"dealership" poems
My shoelaces flap side to side like one of those car-dealership inflatables arms-
My veiny stompers pump puddles of pure procrastination from perceptive sprinting-
Underneath the tune-buds, I cannot hear my sneakers scraping the scrap rocks of gravel-
To my left- a hooting owl habitats itself in a hushed game of charades-
To my right- a slick tree frog flies freely from a lofty leaf and lands in the lagoon-
Elapsed images of elastic languages fill my mind with everlasting wisdom-
Entertained by the watercolors, my canvas curdles and secedes the state of mind-
Pressing harder- the curtain continues to close as I chase the condescending daylight-
Pressing softer- the tuner in my temple turns into a terrorizing shriek from my tibia-
Nov 20, 2014
Nov 20, 2014 at 3:41 PM UTC
In the morning the mist arises
but some will say it is
yesterday's hubris.
I dont have an attic
to wayleigh communications
or require windows
to twitch gingham curtains
so the deep chill
void remains.
A debutante passed by my uncut grass
but she was no better served,
a dream interview with ******* Club
turned sour, this time of year.
At least she hasn't endless dealership openings
or humoured the word "exhilarating" in interviews
when inventing a rich Stepfather.
Like me there be few visitors.
Thirty stubborn years will pass
but at least she know the meaning.
The pride of the morning.
Apr 24, 2012
Apr 24, 2012 at 4:11 PM UTC
Exchanging or replacing an old automobile
can be an intensely emotional experience for anyone
I still have the license plate screws from the first car my mom sold
although I didn’t care at all when my dad sold his car first
I remember crying at the dealership when they took my mom’s Toyota
I don’t even remember my dad telling us he got a new Ford
backseat on the left, behind the driver, was my designated spot, still is
I kept them in an empty Hubba Bubba OUCH! Gum tin, the screws
sometimes I’d open it up just to hold them
and wonder why I’d cared so much about that car
Jul 31, 2018
Jul 31, 2018 at 10:52 AM UTC
Budding with excitement and seemingly pointless fear,
but I held a new life in my hands shown through a *** of all my savings.
My eyes dart wildly in awe of all the different cars,
big ones, small ones, new ones, and foreign ones.
Everyone smiled at us - the dealers and the other buyers who walked out with
shiny, new vessels as if it were nothing.
Nobody knew this was our fifth dealership, even we pretended to lose count
maybe this time we’ll leave with something.
I know they can see how badly I yearn for a car of my very own
that I can say is mine,
that I worked for it,
that I can watch age through the years.
Mar 11, 2019
Mar 11, 2019 at 1:20 PM UTC
Is there anything as special
As a sister's love?
They are right there with you
When push comes to shove!
They fight for you
Have light for you
To show you that they care
They grow with you
And sow with you
The mem'rys you both share
Sometimes they may not agree
Sometimes even fight
But that's because they want the best
And they know what's right!
It's my sister's birthday
And I want her to see
She is near and she is dear
In my memory
So here is a story
I remember from her past
It tells of her character
She's a fighter to the last!
~~<♡>~~
When my sister was still going to the University of Arizona here in Tucson, she had a motorcycle. Which had a proclivity for breaking down. Well, it was getting on toward summer. And the bike broke down many miles from where her mechanic was located. She had no money to get it towed. So my hundred and twenty pound sister pushed that heavy motorcycle all the way to the dealership! The mechanic was agog!
He couldn't believe she had lugged that motorcycle all that way! He told her, "Honey, you have some *****
This is the way my sister is. Beautiful, brilliant, and brave!
I am very proud of her, and I'm honored to be her sister!
♡ Catherine
Sep 24, 2016
Sep 24, 2016 at 4:06 PM UTC
Wondering what that feeling is that is so intriguing ,
Why haven't I felt this way before,
His big brown eyes that smile when he looked at me,
Just as I noticed him walking through the dealership door,
I'm frozen in time and memorized by his hands holding the key,
the key that's opening doors and breaking down walls to my soul
To-day isn't about automobiles it's about my heart, it's about me.
I'm mesmerized by his body and spirit, knowing I must concentrate by his practical goal.
