, i was a deadbeat
somnambulist
struggling with angels and hellions
tedium and desire
i feel
remorse for all i have done
and did not understand
only now dusted white am i ready to love you
so please come to me
and we shall make a home
of this tortured cage
and turn it to
heavens tremulous kiss
i have finally learned my lesson
have you ?
Mar 23, 2018
Mar 23, 2018 at 12:32 PM UTC
In class the big black and white tick-tock pinched
my mid-morning belly. When everyone else
borrowed numbers, my pencil lead and yellow paint
scratched out hunger. Minutes chugged like school
buses. Even columns of three-numeraled numbers
minused the bottom line, scold of lunch.
A borrowed quarter and dime from the office,
meant a secretary’s red-lipsticked mouth, bent
and accusing. Her coiffed curls shook my dreams.
I would starve before sailing into that office
for my little belly, but forever yearned for the secretary
to pet my hair. Say, “There, there,”like to a character
in a book rosy with girls in gingham dresses.
But, for all those lovely boats of hot lunches: meatloaf
with crusts of catsup like a winter cap, buttered beans,
dinner rolls
and cold-cartoned milk, not watered down--
Missing lunch, I'd hide out in the cold storage
room of sack lunches next to the playground.
While the others ate, I'd escape at the right tick
into the recess of blacktop and tetherball.
Feb 3, 2015
Feb 3, 2015 at 2:28 PM UTC
~~~@
**a maze of tunnels
under blacktop
a poesy of lilies dark as dusk
a bette noir drawn on
charcoal paper
an elephant's carcass
sans his tusk
the negative without a cipher
the poem written in the dark
the Good Book without a cover
the human blood that
draws the shark
as i sit here
twilight's falling
i'll sit here in the failing light
i'll sit here looking at black rainbows
til my heart bleeds its last goodnight**
Jun 16, 2015
Jun 16, 2015 at 10:43 PM UTC
On a long stretch of highway
his thumb to the road,
Leon set off to lighten his load.
No thoughts of tomorrow
no plans set in stone
just a few hundred bucks,
and a dream of his own.
Leon was weary of playing the game.
His boss and his girl,
they both thought the same.
Their griping and wanting
was keeping him tied
to a life that he loathed,
left him weary inside.
He would act on an impulse,
and finally be free
to do as he liked, and be who he'd be.
A fantasy stirring could finally come true!
No end to the wonderful things he could do.
For hours he walked,
while the headlights flashed by
light on his feet and a smile to the sky.
While on that same blacktop
Jenny drove on
anxious to make it to Phoenix by dawn.
It may have been fate or say what you will
that she spied him on time
as she came up the hill.
Surely this guy must be needing a ride
so she pulled to the shoulder,
letting Leon inside.
Jenny felt guarded while driving along,
not accustomed to helping who didn't belong
in the world that she lived,
and the life that she led,
ain't it funny how sometimes we do what we dread?
Her worries subsided in such a short while,
for he talked with such ease.
He had such a nice smile!
It's true what they say,
you just never know
who you might meet if you give it a go.
Just outside Phoenix the sun started rising
when Leon said "Jenny, ain't it surprising?
I feel like I've known you my entire life."
The last words she heard,
as he pulled out his knife.
Ain't it funny how sometimes we do what we dread?
Leon's still dreaming,
while Jenny lies dead.
.
Jul 26, 2018
Jul 26, 2018 at 4:49 PM UTC
the world is a wild and weary place,
fully sunk in spiral ******
fully strummed in skin water waves.
bound by death from the very first verse:
first love.
first this.
go forth my machines, be fruitful and jettison.
color says hang at the edge of our lips.
smell the books.
remind us; books.
& before the big blue vast takes it all, that
sunstruck lomographia light,
transposed no-makeup california girl, she
walks before me along the boulders of the wharf.
real summer breathing.
our bodies, piled
and starbleached ripe. [like heap of buffalo skulls]
maybe then a futuristic dinner, where everyone gathers in floating space pods
singing hymns beneath,
above,
between
the lights and music.
reality is: blacktop shards against my knees,
something burning as it trickles to my chin, man of me
living the city glisten, city green
& pink.
city midnight and barely breathing.
destroyers, we are.
and what? what am i, father? man of industry?
man of workwelded science? secure as the armadillo,
armadillo picket fence.
am i of halfbreed phosphorus?
americana?
built on love and hate and television.
nat geo channel: [a gecko licks dew from its eyes
on the coastal sand dunes of namibia]
money. women. go west young man.
be a hand tightening ribs.
be a quaking echo of mammalian design.
a paradigm of seed my fire.
quest for fire.
for uncut diamond; like foggy strawberry rock in the africa-boy's fingers.
or cut steel; phallus of toyish death between a brazil-boy’s fingers.
pulled teeth; bits of wet fruit in the young afghani’s hand.
