"chugging" poems
"I haven't been myself lately."
And when I say that I mean
I've been spending Friday nights alone in my room chugging a 2L bottle of wine,
instead of hanging out with my best friend.
Because as much as I can't stand to be alone
My head is screaming at me that I deserve to be.
I mean that I can't wake up for work in the morning because I spent all night
worrying about everything that's going to go wrong,
And decided it wasn't worth it.
I mean that I haven't seen the sun in days all I see is darkness and Mom I don't know how to find the light again.
I mean I can't remember what it feels like to want to WANT to be alive.
But I can tell you all of the reasons I think I should just die.
I mean I lost my motivation to care about myself and maybe the voice in my head is lying,
But I feel like no one really cares anyways and why would they care?
I mean on Saturday night I sat in my bed for hours rocking back and forth,
crying uncontrollably with a bottle of pills in my hands
And I almost did it.
But I thought of you.
I mean that when I woke up in the morning I woke up with regret because I had the chance to end it that night
But I'm still here and I can't live with this pain any longer.
I mean that everything is still the same except I feel like i don't know who I am anymore
And I'm scared mom.
I'm terrified.
I mean that I am scared to live mom but I'm also terrified to die.
So when I tell you I haven't felt like myself lately
I really mean I need help mom.
I need it soon.
But I'm too afraid to ask you.
I'm too afraid that you're going to worry so much that you too will end up in this darkness
And it will be my fault.
I'm too afraid you'll roll your eyes and say "things aren't as bad as they seem sweetie. They will get better."
Because I know on paper everything looks fine.
But if you stepped inside my mind for just a minute you'd come back screaming "THINGS WILL GET BETTER BUT HOW DO I GET THERE?"
I'm afraid you won't believe me and I'm afraid you won't understand because mom I don't even understand.
And I'm sorry, that this is your child.
I'm sorry I can't control this and I'm sorry I have to put you through this again.
I just haven't been myself lately mom.
I hope now you understand.
Dec 14, 2018
Dec 14, 2018 at 7:55 PM UTC
Doom train hurtling along
Through the fog in my mind
Towing freight, rectangular and oblong
Dim headlights, you're travelling blind
Five carriages long, excluding engine and caboose
Metal against metal, spitting sparks on steel
Undetermined path, rails will choose
Chugging along on dirt covered wheels
In the cabin, I see the light
Emanating from your furnace
Swallowing up coals in your gaping bite
Tongues of flames licking the surface
Fire breathing, spewing thick black smoke
Almost unseen, against the dark of night
A long plumy arm as if extending to choke
And plug the remaining sources of light
Meandering precariously on tracks that weave
Over uncharted, unfathomable terrain
Your store, so reliably you heave
Worming your way through my brain
What's in that cargo of yours?
What lies within those boxcars?
What drives you to diligently run your course?
What fuels you to travel near and far?
Loads of self pity, self loathing and self reproach
Snaking your way to an unknown destination
Screeching brakes as if a stop you approach
Herald the train of dubious intentions
Light is upon you, dark will dissipate
Your plumes starting to lessen from your stack
The dawn breaking horizon you didn't anticipate
To see another charging towards you on this very same track...
Sep 27, 2014
Sep 27, 2014 at 4:16 AM UTC
Light train chugging, working to outrun
Over exerting, pulling along your freight
Sand is running out under the diminishing sun
Fastidiously you tug on your enormous weight
Segmented equal in seven hulking proportions
Weaving between sleeping rocky giants
Assertion in your drive gifted from the high heavens
Borne of light your cargo load of tenants
Silver blurred rays glinting back as reply
As you power your way through
Defying seconds, before the last rays should die
Against odds, delivering what is due
Questing to alleviate my inflicted darkness
Spear of brilliance slicing through my mind
Illuminating the farthest and tiniest of crevices
Nook and crannies that willed me blind
Careful manoeuvring to keep your balance
Through scenic views fraught with treachery
Furiously working to keep your cadence
Hopeful of unloading the load you carry
What lies dormant in that cargo of yours?