I can feel my heart pounding thinking as if he could hear it.
As I look to him to give my presentation, loss for words as my body takes it's part
Again and again I'm searching for words, thinking , feeling like a idiot,
walls going up all around me, fears of the past surrounds me, shutting down my heart.
He's the one, never felt like this before, my heart and body is taking on a new feeling,
Part of me wants to turn to run and the other part of me wants him to take me in his arm.
I'm trying to concentrate why he's here, Can't he see it's about me and not the dealing.
He's a mechanical engineer from the cities and I'm just a women that has lived in the county on the farm.
Two worlds so different but yet so much the same, I want to get to know him, this is no game.
I can't breath, Fear stops people from moving forward if they don't take that chance
Standing so close to him and looking in his eyes watching his mouth as he speaks, listening to his manly voice.
Just turn and run, your not his type I tell my self, Every excuse except having courage to stay in the dance.
Oct 22, 2013
Oct 22, 2013 at 10:12 AM UTC
black coffee
6 a.m.
old garages
tomato sandwiches
toy planes still in the plastic
Margaritaville on casette tape
Sunday's are car dealership days
tabasco sauce on every dish
two-bite pinchers when we were kids
every boy's name is Mitch
May 27, 2015
May 27, 2015 at 1:04 AM UTC
Digging through the pile, always looking for a match
Some thing to stop the pain, some kind of fix or patch
She knows not what she needs, but searches nonetheless
She knows not what's her goal, she does not reassess
Why’s she searching in a junk-yard, when no dealerships are closed?
Why’s she searching for the parts with which others have disposed?
She often finds a fix, or finds some thing to use
No logic when she looks, why search when you can choose
The only parts that fit, only work for a while
The only parts that fit, are at the bottom of the pile
Why’s she searching in a junk-yard, when no dealerships are closed?
Why’s she searching for the parts with which others have disposed?
The dealerships still open, her heart it still does bleed
When will she stop this search, they'll sell her what she needs
Money's not the issue, for everything is free
Money's not the issue, I'm sure she would agree
Why’s she searching in a junk-yard, when no dealerships are closed?
Why’s she searching for the parts with which others have disposed?
Now she starts to panic, the salvaged parts were cheap
Knows not what to do so she falls over to weep
She realizes now, the junk yard parts all break
She realizes now, she's made a huge mistake
Why’s she searching in a junk-yard, when no dealerships are closed?
Why’s she searching for the parts with which others have disposed?
Thinking clearly now, she knows where she must go
The pains already stopped, her face is all aglow
She knows what she must do, the junk yard she must leave
She knows what she must do, and what she can achieve
Now she's shopping in the dealership, where everything is free
Now she's shopping in the dealership, the dealership is me.
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 2:56 PM UTC
I
kept saying “I’m just glad no one got hurt,” last night when
I crushed a car driving a semi.
Just about to sleep
on the road by the sugar factory in my hometown
when I heard a horn honking and people yelling at me.
Before I heard aluminum bend at once.
I recounted it to spectators after the fact--
IN MY DREAM--
it was this
yelling, this
honking
inDICTED the victims in my
mind.
That road was endlessly wide.
Their car could have moved enough to miss me; they wanted to
get hit.
For the insurance, maybe.
Who knows?
IN MY DREAM
people get right out of smashed cars.
Below your driver’s side door giving silent, dis-
approving glances within seconds of your palm-
shielded face;
After it had started to get dark
I remember how my dad had
our truck down filling up
on the corner with
scraps of steaming
food.
I noticed potatoes
cut into halves and
fourths piling in and flowing through the broken
tailgate. I knew
where that truck was going:
back to the country.
Where I was told to park my truck and RUN. in-
stead of
crash into the city. Then I saw the insurance adjuster, ask-
ing him,
“hey,
how much will it cost.”
“Some
number that doesn’t surprise me.”
I walked to the corner, past a car
dealership which doubled as a
firework
stand
in the summer
when I was young
and still does.