& icecream trolley; pedestal etched iron; denim and *** and
microwaves ::::::
white man: what I got ? what I got ?
manifest destiny: gold bricks and beer.
blood soaked socks.
cyprus burnt umbers.
tribes decomposing at the bottoms of styrofoam cups.
like coin-op wormies.
& eighteen inch circumference blades make round rolling high pitched songs deep in the skin of old mother earth.
old baby cakes.
old life in slow motion, all motion, all
of particle cannon treatise.
40 ounce bounce.
watery us
below.
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 2:17 AM UTC
***** from the bottle,
Warm.
Hot dogs from the package,
When your down and *****
The grotesque becomes magic.
Pawning a guitar for a pellet gun,
To procure breakfast.
Squirrel stew in the back of a scamper camper.
Spotlighting bullfrogs,
And mopping floors for a hot meal,
And a cold beer,
And a sympathetic ear.
Nights when the blacktop turned into void,
And the painted lines became a tightrope to nowhere.
Full circle,
Bangor to Frisco,
Any woman who was willing to sleep in the bed of a truck
Was a queen for as long as she stayed,
Always had **** concealed on me,
The copper piece of road currency,
To the gold and silver, of *** and gas.
The exchange rates would change overnight,
But syphon some gas at a truck stop
And it all will be alright.
Misspent youth, following bands
And getting lost along the way.
***** from the bottle,
And hot dogs from the package.
Sep 26, 2012
Sep 26, 2012 at 6:35 PM UTC
When I was seven, my best friend and I used to dress up and have tea parties. We wore the torn, hand-me-down dresses from my cousins like they were gowns straight out of a princess’s wardrobe, and we were beautiful. We would prance around my room with purple plastic teacups, and there was no better place to dine than the blue **** carpet from Goodwill.
When I was seven I wanted to be a dancer. Not just a ballerina, no. I wanted to do everything. I watched with rapt attention as my cousin’s modern class tumbled to the floor of the stage, and as I stared at their neon colored tank tops and black jazz pants, it seemed that my world made sense. It seemed that as long as I was there on stage, dancing with the same skill and emotion and passion, I would be beautiful.
For my eighth birthday, my friend gave me the sixth Harry Potter book. My favorite character was Hermione. At recess, we would tie the sleeves of our red uniform sweaters around our necks and run around the blacktop pretending to play Quidditch. I thought Harry was smart and cunning and funny, but Hermione. Hermione was full of enthusiasm and rules and always made friends even if they were only in her head. She was top of her class with hair that everyone noticed and her brain was bigger than her group of friends at lunch and that was okay because she was like me. I never thought Hermione was beautiful. She didn’t need to be. Her bushy hair was full of intelligence and her buck teeth were strong enough to bite off the tongues of her oppressors and her dull, brown eyes weren’t dull at all because even the Whomping Willow began as a patch of dirt.
Hermione wasn’t beautiful like a garden. Her fiery eyes were dancing with flames that could wipe out an entire forest without even breaking a sweat. I have never wanted to be beautiful like a garden or the sunlight on the Fourth of July. As I tumble onstage in a blue dress with a tear in the front, my feet are ***** and my palms are sweaty and not one girl has brushed her hair. Footsteps pound the floor like a mighty pride of lions and hearts race as the bass drops and I am not a garden. Don’t you dare call me beautiful.
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 5:57 PM UTC
O' Warped Tour
On the hot blacktop we stand
In front of your various stages
The beautiful bands grace us with their angelic,
or if they prefer, demonic, voices.
O' Warped Tour
The people we meet
Girls in bikinis
Boys with ****** noses
Teenagers sitting on shoulders
O' Warped Tour
Mosh pits in the front
Singing in the back
Crowd surfing
To running circle pits
O' Warped Tour
With your merchants
And band autographs
With your cigarette smoke
And crazy teens
With your summer days
And loud music
We never want to leave
O' Warped Tour
We love you
May 24, 2013
May 24, 2013 at 12:53 PM UTC
Hey, wouldn't it be lovely
If we could set down our books
And sing to the sky
Like lunatics in the early dawn
I'm seventeen and I still can't talk
You forgot how to walk
And scraped your knee on the blacktop
I need a haircut;
Something simple that would leave it
Short on the sides and longer on the top
So I could style it back and realize my
Mirror-driven destiny
Hey, wouldn't it be great
If we could walk away and never look back
Like you knew how to walk
And I could still talk
Nov 17, 2015
Nov 17, 2015 at 12:23 AM UTC
Some of my friends swear they are, but I'm not.