What sleeps easy within those boxcars?
What stokes the fire to diligently run your course?
What promises you bear, travelling near and far?
Bales of hope and crates of strength
Supplies of kindness and self-worth
Reside within your immense length
Intact and lay quiet within your formidable girth
Reliant on the light that fuels and feeds
Your axles seem tireless guiding forth those wheels
Thundering over land with the power of a thousand steeds
Armed to your teeth with alloys and steels
Expelling grit and dirt as you pummelled across
Grey-white fumes, shoot up to the sky
Flag flogged by wind, billow and toss
Blaring your whistle as you race on by
Propelling forward, horizon up ahead
There it is...in all its tenebrous glory
Darkened locomotive seething mad with dread
Brace for the clash and the loads the two carry
Sep 28, 2014
Sep 28, 2014 at 8:03 AM UTC
At Nineteen Miles An Hour, Smoking On A Train
chugging along the lilacs of twilight in the plasma darkening of a stretch
we fetch the improbable road to our destination. we give a **** but the birds are listening.
and that might lead to luggage. so much, you might sweep the light fantastic
into army hats. you might march a sustained coup on your hopeless epiphanies.
at nineteen miles an hour, on a train... you see your god.
are you too light to darken the right words
to a happy demise?
are your zeroes at odds?
Dec 15, 2012
Dec 15, 2012 at 4:05 PM UTC
There is a body floating in the water of Lake Michigan again, but no one is willing to fish it out. There is a body floating in the pond near my subdivision again, but everyone already knew that anyway.
I am sitting eighty miles away, overlooking a city that is not mine, thinking about how the moon outside my window is the same moon that you can see from down below in your partially frozen-over dirt bed. I am thinking about the vampire that sits in his apartment, chugging two-to-three bottles of blood a week, and wondering if he is haunted by the same ghosts as I am.
It’s taken me eighteen years to realize that I was infected with a different variation of his curse all along—I am less human and more lycanthrope than I would like to admit. I am not like you, I am not like him, I am my own breed and that terrifies me. (There are black cats prowling in my heart and fragments of mirrors in my liver and salt that bleeds from my heels when I walk.)
No matter how many rabbits’ feet I tie to my keys, how many dreamcatchers I put above my bed, how many cloves of garlic I hang over my door, I am never able to rid myself of the chill that goes hand in hand with the phantom you left here.
Mother, I think I killed a man two full moons ago and I haven’t been the same since. I threw his body into the lake and watched him drift out into the unknown, watched the kraken drag him down, watched the water spew him back up like a cork. And now I need you to make your way back to the land of the living to sit by my side. I want you to cut off my head and make me a trophy animal. Create a rug from my fur. Eat my organs and freeze the rest for winter. Use me for your own survival. I just want to be helpful.
I want to be everything the vampire was not but my fingers are breaking from holding on too tight.
I should let go.
Nov 4, 2014
Nov 4, 2014 at 2:06 AM UTC
As I sit here, at the dining room table and stare over decaf coffee at the screen on my Mac
my eyes are drawn, once and awhile, to the picture sitting on the buffet in the butler's pantry.
Before we continue you should know that "butler's pantry" in this case
means the "third bedroom" that we saw in the listing on Realtor dot com before we bought the house and that,
in the usual real estate-ese, is an optimistic label at best.
But I was talking about the picture.
The picture sits, slightly askew, in a carved wooden bowl given to us by my wife's boss
as a housewarming present.
It, the bowl I mean, came with salad tongs or forks,
depending on what it is that you call them,
made of water buffalo horn.
They sit in the bowl too and,
although she'd never admit it,
I know that the thought of serving salad with water buffalo horn salad forks...
lets just say.....
doesn't appeal to my wife.
Right, the picture....
It sits in on the buffet,
in the carved wooden bowl,
next to another wood bowl.
This one full of carved wood fruits and vegetables,
which evidently, includes sugar cane.
When my wife's dad moved from his house to an assisted living facility
the kids, my wife, her brother and sister, took turns going down to help him move.