Feb 19, 2012
Feb 19, 2012 at 10:59 AM UTC
Through the glaze of snow falling from ninety-nine cent aluminium, we'd taken the remains of a novel formulation to remove the stars from the sky and plant them in a field. I took crushing endlessness and the heat of leaves growing in moments to make the autumn of a town I hadn't yet seen. This is how I escaped from the sealed-elevator flight plan the first time; talking had failed me, pinned against the face of a fleeing infant. His mother could never find a way to paint him as a forgery, a skeleton, and make it stick, so he coughed rough and eloped from the schematic with his brother as their father remained on the ground, paying out the parking lot tower fees, unaware that he, himself, was only a figment.
and I, just another figment, ventured off into the village, the leaves cascading and trembling, the gold of their hues dissipating as the flight crew shook a lifeless husk, spent lives ago, now, with the clamour of shells dividing, each split or junction or birth yielding arcs of light as my sister tells me how the strings she pulls around her wrists tell metric time whilst I brush my hand against concrete and glass, leaving traces of skin within the grain, sloughing away finally in the small moments as I float through an antique dealership: mahogany gods, carved tall as redwoods, and bathed in mist like the western coast at dawn.
and I, indifferent to the television sets implanted between memories, broadcasting coffee-stain eyes lost midsummer years ago, still indifferent.
as I finally reach the elevator, the last level, the depth below, struck me. I am the test subject, my irrealities are just trying to get out, to survive this feigned life, to be born into the world I frequent. They are abstractions and know it. I have not said a word as I step out onto that plane, amidst the rising roar of engines and the row of the crowds and the swell of my emptiness.
I breathe in and become the field, at last.
Mar 16, 2013
Mar 16, 2013 at 1:02 AM UTC
If you could only let it drop
we would not need to bear it:
that holy hoity-toity
illiberal burden you announce
from where you wear it.
Would you then be able to live
with your fellow citizens:
fellow toilers in rhyme
buying gluten-free time
at Whole Foods
US; your citizen-neighbors
online cloud of witnesses
Looking at used Subarus
and paying our dues
with you
at the dealership.
Could you only see
through deplorable eyes
and love with a deplorable heart
you would appreciate the art
of the real deal,
loose the seal
of your own apocalypse;
let love reveal
landscapes your pride
has kept hidden for too long.
If you could let your hatred drop,
Slough off the smug and the sneer
If you could stop
signaling to your own
long enough to know REAL diversity, and live
perhaps you’d give
a thought to your own fallibility
lost in a forest of woulds, failing to see
Your neighbor’s Tree of Life. . .
But you are busy perfecting strife,
screaming Timber!
before the axe has even been laid
at the root of your poetry.
If you knew, as the rest of us
how often you have shouted thus
you could understand why
we tend to ignore your warning cry.
Perhaps it could be feasible
to stop blaming
that orange source of all unreasonable
derangement, cease from naming
your neurotic projections
as they are unscrewed
to reveal another inside:
crazed conspiratorial Russian doll
of your own
discredited obsessive offended perpetual alarm.
Apr 7, 2019
Apr 7, 2019 at 6:16 PM UTC
This car dealership coffee and styrofoam cup,
Makes me wonder how I'd live,
If I were to surrender or run,
Everything seems so paper here,
So two-dimensional so thin,
Suburban castles could be blown away by reality's wind,
I wonder how the people still exist,
Cardboard prop ups,
Nobody knowing the world or love,
Just what propaganda has told us,
Nobody realizes we are not alive,
Slaves to the modern idea of conformity and strife,
People claim find god in glory and wealth,
Along with a prescribed happiness,
But god drifts in the air and in the sea,
She is the desert breeze and the rain of spring,
Wars rage over unknowns rulers' precedence,
Rather than breathing the carcinogen air of humanity's present,
And I just watch,
Drifting to come close to living,
Loathing to come close to loving,
Mentally deteriorating to come close to reality,
Dying to come close to faith,
Dying to come close to an escape,
Dying to come close to clarity,
To life,
If I were submerged in the dirt,
I'd be held by god,
And embraced by Allah,
Consumed by all deities who are one in the same,
And loved for what stories my disintegrating bones told,
Rather than my fresh faced human skin,
Rather than my cardboard exterior,
Rather than my papered mask,
I'd find life by dying,
And faith by death,
So ask me once more why I smile through my cancer bearing 7 minutes of heaven,
In this paper mansion of a business,
Ask me why I let the caffeine soak through my veins and over stimulate my heart,
From this industrialized styrofoam cup,
Though you already know,
I'm only doing what we all are,
Trying to find out how to exist,
Only I've realized it's not about life,
It's about the exit.