(sonnet #MMMMMMCCXL)
Rain. Just a whisper as how twilight thence
Steals thinly 'cross the ist more fragile scale
Of wet? I caught that note in sweet all hail
To say "it can't be--!" puddles' ghostly sense
Now winking lightly from the blacktop, whence
That subtler voice of traffic hissing, pale
In deeper shadows' lonely wake, t'avail
Was't true, and phone recharging, what from hence?
I'm sleepy. Blackened silhouettes hulk fer
Good measure in the darkness, like a crew
Upon some ghastly mission as it were,
But I'm too tired for aught now, lying down to
Effect right in this stuffed chair. Call it poor,
And one espresso long gone, kiss me too?
02Apr17c
Apr 15, 2017
Apr 15, 2017 at 12:51 AM UTC
Hips hunkered, rise to dapple-blue-toned dusty seat
Flush arch cheeky blush, excitement
Droll eye-glazing blue pupil toned in sleepy drug haze
Wind whipping wild air rushing through tempered glass
Wubing whoosh of wheeled blacktop pavement
Colored in eerie sunshade yellow
Lined, darting-flash gold white boundary crossing
Tight knuckles, two hand hold
Blinking brown doe-eyed drowsy heavy lidded
Lolling head knocked back, head bash rested caressing faux blue
Ploom of dust
Dry-mouth open to catching fly’s
Or what’s left of dank-infused air
Quiet stillness
Blond hair crawling in busy wind,
Equally as gone
Thumping, jolting-momentum
White line boundary lost, wheels ended grass
Ditching down, dirt slid slide
Floating weightless suspended-nightmare phase
Snapping,
Awake! Awake!
Screaming slotted terrified,
Panic! Painful-heart-wrecking rob breath
Nose dive, mounded metal drive inching closer
Hairs-breath away
Afraid, screaming ****** ****** inside sealed lips
Brown eyes; lid white
Hands upon steering slack, loose light
Asleep, peaceful in calamity
Unnatural shake and tumble
Nail dug bleeding ache
Skidding gravel, tree lined doom
A god not believed in a prayer ensued
Shaking, the calm unglued
“Baby, wake I beg you!”
Brown quick electric wide
Screaming, Screaming
“Oh my God! Why!”
Swerve snake skin peelout
Black lane orange in night
An almost death.
Sep 21, 2012
Sep 21, 2012 at 4:08 PM UTC
The bicycles were a forged parent-permission slip
But well-forged.
I lifted myself over the tear in the truck's seat cover, not sliding
Not perforating further for today.
The road was short, short enough to have ridden the bicycles from first start to real start.
But that would not have been exotic
Connection is exotic, and channels must be followed through an antfarm
Proper etiquette must be observed with touch-me-nots
The bicycles were easier to lift from the bed with two
I gave him that, passing a front end, and jammed the wheelspokes with a jabbed finger
So that the damp spinning would not flick his face with groundwater
I expected it to hurt. My expectation tapped lightly.
That narrow pock-marked blacktop was my windtunnel
The air stroked its thumbs over my eyelids and I ached to push, breathe, push further
He held me back with his slow handlebars,
His slow kickstand clicking.
Pedaling slowly is more difficult than flying.
One finds gladness in choosing leaves to crunch with an inch-wide tire
And high-fiving low-hanging branches is socially satisfying.
He smiles behind the white mustache, and I don't mind.
Sep 14, 2014
Sep 14, 2014 at 11:17 PM UTC
I was not allowed to be angry, so I bottled and drank
my rage with wine chilled by too many ice cubes--
I suppose that’s why I shiver at inappropriate times.
My parents said: You have to be the better person.
Even as you ***** those girls, called my sister a liar,
mocked my mother and father as they drove to town,
attempted to arrest me for “demeaning of character.”
But I lost my temper, once, I felt it hot like nausea
creeping all the way to my fingertips before I
screamed and shouted and shattered two glass bulbs
hard against the tallest pine tree in our backyard.
I cut my middle finger picking up all the chips,
incidentally making me rethink my plan to punch you.
Instead, I imagined myself holding my father’s pistol,
the one he showed me how to shoot from 100ft,
complete with target acquisition training--just in case
you tried running--we both know you never
took me seriously enough for that. I bought a faceless
target shaped like a man, picturing your acne-skinned
cheeks warped with that smirk you wore when I tried
telling you to **** off. All this before my anger faded,
fog rising from too-hot blacktop pavement when the air
cooled, snowflakes falling as I stuck my tongue out,
swallowing each crystal like a word I could have said.
