"headlamps" poems
Somewhere in Vermont
I see the sky
Stars scattered
like lighting bugs back home
Clouds drift,
Cold breeze,
Threatening rain
Shaped like an unfamiliar constellation
Headlamps shine
Some red, some blue, some yellow
Some bright, some dim
There's a presence here
Neither scary
Or threatening
Or even mysterious
People breathe,
A guitar sounds,
Pens scribble
Each in unity with the other
Somewhere in Vermont
People write
Separated by space
Their own thoughts
Spilling around them
Combining as one
Yet still
Individual
Brought together
By happenstance
They breathe together
as
One
Oct 26, 2015
Oct 26, 2015 at 11:35 PM UTC
Staring with the spider
into semantic oubliettes
The cats have all gone mad
The hounds growl at shadows
The guards in the tower
hone their bayonets
The night is red
The shroud of crow
follow my car
past sleeping windows
then lift like one
legendary rook
The snow falls in my headlamps
and my mind is a cemetery
Dec 9, 2011
Dec 9, 2011 at 6:20 AM UTC
driving at Kennon (treacherous zigzag
resembles hopscotch with death)
as i play Morrissey on the radio and the
woman sleeps, sometimes waking up lamenting the death of moths I ran over, splattered on the windshield, "Poor little creatures!" she said. no, baby, i am the poor little creature and so are you,
relentless against the dark
past Urdaneta — her being mineward,
i play with death as i turn the headlamps
off (pure blackness, nothing as if falling
into a bottomless pit as void sits on its
throne waiting) and on (all white as pains
now, trucks flare up and down the bend,
the tumbled boulders keep meting out
some forceful way of disturbances,
our collapse, the afterthought of it all)
i sensed from the beginning that the
old moon will wade out and soon the sun
will throw dissipated shades all across
camps with bonfires dead and stilled.
at the height of all, it becomes so
hot that the birds leave the trees together with the flowers and the Cordillera cannot cry any longer.
my woman wakes up as if rattled
with different pains, her face floating
past the mountains dreaming at the verge
of birds in the morning—
and it is twilight and still the same birds,
now it is the night and you
cannot see the birds anymore,
neither a hint nor a trail of
where they have disappeared
like the glory of Rizal in Luneta.
the lightsome globules in Paris.
the lions of Manila, now a town full of cowards as alleys fill with ******
the kids laying flat on their bellies
as the lawn takes its revenge
on the rest of the surrounding,
beheading the tree, and the
birds fly farther and away.
Nov 12, 2015
Nov 12, 2015 at 7:09 AM UTC
I waited, seated behind the arched letters of the cafe window,
riveted by others who moved urgently, soundlessly, beyond
the thick glass, scurrying along glistening sidewalks,
winding between glaring headlamps in the slick night
to lovers, to friends, to family, to home.
I remember no words, only the sting of hot coffee,
a hurried gulp to stanch the welling pain and to quiet
the certain quiver of my voice if left to speak.
Yet once into the dampness, standing together for a last time
in the crystalline night, the balance is seared into hard memory
as I watched you lift a speck from my collar,
grooming me, as before, and then a smile, wistful,
and you rose on tiptoes to brush a wisp of hair from
my brow and silently, hood now raised in the misting
dark, you found the sharp corner of the red brick
building and vanished.
Sep 12, 2025
Sep 12, 2025 at 2:34 PM UTC
Evening darkens upon the moors,
Forgiveness—a hairless thing
skirting the headlamps, fugitive.
Why have we come,
traversing the long miles
and extremities of solitude,
worriedly crisscrossing the wrong maps
with directions
obtained from passing strangers?
Why do we sit,
frantically retracing
love’s long-forgotten signal points
with cramping, ink-stained fingers?
Why the preemptive frowns,
the litigious silences,
when only yesterday we watched
as, out of an autumn sky this vast,
over an orchard or an onion field,
wild Vs of distressed geese
sped across the moon’s face,
the sound of their panicked wings
like our alarmed hearts
pounding in unison?
My family did get lost in an English moor on a dark moonless night. It happened when I was a boy. My mother was driving and seemed to have no idea where we were, or which direction to head. I wondered if we would ever find civilization again. It was a very spooky experience that I drew on for my poem. Keywords/Tags: England, Devon, moor, car, headlamps, headlights, directions, maps, points, routes, strangers, signals, orchard, field, geese, hearts, relationships, parting, separation, divorce, loneliness, alienation, free verse
Feb 27, 2020
Feb 27, 2020 at 2:10 AM UTC
Concise, smooth
... in the mind's motor
Change the gears
... in the mind's motor.