Jun 29, 2014
Jun 29, 2014 at 3:53 AM UTC
Valentine's Day Shopping...
She had a
Mercedes’s face,
a Porsche body,
and a Maserati
libido.
Sadly, I was at
the wrong dealership
looking at
the wrong model.
Feb 14, 2017
Feb 14, 2017 at 6:52 AM UTC
A big American auto dealership shining bright
Silver columns glint in the morning light
Displaying brand new cars at different angles and heights
It pops out of the dull landscape like a bright star at night
But it was not so long ago
That we were about to lose this all
And I remember the swan song before the fall
It's amazing it's there now, standing tall
I was living in NYC
Married, my husband and me
and it was all about the SUV
we saw no reason to conserve any energy
The rest of the world was thinking
Our resources are shrinking
Maybe our cars, should, too
And that was really the thing to do
But ask an exec back in Detroit
What to do right now, what is right
And bigger is better like might makes right
Would be the answer, a sorry plight
And then it all crashed and burned
would not work, like an SUV that could not turn
down a narrow street in an older part of town
made before we thought less of me and more of the crowd
And I'm not glad for the greedy execs
but it was really about American workers necks
I'm glad we helped the car industry
Will it happen again? We shall see.
Dec 24, 2012
Dec 24, 2012 at 4:28 PM UTC
I want to love
You
In text
Possibly in ***
Not with interest
But a blooming ****
Needing to eat a seed
Contracting the cold
Ending the clutch
Of life
Everlasting
In a haven of oil
Sidelined to be controlled
And subordinate
To ambition
Fur is my harvest
Wool, not grain
Or wheat
Definitely not grain
Or a Nissan
The constant Japanese falsehoods
Toyota is Japanese
But it is true and sound
Without regret
Regarding
And obeying
Its self-check-up
I'm enthralled
By decision
To buy from the dealership
Feb 2, 2018
Feb 2, 2018 at 12:19 AM UTC
Lucy was majorly bummed,
looked seriously glum,
said her Daddy had taken
her T-Bird away,
wasn’t have much fun
anymore.
I said, “Are you freaking kidding me girl,
clearly you could buy a ‘Vette
& have just as much fun!”
Then she smiled with
that Lucy-gorgeous-smile
& replied,
**** straight Jonny,
think I’ll head down to the dealership,
check thinks out,
there ain’t no way
Daddy’s gonna rain on my parade!”
Jan 25, 2014
Jan 25, 2014 at 12:47 PM UTC
I know you have kids to feed,
But I must say what I need,
I am no thief,
I did not steal from you,
And our boss already finished the deal,
I owned what I worked for,
You don't get to carry the sins of the father,
unto the son. Because it suits you.
You curse the dealership for approving deals,
That make you lose money in peels,
But you want my losers,
You have to ask everyone for yours,
I earn mine, and never have to ask anyone.
Please stop accosting me.
Do not tell me, that my father thinks I am Greedy,
Do not tell me that I don't know anything,
That what comes around goes around,
Do not call me, The kinkiest ************ you know,
And say you wont do buisness with me,
Any more,
And then keep coming to me,
And lecturing me,
And riling me up,
And stressing me,
And making my heart burst up,
Leave me alone.
Fight someone else,
To get what you think is yours,
While I'll sleep soundly,
Maybe tomorrow,
Knowing I did what was right.
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 5:23 AM UTC
Folks shopping for a car at a car dealership
is a depressing sight out of the car window.
All the sedentary businesses along route 131
in Michigan were vague. "Distribution Center"
"Shasta Rentals" "Oasis Family Restaurant"
And PEACE in a flowery calligraphy
on the bumper of a gray dodge neon
on the bumper of a red denali.
A maroon sedan.
A silver-blue ford truck.
A pale red camero.
