"junkyard" poems
She's thoroughbred hunger
From her double shift mom to her deadbeat dad
She tiptoes through junkyard junglegyms
Collecting alleyway beach glass
She learned to swindle
Haggled survival with the big guy
Big sisters traded on corners
She was one
Karma mustve forgotten
While doing rounds
She's got an invincible soul
Stitched of disappointments
Wrapped in sorrow
Hope as a bow
He's thoroughbred gluttony
From mommas limelight jewels to daddy's sin-shined shoes
He learned to swindle
To thrive
Wall street walk on the 99%
Politician promises
To impermanent faces
Costly trips
To extravagant places
Mixing up "enough"
With "more"
Looking for happiness
In a store
Though it seems to me
Whats made of life
Is what makes life worth living for
Feb 24, 2015
Feb 24, 2015 at 4:34 AM UTC
the newbie failure complex(ity)
the poems come torrentially,
hurricane, waterfall & tornado are working adjectives
worthy of the task, yet unequal to the unlimited army
of the written dead of unread poems and poets
that occupy the nether of blog, podcast, and poetry sites,
orphan stars in the un-salvaged junkyard galaxy of verbiage
a faceless wight, once alive, now permanently dead,
we shuffle march, chanting each our own newbie poem,
onward soldiers to ignominy and glory so fleeting,
we are forgot before we are remembered
*this is life in poetry,
or better yet,
the worst of it, (sigh)
this is the poetry of lives*
all for nought,
nought for all,
at least we pass our prison time
in the company of fellow strugglers*
May 13, 2019
May 13, 2019 at 5:44 PM UTC
I was molded by his own hand
sculpted to perfection and eager to please
who else other than my husband
for without Adam, there is no Eve
at least, that was before he slithered into our perfect life
pounding our perfect garden into the ground with his slick feet
conniving and a brute,
he convinced me to take a bite
and share my fruit with man
for what is mine is his
my knowledge is his
I am his
together we ate
snacking and licking our fingers with glee
wiping the secretions of the fruit of mankind
against the tree we tore it from
until our Paradise's pastures declined
the wildflowers overtrodded with weeds
the singing waterfall vanished
only to be replaced by an evil, magmatic spout
and our tree,
our once bountiful, glorious, fruitful tree
decayed from the inside out
Adam's burning glare rotted my fruit and my seeds
until they and I dropped to the burning embers on the ground
like nicks off of a pebble that was thrown too hard
or like hairs from the back of a matted mother cat
that has spent far too many heatless winters hunting
for a different life,
for any life
with no more than a curse from Him,
I became the failed experiment of humanity
tossed into God's own graveyard
left to rot with my stolen seed
Apr 29, 2022
Apr 29, 2022 at 1:16 PM UTC
Jordan gave me rose quartz prayer beads. Freddy picked me up and spun me around.
I kissed the beads and kissed my hand and blew it to the stars, over and over again.
Thank you universe, for the kind hearted people you have dropped into my existence.
Thank you universe, for the good music, the good **** good wine, and good company.
Thank you, for the smiles, the laughs, the cigarettes, the numbers given out on backs of receipts.
Thank you for the swing sets, the campfires, the coffee and tea, the cars we drive around in.
Thank you for emotions.
Thank you for the feeling I get when someone kisses my forehead,
the feeling when someone compliments my smile,
the feeling when I notice the moon for the first time that evening.
Thank you, for the moon, the stars, the clouds, and the autumn breeze.
Thank you for the sounds, the crickets, the leaves rustling, the clinking glasses,
and the sound of small kisses.
Thank you for the snort I get when I laugh to hard.
Thank you for the bass, the guitar, the drums.
Thank you for the shouts, the soft spoken, the loud, and the whispers.
Thank you for the doors, the staircases, and the windows.
Thank you for everything that ever was, is, and will be.
Thank you for the indefiniteness of the now.
Thank you for everything.
I once read in a book, that the likelihood of our proteins folding just so to make us what we are is comparable to that of a twister rolling through a junkyard and assembling a jumbo jet.
This is something I like to remind myself daily.
It is so miraculous that we are here today to experience everything and everyone around us, and be able to document and share it.
I hope one day someone can look at my photographs and writings and feel these immense and overwhelming emotions that I feel in these moments.
Jan 11, 2014
Jan 11, 2014 at 6:10 AM UTC
My grandmother likes salami, God, and bougainvilleas
I like to think she likes tenuous pink things-
but then there’s the salami.
One day she taught her daughters to string neck-
laces from bougainvillea petals
like-ponies-in-a-junkyard
I think I chewed too much bubblegum in mass
because I picture God pink
an ethereal globe of a poppable pale pink.