Smooth transition
Up & Down
Forward & Reverse
The clutch
is not the crutch
the crucifix logo
on the bonnet
covering the forehead.
Pain on the dashboard
Diviners, decals or designators
Inflictors, innovators or inflexions
Pain on the Dashboard
Ignition, perception, cognition
waits for the turn key
in the soft tissue starter motor.
Turning indicators
flicker flash
amber red
there is no green.
Headlamps a dull glow
in the white hot agony
of the parking lot.
Robyn Youl.
Jan 7, 2014
Jan 7, 2014 at 12:32 PM UTC
And know that these streets are irresponsible,
and that you are too. And that no matter
how bright your eyes and headlamps may be
you will always find something you didn’t
see before. Life will always be throwing at you
curveballs. And car insurance. And the ungainly heft
of police officers leering in lustily at the watch on your
wrist and the hollowed, hungry eyes of your companion.
Do not answer them, I beg of you, when they ask
you too for your name and your father's,
for they truly care not to hear
its sound. They only want to add to the noise -
continue living beneath its dins. Not after money but the
fear, the control that from you stem. Now, yes
I may be over-exaggerating (after all, it was but one
slight dent in the bumper of the car, but
there is no exaggeration to the voicelessness of they
who queued before me, no companions guiding them,
no voices shouting for them.) He, they, there, by the streets,
only has in his hands a car horn. And so he honks.
And so the siren wails. And so the chaos reigns.
And so do they - officers - living silently beneath it all,
urging us onward to yelling and screaming and shouting.
And yet we can’t. And we don’t. And we won’t.
And yet they, for all their damages, do not - scratch,
refuse not - to do so.
They only can look down at the pavement,
dotted yellow, black and white dashed.
Sep 8, 2015
Sep 8, 2015 at 8:32 AM UTC
My mind skips from tree top to tree top,
Skimming over rivers, lakes and streams.
And as I wonder of pasts and futures,
My thoughts flow smoothly through kaleidoscope dreams.
I watch the world fly past the window,
No time to see specific things,
Houses blur into fields and meadows,
A flock of birds into a flurry of wings.
Cities’ streetlamps blink into stars,
A join-the-dot puzzle, mapping the ground.
Headlamps and headlamps merging the masses,
Lost individuals into the sound.
Glance through the glass, look out the window,
Catching the eye of a stranger’s stare.
A moment held, a second, a freeze-frame,
Suddenly it seems that there’s no one else there.
Before I can blink, or think, or wonder,
The face is replaced by a patchwork floor,
And all I can see for miles and miles,
Are fields and heath land and woodland and moor.
On the flat, look into the distance,
See as far as the world is wide.
Sapphire sky and cumulus clouds,
The boasting Earth and his beautiful bride.
Dec 12, 2012
Dec 12, 2012 at 10:55 PM UTC
Norman Rockwell weekend
Faded baseball gloves
Slick stones off the water
Fishing for lost loves
Boathouse Road revival
Rope swing double back flips
Red serape twilight
Rolling back for night dips
Adirondack north woods
Boy Scout jamboree
Telling age-old stories
Felling age-old trees
Back seat back road banter
Front seat small town blues
Lukewarm diner coffee
Corner TV news
Swearing off old demons
Swearing at red lights
Chasing down old crushes
Long into the night
Headlights on the highway
Headlamps in the mines
Mountains in the rear view
Main Street on my mind
Norman Rockwell weekend
Corduroy on wool
Campfire snap and sparkle
All-nighters to pull
Oct 3, 2016
Oct 3, 2016 at 4:57 PM UTC
The lure of gold brought Fifty-Niner’s in droves
to the Kansas-Nebraska territory
laden with packs, picks, pans and shovels -
hell-bound for adventure and facile wealth.
Placer miners squatted beside frigid streams,
dipping their pans and filling their sacks
with nuggets bound for the assayer's verdict.
Mine towns sprang up where the veins were strong.
In ******* Creek, Leadville, Independence and Central City,
the valleys rang with the strident cacaphony of
drills and explosives - burrowing shafts deep
into the ore-rich valleys and mountain slopes.
Headlamps lit and shadowed mazes of timbered tunnels
where men piled rock high into mine cars
headed for the mammoth crushers at Idaho Springs.
Whiskey freely flowed in saloons and hotels
where raucous miners let off steam with
every mode and cast of ***** talk pleasures
In time, the veins were spent and profits dwindled.
When the drama ended and the curtain fell,
the miners vanished - leaving only ghost towns behind
and a new state named for its reddish river – Colorado.