My wife was the last and dad insisted that
someone
"had" to take the fruit.
But, the picture....
It, and the wooden bowls full of fruit and unused salad forks,
are surrounded by both faux and real glassware
and placemats
which all sit perched
on the top of the buffet as precariously as refugees
and all of their belongings
on the deck and roof of an overloaded fishing boat
chugging from their homeland
to some place that is hopefully better.
The picture...
It was painted by my father-in-law and,
of all the others we have in the house,
is one of my favorites.
It sits on the buffet, askew in the carved wooden bowl with the horn salad forks,
amid polycarbonate and glass drink ware,
and placemats,
unframed for some reason.
All of his other works came framed
but this is one he did not...
and did I mention that it is one of my favorites?
I like his choices of frames on all of the other pictures we have,
but this is just canvas, stretched over a frame,
sitting in that carved African wooden bowl
with those salad forks made from water buffalo horn
on the buffet next to the other wood bowl full of wooden fruits and vegetables,
and wooden sugar cane,
in the butler's pantry.
Jul 15, 2013
Jul 15, 2013 at 9:51 AM UTC
In a city full of tall buildings and unspeakable views,
breathtaking unknowns and unfamiliar faces,
there are those sitting on window sills
chugging bottles of brew,
leaving cigarette traces
She spends her days in a haze,
sharing little laughs that make her ribs ache,
all in attempt to erase you
It's only then she sees,
an imprint on the
soul is the kind of
stain that can't be
scrubbed
Apr 7, 2014
Apr 7, 2014 at 3:09 AM UTC
What are we doing out here
In the wild wild west
Are you showing me something
Or are we here to rest
We've traveled a long road
But I'm not ready to settle yet
Spider crawling up my arm one day
Blood on my quilt the next
Blood splot on the bathroom floor
Hair chopped off
Cut my finger
Cut that ****
Third eye minds eye know you can open it
**** nugs nudging you toward it
Chugging fluoride gotta know its blocking it
Depression crippling lazy thinking I'm not getting anywhere anymore
Dated a slick-back sexist slug of a human
He haunts me in my dreams
I'm trying to dream big dream of everything
But his face shows me where I've been
His hands done healing flex ****** veins, stop stealing!
His mom sewing his mistakes back together again, stop helping!
His dad fueling the fire again at home, stop procreating!
Its not the job of a lover to raise your significant other
Its not my job to shower you with everything I have day after ******* day when all I get in return is leftover pizza and a sore ******
-SOME PEOPLE DON'T KNOW HOW TO LOVE
IT IS NOT ON YOU TO SHOW THEM HOW
SOME WILL TRY OUT THE MOTIONS WITH OTHER MOTIVATIONS IN MIND
BUT LOVE IS NOT JUST AN ACTION IT IS TRULY A LIFESTYLE
Without love I would be dead
Fill
With intention
Else you're dead
Living isn't that easy
Same struggles every day
Being healthy isn't that easy
Definitely more expensive that way
Being human isn't that easy
Hunting my own spirit day after day
Not wanting
Feeling bad
Not supporting
But loving
I have something to say god ******
And don't dare tell me its just the drugs
We need to start questioning what love is
The lack of it is ******* stuff up
I'm high right now if you didn't know it
If I was sober would the words still come out
You say you love me but you don't support it
But how can you love if you don't understand it
Love is unconditional
Love is support
How are you loving when you try to change it
There is no fixing my humanity
You don't know what makes me happy
No one can be trusted
Love
Choice
Choosing
To be loved
Oct 18, 2016
Oct 18, 2016 at 4:27 AM UTC
I look up from my book
to find beams of warm sunlight
touching my face,
the chugging of the train
accompanied by its whistling,
become my aural companions
for the journey,
as I look at scenes that
unfold before my eyes :
I pass by hawkers
trying to sell their wares,
their calls mingled with
joyous voices,
of children
excited about their
first train journey,
of families
on their way,
perhaps, to attend a wedding,
or to celebrate the birth
of a much awaited child.