Apr 9, 2015
Apr 9, 2015 at 12:24 AM UTC
poisoned well of the antichrist littered with ground cover
picking out ****** flecks of gravel
blacktop kneeskin
patience pieces of scattered space time
to go back to the future of continuity
lack of genius ingenuity
and the suckling of the pig entourage
riding in a flat top hatchback
cadillac of the daily grind
upperclassman japan onii-chan
brother in arms from anotha motha
hug from afar colliding with crackpot theory
terrible fantasia cooling bricks in soggy sun
swallowed his pride with a glass of self-worth
and these ***** don't cook like they used to
I don't look like I used to
warped veil of camouflage chameleon leather
with a ****** level of automobile salesman
tried to get closer to god
ground him up, picked out the stems
twisted him into thin paper
touched flame to his finger tip and a son of Adam was born
gum shoe gaze
or the emptiness felt at the end of reasonable doubt
correctional text messaging system
sent from hoarse corpses
tenderly poignant in their ****** coffins
will think for food
cries from an outdated MENSA
over ***** and under-appreciated
siting on hunched shoulders to get a better look
to be a martian in a plain port
wharf warehouse whaling boat
red tide in a Shanghai **********
floodgates made of bitter premise
that last bit of purple yam
**** Okonkwo
Things Fall Apart fell apart due to faded highschool ambitions and bloodshot eyes
cruel like the shade of off-cerulean
champagne fizz tickles at the soft meat of his tarnished throat
and silver tongue
as the matchstick framework
so fragile in comparison
fizzles out on drenched sidewalk
while cigarette ash floats by
like gray gnats
May 30, 2013
May 30, 2013 at 4:03 PM UTC
Cloudless skies and
You & I.
A BBQ aroma
Levitates
Like those hummingbirds
Did you like that movie?
I've got to be home
Maybe 11.
I like your pick-up
It makes me reminisce
For an old home
With happier times
Maybe we
Could re-create those?
Looking at the blacktop,
I'll miss you tonight
You'd make a good father
Half-moon lover,
Let my dreams
Only be of you.
Jun 2, 2012
Jun 2, 2012 at 2:12 PM UTC
I didn't hold tendons between my fingers like
street boys on rain city rooftops,
crumpling their futures up to smash into shredded jeans,
shredded hearts,
some wrappers escaping, flying over this city
as our neglectful witnesses.
Their hands were broken bottles. The black top
made my guts look like escaping snakes,
my eyes hoping to be Medusa.
Fictionalizing gets me through most things.
Sometimes pain tastes like metal, sometimes like cherries.
I stare at the sideways sunset, a wrapper spit up
and drying out, a pipe dream promise;
reviewing my time strips as if they'd had a spelling change,
recounting every drop of blood word and smile.
Sometimes I forget that I'm real.
Sometimes I'm not.
Apr 27, 2015
Apr 27, 2015 at 8:22 PM UTC
“some say love is a burning thing. that it makes a fiery ring.”
so kiss her.
or don’t.
and always regret.
always bike home thinking.
always think of love.
she’s in a parking lot somewhere drinking cheap wine,
balancing on the bumper.
he’s on the river somewhere drinking cheap beer,
balancing boulders.
a dog sprints by and forgets all heartache.
he is happy.
the town and the people and the job and the dreams.
the nothings
and the everythings.
and the little life this is.
to slipstream years gone by.
one fire in the sky, or another in the hills
just west of town.
something said about the smoke.
we take a weekend to spool through the story of your folks.
film cans or video cassettes,
or home re-sets. rewind.
words and faces scrawled in a tome of note.
spoken little memories,
little mysteries.
stories to tell no one.
stories to tell those who will listen.
the boys with dirtbike brothers.
the brothers with drunken fathers.
the fathers with dead wives.
the wives with ancient mothers.
the mothers and their children.
and the children living well enough.
living calm, then free.
far away, then close.
an empire.
of highways and histories.
of songs and the souls they swing.
of old money/new money,
betrayal on the horizon.
blacktop jamborees and assassinations.
driveways and nicely neighborhood lit-upon lawns.
well-trimmed trees.
a never-ending tree of lovers,
grasped and gasping for the sky.
listen and wait.
for the sun to kiss the moon goodbye.
[a family and their dog.]
this chrysalis.
this coincidence that is us, on one good gust.
from heart to hand to sons and daughters.
synchronized to die and revive and imbibe along the ride.
a tableau of animalia.
feasting and sleeping and awoken
by the wide little world all around.
“we are fires in the night. let us bathe you in our light.”
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 21, 2014 at 5:46 PM UTC
Got an idea for a pretty poem?
Hold that thought
while Yung Joc finishes plz.
In the barnyard
in the suburbs
Blacktop recess was the best recess
cos we were kettled together
90s nostalgia is limited to lame t.v shows
why don't no one talk about the wet overcast no more?
Dec 12, 2011
Dec 12, 2011 at 3:31 AM UTC