Aug 5, 2020
Aug 5, 2020 at 12:41 AM UTC
Setting up camp
I am caught in the headlamps of some corporate tramps with the wings of the albatross stamped on their foreheads,and quickly they come at me firing their guns at me,out of the sun, I can't see them to clearly.
Nearly got me that time
I must be beware,
corporate tramps get every where and try to disrupt me,corrupt me with credits and debits,in books I have read it that these are no good but sometimes I can't see the trees for the wood and they prey on the blinded and feeble and frail,they'll bang at your brain until they make a secure sale,it seems they can't fail,
because
we are bombarded with adverts perverting our minds,adverts that sell you all kinds of mindless monstrosities,colossal calamities and we **** on the corporate mammaries until we've had our fill,
then we burp and slurp it all down.
Welcome to the **** it and see almost but not quite free franchise town,
need a gown.a duck down eiderdown,brown shoes,black shoes anyway you think you win they know you lose but buy it here,buy regurgitated,variagated beer here in the franchise town.
'come on down the price is right'
the time is now
you're going to die so spend and spend and how you please ,use your cards and we will bring you to your knees,
Jeez
it's depressionville,third turning past the bank of **** creek hill.
It makes you want to **** something,someone,the corporations go on and on,before to long they will run out of space,then ,
option one kicks in and kicks you in the face and puts you down.
Join the rest of us.
in the almost but not quite free, buy me here,have a beer,
franchise town
Dec 14, 2013
Dec 14, 2013 at 6:27 AM UTC
dark
dankness
draws
me
forward
to the
brink
of
intra-terristrial
gape
****
of the
globes'
epidermis
the
wind
huff
puffs
skirls
and
sighs
and
in
greeting
mayhap
warning
but
still
we
enter
and
descend
beyond
daylight
cimmerian
murk
swathes
us
broken
only
by
our
headlamps
feeble
in the
reaching
limitlessness
of
inner
earth
we
are so
small
in
comparision
to the
cathedral
structure
we
rest
hanging
like
a
spider
in a
church
spinning
on
gossamer
thread- web
|
|
|
|
|
|
spelunking
the
call
of the
spheres
quiet
secretive
neighborhoods
May 26, 2014
May 26, 2014 at 1:30 AM UTC
Having followed tram-lines along cobble-stoned roads of marine industry, I am reminded of the smell of cold meat and the sound of an early siren, which beckons me to dilapidated buildings and disused railway tunnels.
There is a loud sound when car headlamps are dropped from a height onto pornographic concrete.
All that you have to do is to go to the dairy and reach over the counter, and you will find that a jubilee leaves indelible evidence to scrutinising faces and invites unwelcomed interrogations.
Let us walk up this crescent and kick leaves into puddles of Autumnal darkness.
The number five will always trigger the musky scent of cats and the sound of diesel locomotives, whilst uncertainty and aggression seek to establish a sense of equilibrium amidst social isolation.
Having said this, I will leave you with one final admonition: never forget the power of a steak pie from the butchers shop.
This is the essence of Partick.
Feb 27, 2014
Feb 27, 2014 at 10:55 PM UTC
She was fetching at Nineteen,
with her dark eyes of mystery.
Her composed, secretive demeanor.
She exuded the promise of exotic sexuality,
all without much real experience.
I was Twenty Two, older in
many ways than she.
I took her to her first Night Club,
Deep into those Disco Days.
No one carded anyone back then.
She was like a Deer on a road,
caught in the Headlamps of
a oncoming car.
Dazzled in a world she did not know.
A player on a artificial stage.
Several times that night
I saw it happen.
Her eyes meeting and locking on
to some cheesy Saturday Night
Fever Guy clad in garish Polyester,
Soaked in dance sweat,
a club Dennison of no real merit.
Her eyes said it all in a lingering glance.
It told her story and set the tone for the
rest of her life and a list of failed couplings.
It took ten long years and a child born
for me to fully comprehend what those
looks that night really meant.
To then finely extricate my son and I from her.
And sadly too I learned, that some people
will never know or understand what Love means.
Or perhaps deserve it in return.
May 29, 2014
May 29, 2014 at 4:10 PM UTC
This cabin smells damp
Tucked away in the timber
Backroaded
Secluded
Welcome to Deer Camp
It was wintertime
And we had to ***
Into a tube in the wall
PVC
I’m at that awkward age
Not lanky
But frumpy and weird
So hand me a rifle
For the slaughter
Of a creature I revered
Man, what we do
To make our fathers proud
My secret was
I hated guns
And loved boys
I really only went on this trip
Because I heard that John
Grilled some mean potatoes
Accented with caramelized
Onions and garlic
The rumors were true
The fire crackles
Against a sky
Of light blue
I watched these men
Bearded and loud
Would I ever be like them?