I see :
village belles toiling away
on fields;
shabby looking buildings
speaking of years of neglect;
temples ringing with the sounds of
bhajans being sung with religious fervour,
bells being tolled, pleading
the gods to look down
from their divine abodes;
roadside stalls filling the air
with aromas of food,
promising hearty meals.
They are all ephemeral sights, and yet,
they have become a part of me -
the smells, the sights -
they shall bring back memories
that will become my companions
in solitude.
Oct 18, 2012
Oct 18, 2012 at 4:17 AM UTC
I look at the mirror, someone's staring at me.
I'm eighteen, oh gee.
I get out. Everyone's smiling.
"It's your birthday!", smiles all beaming.
Yet deep down I am filled with worry.
What will my life come to be?
But alas, it is my birthday.
I've noticed how much I've grown.
My face hardly changed,
but I know my actions have shown.
I am now legal.
A great time for most.
No, I will not be chugging down alcohol,
but I will write poetry to sing my songs.
Jan 13, 2016
Jan 13, 2016 at 9:17 AM UTC
Retail-hunter gatherers pick
clean processed bones, digging graves
with their shiny teeth, studious in
their reveries as they drone
past worlds dumped in the thresher;
the trucked-in fields of film-wrapped
gore splayed lustily before the managers
wound tight in Machiavellian design.
A shepherd herds his flock of
wreathed iron back to its pen, its
skeletal tangle lit in riotous gold by
swords flung from lambent eyes of
pre-dawn’s shunting chariots
Cages shunt and bobble like tugboats
chugging stoic up swimming pool lanes
of nondescript tile, cheered on by shouting
colours to float through archipelagos of
paper towel and chocolate blocks past
the vegemite diaspora, and the arctic
wastelands cased in sliding glass fields of
perfect steady storms as wraiths baked in halogen
ask silent questions of the silverbeet, while
Lana Del Ray’s voice falls like
nightshade—slutty and serene—coating
shelf stackers in a Piaf sadness as the
shelves reach their arms out for more.
The check out chick hatches
a sense of déjà vu as carrots
and biscuits drone towards her
mind berEFT of any twitching
sense of POSsibility that wised
up and flew this leering coop and
deep in her catalogue of grey folds
something stillborn and waxen is
perched on gleaming steel, reeling
out her guts like cassette tape with jerky
nightmare arms and laughing like a
banker watching ***** films, mornings
dull cerise an invocation through
auto-jaws as she bursts out to warble
with magpies in car park’s climbing fire.
Jul 25, 2013
Jul 25, 2013 at 9:23 PM UTC
I grew up in a country
now I live in a business.
America has been stolen
and morphed into
a fascist Disneyland.
Our women are told
if they don't look
25 when they are 60
they don't exist.
Our children are taught
not to ask questions
or defend themselves.
Our young people
are commanded to go
to college, get on
the endless treadmill
of the American Nightmare
or they are failures.
We warehouse our parents
at great expense
so we don't have to face
the reality of death.
Our men sell themselves
for money and power
they can't take with them.
Courage, thrift, honor,
all replaced with greed,
the last recognized virtue.
The only remedy is to say no.
Try to remember what is important:
protect your loved ones,
love your friends,
reject the latest and greatest;
turn off your TV.
You won't change America,
that is lost for good.
But you might change yourself
which is much more important.
The rich will stay rich,
the powerful will keep their power,
the business will keep on chugging,
but you will be yourself,
a sane person in a country gone mad.
~mce
May 23, 2015
May 23, 2015 at 2:43 PM UTC
Summer was
******* on sugarcane and cinnamon peels
handed from your grandparents, occasionally mine
when our roller-skates made love to cracks in
the sidewalk
our knees were drunk on its feathers
so many specks of moss get caught in there, too
you taught me not to cry
or have that formaldehyde-chugging look
until I hit the bunkbed; your sheets made my sweat
look so much worse
we got anything we could want.
I wanted to kiss you when your wore your
Popsicle lipstick, a freeze cracking the crib of your
mouth and circling buzzards around.