Aug 17, 2015
Aug 17, 2015 at 2:14 PM UTC
I-81 North towards Hazleton.
Exit to Hazleton.
Merge left away from Mahanoy
City exit.
Luzerne County crossing.
I always thought the spheres on telephone wires were kids' basketballs that got stuck in the sky.
Three New York plates in half a mile.
151 A or B?
Kelly Clarkson tells me through static that I don't know a thing about her.
Water beads on plastic cup lids by the "diet" indent, but never goes in.
Americans are water.
Lemonade clots the cuts
on my lips.
The car's a few years old but still carries its dealership scent.
Adjacent drivers keep their
lazy eyes on their phones.
Prismatic flashes through tinted windows from a woman changing CDs.
Oaks in the distance overtake
stores and church steeples.
The earth is theirs.
Aug 3, 2014
Aug 3, 2014 at 12:19 PM UTC
Canted at a crazy angle
with arms going wild like an air dancer at a car dealership.
I threw up in the bathroom of one like three weekends ago.
It was awful.
Jun 9, 2016
Jun 9, 2016 at 11:02 PM UTC
"I think we should just stay as friends-" She said.
"What? Why, is there somebody else?" I replied.
I knew I was wrong to have let you off three months before,
I don't know who was at fault anymore.
You took the keys to his car, the keys to his apartment
And I thought you were just being nice.
I thought you needed a break
I thought you'd come back
And ask for me again,
But I gave you the green light
To "follow your heart."
But you know what,
I know what you haven't realized -
That behind your puppy eyes
And a smile wide enough to back them up
You know, **** well, how to play a man.
Your credit cards (that's right, I know)
You needed someone to pay them off.
Does he know? Bet you haven't told him -
You're just wanting for him to propose.
You didn't have to tell me
His parents owned a dealership
To know that your end game
Was to help him save your credit score.
**** you, and your stupid little game
You manipulative ****** *****
I got to know the person that you really were.
He doesn't stand a chance
Knowing what you really want,
And that you're playing him straight
Into losing half of his inheritance.
To tell you the truth I'm not sure about what I grieve.
I don't know if it's you or myself to blame,
I was too easy and only used half a brain
To realize that money was the only thing
You cared about and made your hear content.
Jun 14, 2015
Jun 14, 2015 at 3:51 AM UTC
The old cashier at the car dealership,
she chain-smoked skinny, long cigarettes
all day, every day.
Her voice sounded like a bullfrog
that recently learned how to curse and laugh.
The crease lines around her mouth
and the folds in her neck
conveyed a relaxed style, confidence
earned from a hard life
and dangerous choices.
Sometimes there were no customers
in front of the cashier’s window
and no mechanics busting her chops.
That's when she’d rest her elbows on the counter
and cradle a skinny cigarette
between two fingers near her cheek.
That woman’s eyes would gaze outside,
glossed over in what looked like daydreams
about all those lovers, in their graves,
and their cliché widows
with their tiresome grandchildren
and their sanitized lives.
Back in the day,
men in gray suits and skinny ties
never could resist her,
but then again,
so few ever tried.
May 7, 2018
May 7, 2018 at 3:36 PM UTC
I wander our old lives, I take the train I always took to see you, I pass the pancake place we never went because it was always too busy at brunch time,
and the teriyaki place we went instead that was surprisingly good considering it's emptiness.
I see the Kia dealership I waited in front of, not knowing you were waiting for me a block away on a charming main street.
I see the Mexican treats place where we got deliciously odd flavored paletas, and the pirate golf where we ate mediocre pizza and giggled at cheesy glow-in-the-dark pirates.
But you are not here. You do not greet me at the transit center.
While I revisit old memories, you are exploring our future. You are walking streets we may walk together. Perhaps you are passing restaurants that will become our favorites, a park where a momentous decision will be made, the locations of disappointments and joys
yet to come.
Despite the traffic and obvious signs of habitation surrounding me, this place is a ghost town to me.
It's not for me anymore.
My present is a limbo between nostalgia and anticipation. My future is with you. I'll join you soon.
Aug 23, 2020
Aug 23, 2020 at 8:06 PM UTC