Did I want to be?
My quiet heart
Felt alien
A freak
I wasn’t a hunter
Instead I gathered
A harvest of me
Thoughts and emotions
Into a cauldron
Of poetry
But I kept that part
Hidden
Tucked away
For another day
The men in their
Camouflage attire
Yawn as the sun sets
I try to fit
Into the cabin
We retire
The lantern’s light
Flickers across
The walls of the room
Sam’s Club candy
For dessert
Distant thunder
Booms
It was bedtime
And a storm was rolling
In the atmosphere and in
My head full of fear
Can someone please
Get me out of here
I cried from my cot
“Please take me home”
My dad glared
What a disappointing
Drive that was
Have I ever not
Let you down?
I think
As blankly ahead
I stared
We pull into the driveway
Ignition turns off
Headlamps extinguish
He unlocks the door
By the light of the moon
I feel
Relief and anguish
Mom was annoyed
This was supposed to be
Her weekend alone
Grieving the death
Of her own mother
She hugs me
While wiping
A tear from her
Cheekbone
Steel Magnolias
And a box of Kleenex
I ruined that
You brought a fairy
To deer camp
What did you expect?
Oct 1, 2022
Oct 1, 2022 at 12:54 AM UTC
How’s the girl
with the red beret?
your sister asked
she’d seen you
and Janice
and her gran
on the way home
from school
she probably walking
with her friend
following behind
and Janice said
I made a picture today
out of cut up
pieces of paper
and the teacher said
it was the best
she’d seen
her gran said
Now now Janice
mustn’t boast
I expect
there were other pictures
equally as good
But teacher said it
not me
Janice replied
Did you make a picture?
her gran asked you
her eyes falling on you
and taking in
your look
like a rabbit caught
in headlamps of a car
in the night
Yes
you said
I made a picture
of a morning sunset
out of red and yellow
and green for the grass
and blue for the sky
Janice smiled
and touched your hand
surreptitiously
her small hand
feeling along
your skin
Did you make it
out of cut up
pieces of paper too?
her gran asked
you sensed Janice’s fingers
squeezing into your hand
No
you replied
I did it with water colour paints
and what did teacher say?
her gran asked
she said it reminded her
of a Jackson *******
whoever he is
you said
looking at Janice’s red beret
and her hair
coming from beneath
so wonderfully
unlike your
short back and sides
and unlike her hair
with its red coloured
hair slides.
May 26, 2012
May 26, 2012 at 3:07 AM UTC
Like the licking of an old dog that insists you take her
for a walk
the insistent swell
laps your legs.
Off port, headlamps
slip by in an unending current
supplying the illusion of your
inevitable progress forward,
and little certainty you had ever been moored at all.
Dec 27, 2019
Dec 27, 2019 at 7:39 PM UTC
Some places are meant to stay sacred,
like this one, hidden from the rest.
We sunk deeper in swirling volcanic-waters,
staring at the twinkling-milk splashed across the chilled-sky,
wondering about the birth of the universe.
Strange, how no one exists on the top of the world.
High on the altiplano, we saw the headlamps
of one lone trucker pass in seventeen days.
I still wonder if he might have been an alien,
like us, just passing through to the next galaxy.
Some places are meant to stay sacred,
like this one, hidden from the rest.
Dec 22, 2013
Dec 22, 2013 at 10:07 PM UTC
We sat stoically together
connected by thin rope
on the tongue of the glacier.
Wrapped in warm feathers
like Michelin-men,
we deciphered
the operation of crampons
& giggled maniacally
about doing it with
stone-blue fingertips.
Headlamps glowed
as starlight glittered
off the ice wall facing us,
leaving traces of a million suns
burned into my retinas.
Frozen snot clung
to my moustache
like hungry ticks
and all I could think of
was sticking to the plan.
A short jaunt
across sixty-degree slick-glass,
then over the moraine
for eight hours straight up,
zigzagging to Heaven.
And standing ten minutes
in that sacred place,
we'd kiss cloud zephyrs,
dole out high fives
with splitting headaches,
crack huge smiles
with ****** noses
taking Kodak moments
before the six-hour descent
to hot chicken soup.