But how does a girl say
she would rather have someone than a cigarette
stick of candy from the ice cream man –
the ones she would twirl like cherry stems
and feign middle school maturity?
We would whisper about things at night
with the lamp off, our pants down
but never ever love:
love is for adults. Love is Mardi Gras in the city
not powdered sugar from beignets
or the kind of beads you settle around your neck.
I wanted to be the bayou you swam in,
cast your fishing pole at the underbelly of and
counted how many seconds it took to lift back up.
I wanted to be a chest you put
your personal belongings in, a treasure box.
Most of all, I wanted
to be your personal belonging
the treasure you immediately thought of –
but that is not what Summer was.
Apr 2, 2013
Apr 2, 2013 at 5:18 PM UTC
red is the colour of blood that courses through your veins, pumping that blood chugging ***** in your chest known as the heart. red is the colour of your skin when you blush, like that night when i mentioned how beautiful you were in the pale moonlight. red is the colour of that dress you wore to dinner, the silk draped from your body in the most modest way, yet you looked like a queen. red is the colour of the jewels i bought you after we went window shopping; i've never seen such a pleased look on anyone. red is the colour of your lips, and when you licked them, they looked as appetising as a cherry lollipop. red is the colour your face got when you got those candies from the boy you liked; the boy that wasn't me. red is the colour my hands got after punching the wall a plethora of times in anger. red is the colour of love. red is the colour of jealousy. red is the colour of anger. red is the colour that wasn't in your face when i last saw you, arms crossed on a bed. red is the colour that spilt from my open wounds after i received the news. red is the colour i last saw before i saw black.
Oct 10, 2013
Oct 10, 2013 at 7:22 PM UTC
Set fire to the Antique Shop,
We’re one step ahead of the cops.
Mannequins of Elvis begin to melt.
Free from past matters; free from guilt.
Promoting the prosperity
As we hoard hostility
Androids ambushing Arkansas,
They seek to find ménage trois.
Achieving self-awareness
They want fill the void’s emptiness
Chugging R & R by the fifths.
By our thumbnails we dangle off cliffs.
Thread by thread, the veil unfolds.
Standing all alone, I’m left in the cold.
Show me how much you care.
Push me in my wheelchair.
Listening to what drives you crazy
Eventually helps you stop being lazy.
Lilly is spinning me dizzy
She belongs to the world of yesterday
The haze is now fading away.
If only I could stay
for just one day
But Behold
I feel you should be told
I have come from the end
When the Earth is condemned.
As I tell the tall tale,
How we came to live in hell,
once we found the holy grail.
“We overcame our fear
The classified was made clear.
We launched all the nukes,
By order of the Skywalker named Luke.
The framers were lousy architects;
They left the balance completely hectic.
The CEO’s got away with fraud.
Thinking their work was the will of God.”
I met you in the gloomiest bar.
We speed across the town in my car.
Questioning why we remained silent.
The flickering florescent light compliment
The tone of shallow yellow paint,
I can finally hibernate.
After I left the oblivious,
Do I finally notice,
It’s hesitation that leads
me astray from redemption.
TJW 2013
Oct 22, 2013
Oct 22, 2013 at 6:14 AM UTC
I keep losing my train of thought
I really would like to find it,
but sometimes I'm afraid I don't even have the ticket
I lost my train of thought
So I decided to go looking
When I found it, it was derailed off its tracks
Wrecked completely, in flaming chunks
I found pieces of it hanging from a cliff
Other pieces somewhere in the depths of the ocean
And yet more pieces,
Still on their track and chugging to their doom
I lost my train of thought,
maybe it's best I didn't have my ticket
May 22, 2014
May 22, 2014 at 2:07 AM UTC
What do you do when your pain killer
Is the thing making you hurt
And its dramatic irony
Because everyone knows it but you?
How do I fix it now?
Because I was chugging down an anti-venom
Only to find out that it was donated
By the fangs that pierced my skin.
What do I do
When theyve locked me up in a padded room
But then I find a way to hurt myself with the cushions?
How do I handle the fact
That the thing that was helping me so much
Was making me go blind
So I couldn't read its warning label?
I was treating you like a ******* medicine
But you turned out to be poison.
Apr 29, 2014
Apr 29, 2014 at 7:28 PM UTC
you're chugging wine at twenty-three
"i get nervous when you sit too close to me."
after a few, you touch my hand
pull me across the street, "i don't think you understand;
i don’t like the way you love,
shoulder to shoulder, i hate physical touch"
i lean on your bony arm and sigh
sinking beneath me, you’re afraid to die
i should've told you that when i come round
i like them tall, skinny, not afraid to drown
so tell me about those other girls,
was that last one your entire world?
did you float through her rivers, sail across her sea?
did she build you a boat out of your shoulder, neck and knee?
did you let her fingers run through your hair?
did you make contact besides a brown eyed stare?
well i too have a ship full of lovers,
they sing me songs, they pull me under covers
they touch my arm, my cheek, my thigh and lip
they fill the gap where you refuse to fit
i would kiss your face and let you drown
but you’d only let me if my hair were brown
May 18, 2015
May 18, 2015 at 6:18 PM UTC
He envisions the Machine as a large locomotive
Of a deep, tainted, black metal chugging down and infinite track
The eternally glowing red hot coals pushing the pistons
A giant crimson cowcatcher is fixed at the front
Scraping up followers; forcing them into the vehicle
Manipulating Its passengers to smash their heads into the Machine
Welding their minds into Its mysterious black metal walls
Stained with the blood of many who have tried to resist
Ultimately wounded, maimed, outcaste from society
Forever marked, branded by the scars of their attempt
When the Machine has used you and-or your mind to Its purose
It shoves you into Its furnace—keeping the pistons turning
The Machine cannot be stopped—always picking up followers
Forcing you into It; becoming one with the Machine
As He looks into the engine room, there is no conductor
A runaway locomotive chugging down the track with no end
Its only goal: gathering as many passengers as possible
Society, Washington, the Media built the machine
Their brainchild, but have long since become a part of It
Their minds welded the deepest—becoming the foundation of Its walls
Long ago abandoning their carcasses to fuel their mighty creation
Mar 12, 2013
Mar 12, 2013 at 5:16 PM UTC
i. no absolute rest
"yes, time
never did stop
for anyone."
but I add...
ii. no absolute motion
"even time itself
is an
illusion."
because
yours and mine
...dissent.
iii. backwards
maybe yesterday,
we could still
work things out.
--softer,
than lightly (3.0 x 10^8 m/s)
iv. implausibility
our foreheads wear
the cracks of our heart.
you lost your zeal,
I lost my saviour,
we lost each other,
but left
with osmium-clad
backpacks,
and collapsed
patellas.
E = mc^2.
v. our end
fact:
tomorrow
is inevitable.
fact:
screeching alarms
and lopsided bed-hair,
and chugging caramel lattes,
with precisely two tablespoons
of raw sugar--
fact:
forget among the clamour,
the shadow of your figure--
fact:
you are an
unearthed blackhole,
under the facade
of a supernova.
(your mass = 2.5(+) x greater than the sun)
Jun 28, 2016
Jun 28, 2016 at 11:01 AM UTC
Vultures breathe like dragons,
old chalky smoke dissipating into the two story windows.
They silently stalk the curvature of the walls
each step freeing grimy steam,
the constant chugging of a train.
Can’t keep their scarves under control
weaving like salmon up stream,
their stiletto heels making no sound
washed out by typing and keyboard sighs.
Apotheosis (Latin): to become god,
each word in these shelves claim emperor status,
fiction novels start their own scrapbooks
encyclopaedias reach the 5th floor
committing literary suicide.
Don’t keep books open
the words will float away.
Letters will do anything to escape their pages.
History on hierarchy
exploiting the 19th century microfilm
making a hierarchy in the history section,
jamming the 20 cent printers with advertisements.
Riots silently blossom,
hidden in broken globes
from Ecuador to Kenya.