Apr 5, 2015
Apr 5, 2015 at 5:40 PM UTC
My crampons crunched into the snow, as the sky began to come alive with the sun rising over a crest behind me. The only lights near me are headlamps in a straight row, and the whiteness from the snow appearing more clearly. Six people mimic me, tied together by harnesses and a blue and green weaved climbing rope, a six to eight step difference. Relying on me to lead, guide, and set the pace, I stop to look behind me to see a row of white helmets glowing from their headlamps. "Step. Crunch. Breath in. Step. Crunch. Breath Out. Step. Crunch. Breath in," I yell military style. They need me to talk through our breathing. 13,000' and my legs are moving slower, the crampons are feeling heavier with each step. My breathing feels like its being strangled by the rope attached to my back carabiner. I want to stop. Sit. Eat. Not move again. I wonder how I can check in with others behind, how I can lead, yell, talk if I feel light-headed, questioning my decisions to tip-toe on the edge of a crevasse that has just appeared, I think. I have lost track of how many hours have passed. The sun is my best friend reminding me of time, as it burns off the whisking clouds appearing at my head as my elevation increases. As I remember to look up, look ahead, I know we are close, highest I have ever been. I want to run, but I know I am moving in very slow motion. I slip off my crampons, thankfully being able to walk on stone, scree and scramble to the summit to kiss the sky at 14, 562'.
Oct 21, 2014
Oct 21, 2014 at 7:48 PM UTC
Like a malevolent magnet
pulling at the ever malleable skin, stretching
years from womb to grave
charged electrons blinding
the eyes, moisture dried with their green grey cataracts
like smeared windows or dirt dull headlamps and
all transparency and vision
beneath the layered years left as muddied memory waiting
for the ever increasing magnet to finally make
the snap.
Jun 26, 2015
Jun 26, 2015 at 7:25 AM UTC
Surrounded by headlamps and tail lights
but its still a lonely road
with nothing to keep me company
but a radio full of static
a dwindling pack of cigarettes
and my thoughts
Feb 10, 2016
Feb 10, 2016 at 8:09 PM UTC
Sleep circles
with wide wings.
Pages vanish down the eye's well:
Napoleon burns Moscow,
French detectives fry onions,
Lorca dies in the greenest green.
Rain spits into the room
crooked, dark. I'm alone.
The gyre closes, soft as a net.
Dreams hunch on the furniture.
The mirrors broadcast
the Venetian blinds croaking
and rattling against the screen
like creamy swords
in enamel scabbards.
Book-addled eyelids
are rusting into blinks
of burling dusk.
Each dying thought
is a sleek Deco Bugatti
lead by a shining path
from teardrop headlamps
whose fingers pry the night
moments before tires
sing rubber to blue.
The rain gathers into serpents
in the channels of the floor.
Above you hangs
the fat black branch
of sleep's truest face.
Mar 25, 2019
Mar 25, 2019 at 10:29 PM UTC
(20 minute poetry)
On a brighter theme
there's a meme
they made
from the corpses of
the last crusade.
Social media aside,
out have got it in and
inside got us out.
The little victory
a seat
that someone saved
for me
when things are sent to try us
why not
try them on for size?
back in the moles lair
underneath
Canada Square but
it's a waste of my time
on the
Jubilee line.
Disintegration like
hesitation
is a slow business
and I'm getting there
slowly.
Fighting inertia
while
submitting
to atmospheric pressure
( which doesn't feel heavy )
but I'm collapsing
trapped in
the traps.
I should have eaten breakfast
taken some toast
made it last,
and at last
I'm here,
no exhilaration or
exultation,
it looks and feels like
I'm attending my own
exhumation.
On a brighter theme
which I cannot find until
the sun comes up
and changes my mind
I'll switch on
the headlamps.
Feb 20, 2017
Feb 20, 2017 at 1:36 AM UTC
The air is frosted with a scent of wet fall leaves, the darkness a rich abyss of espresso as we enter the forest of deer.
A mist from the swamp thickens as our headlamps cut through it.
My son passes me thinking I've lost the trail, he becomes the pathfinder, a smile appears on my face in the darkness, I'm happy.
Our steps are synchronized, as the steam from our breath becomes part of the mist.
We cross the stream and reach my stand, now we separate wishing each other Good Hunt, may our arrows be true.
I wait and watch his headlamp gently dim through the dense forest. I contemplate the gift I'm experiencing.
I climb my stand, pull up my gear and settle in ancient weapon in hand truth in my heart all expectations gone.
Time passes and dawn breaks, birds feed, sunlight sweeps away the fog. I hear my son call for deer.
Hours pass, minds clear, time ceases.
You envision what you pursue,
the forest becomes your breath as you wait for your quarry.
As what some call barbarous an unnecessary endeavor in this day of supermarkets, internet and smart phones, lest we forget from which we came, I prefer the meditation of which I partake in and revel in its ability to keep me connected to the soul of the world with reverence and respect >>>====>
Nicholas Finocchio
Dec 2, 2016
Dec 2, 2016 at 10:38 AM UTC