They are uprising
burning the library down.
Jan 26, 2013
Jan 26, 2013 at 11:00 PM UTC
Ascent
The narrow passage arched over the gaping river
like a gymnast vaulting backwards,
gracing the ground with open palms.
I began to climb--
beleaguered on both sides
by insecure concrete obstructions;
I diverted my attention to the ascending road ahead.
I continued to climb,
like a slowly chugging roller coaster,
meekly scaling up the track
with subdued anticipation.
I sunk into the road;
the sky merged with my pseudo-perpetual path, forming the offing--
where it seemed the road ran eternally into the heavens.
I saw blue reach into black in the late afternoon's
fading visage.
Summit
Gliding over the mountainous ****
I stared over the horizon
where the sun was neatly tucked
under the trees--
silhouetted against the dusky sky,
looking like fingers reaching up into the void,
accumulating like earthly pillows to a heavenly face glowing brightly.
I watched a murky blue dip into a wet grass'd green,
then a traffic cone orange,
followed by the passionate (infra)red of two lovers' entwined,
climaxing in a jaundiced yellow--
tucked neatly like a layer of film
atop the silhouetted landscape.
Descent
I wished I had
descended the adret
of my ascension's perceived perpetual offing,
rather than this gritty one--
to dip into the horizon,
where I would metamorphose
into a dazzling array of colors;
feeling myself slowly fade away
into the impending night sky.
Tucked away for another day,
sleeping under the stars,
in the fingertipped forests
now obliquely reaching into their absent luminescence
but relishing the cool night air--
silently waiting for light
to soon again
breach their gloomy shells.
[Enlightenment lingered within the visions of my ascension--
I danced with its transient spirit at the summit--
to be decimated as the car lurched downward into mortality.
I saw what could be as I moaned into the
fading afternoon's dipping colors.
Who knew the descent was the hardest part of humanity?]
Mar 4, 2016
Mar 4, 2016 at 6:23 PM UTC
Ole jalopy
Chugging on down the road
•
__
(The heart)
••
Don't seem able to make it home
(But then again it always does)
••
We always DO find love
••
(If we truly want)
---
SOMETIMES WE GET SO HUNGRY WE JUST CAN'T EAT
••
Ole jalopy
---
Takes it real slow
••
Stops for hitch-hikers
Dogs
Kids
••
The heart of the matter
Meaningful discussions about the world
-
•
-
Once it stopped at a little cabin
For about 40 years!
••
Nice and easy
SAY!
Ain't it good to know that ole jalopy is around?
••
Seems we may need a ride
Some sweet Day
Nov 13, 2013
Nov 13, 2013 at 5:54 PM UTC
You can’t beat that musical beat,
From tinkling triangles
To blaring horns.
A quick ditty
Or grand symphony.
Music can mould mountains,
Oceans and plains.
Make you feel any emotion
Or atmosphere.
When songs and poems marry,
Their offspring are awesome:
“Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality…”
Mercury magic.
Those rhythms run like chugging trains.
They fight pitch battles
Within our brains.
Drums keep beating,
Guitars whine.
Ever repeating
All through time.
Chuck Berry with his rock and roll,
Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul.
Elvis truly was the King,
Want some crooning?
Play some Bing.
Beatles, Queen or Stones,
Who really cares?
Roll over Beethoven
Bach or Lennon
On your dancing squares.
I know that rap can give you the blues,
But there’s so much music
You’ve got plenty to choose.
Musical memories adorn our minds,
Warm associations
Of nostalgic times.
Paul Butters
© PB 4\3\2019. Last stanza added 6\3\19.
Mar 4, 2019
Mar 4, 2019 at 11:46 AM UTC
A train howls through the distant summer
again tonight. Eighteen years now
I've spent lying in this bed and how
can I not yet place that howl to
any track other than Howl
by Allen Ginberg, still resting on my nightstand,
its sentiment about alarm clocks one wrong
(all mine are broken and
there it is again, chugging along
through the darkness that dances) simply because I
cannot see it?
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 11:26 PM UTC