And for some reason, I like to think Brother
Charles saw that too
I bet my lungs are somewhat pink:
more pink than my berry red blood
but less pink, sweet and/or hairy
than a cotton candy poodle.
I forget if they were strawberries or rasp-
berries too
There are things that are pink
but then there are things that are pink
and shadowless.
Like subterranean lungs,
God, the future, and
the smell of flamingos in the dark
The future is still pink and
somewhat fruity
like a lukewarm strawberry milkshake blushing,
or was it maybe just the taste
of my pepto-bismol stained lips.
One of those ponies was my mom
Mar 29, 2016
Mar 29, 2016 at 3:02 PM UTC
Gravel mounds in the mist
Are the mountain ranges of fantasy,
Spring green, eerie seen
Through commuter train windows.
Pitched roofs recede
Into infinite distance,
And junkyard parking lots are legion
In the gray suburban obscurity.
Factories and landfills loom,
Monuments and mausoleums,
The labor and the leavings
Of the little colossi.
May 2, 2019
May 2, 2019 at 9:50 AM UTC
My friends and I
are forlorn fabrics
haphazardly stitched into a quilt.
Comprised of different textures and fabrics,
frayed at the ends,
rejected pieces meant for the trash,
not good enough for made-to-wear mall clothes.
My friends and I
fit like a puzzle
consisting of pieces from various other puzzles--
found under coffee tables,
between couch cushions,
tossed into the bowels of forlorn toy bins--
forming a collage of something
disoriented and ambiguous.
Crammed together,
smashing our appendages,
leaving crooked gaps,
wrinkled, torn, ****** up,
but feeling better here
than in our small contribution
to the bland image of our factory's design.
My friends and I,
outcasts, rejects, punks,
convening in the junkyard heap
where we dance and laugh among trash
that makes us feel clean.
Pure when we're filthy.
Quilts and puzzles,
to instill and befuddle;
****** treasures.
Oct 12, 2016
Oct 12, 2016 at 11:53 PM UTC
When I first passed the gates
into the metallic garden
stamping out seeds
for the junkyard
with its infinite cardiac output
I gazed upon the eyes of the creatures
that inhabited this oily soil
of steel and chemicals
all I saw was a cry for help
to escape
to be away
just one day
they cry, just one day
I got caught in the claws
and it scratched
and scratched
the wounds heal but the scars stay
I have become a trapped animal
with eyes of dismay
There's little chance of escape
I can dream
I can pray
one day, I echo
one day
Now I am just taxidermy
for this godforsaken industry
and they call this
quality.
Oct 24, 2018
Oct 24, 2018 at 10:22 AM UTC
"Stay Away"
You gave me too many chances
Now it's drivin' us apart
I keep on runnin' with the boys, girl
But then you knew that from the start
It must keep building up inside you
'Cause you never let it show
I know I'm hanging on the edge now
But I won't let go
I never meant to hurt you
But something was on my mind
Just give me one more chance
We can make it this time
Stay away, stay away from my heart
Stay away, stay away from my heart
If you gave me three wishes
I'd throw two of them away
I've seen that look in your eye girl
I'd use the last one this way
We've been from rags to riches
But your love can't be bought
I'm just a junkyard dog, girl
Who's afraid he's been caught
You're standing in the shadows
Watching everything that I do
And I know the way things must look
It couldn't be further from the truth
Stay away, stay away from my heart
Stay away, stay away from my heart
[Bridge:]
Remember how it used to be girl
Makin' love like it's the last time
We held each other close
Not knowing what we'd found
You felt the pounding of my thunder
As your rain was pouring down
[Instrumental break]
I never meant to hurt you
But something was on my mind
Just give me one more chance
We can make it this time
Stay away, stay away from my heart
Stay away, stay away from my heart
Stay away, stay away from my heart
Stay away, stay away from my heart
Steve Lukather
Gomer Lepoet....
Oct 2, 2013
Oct 2, 2013 at 12:55 PM UTC
little lights, flame flickers
pale skinned lip lickers
red blood, warm flood
gold crown, made of mud
heart rippers, teeth gritters
white knuckled blood givers
i am a fist clenching, teeth wrenching
ear splitting, muscle tensing
junkyard liver, death giver
pale skinned lip licker
Dec 25, 2010
Dec 25, 2010 at 3:41 PM UTC
I ...
Can't breathe....
It feels like the world is closing in on me
So I jog at the junkyard to release the stress
Inhaling trash to remind me of life the inside joke
I trip over some items and fall face first on a lamp
I pick up the lamp and rub it immediately
No Genie, no such luck
I laugh
Brush off my pants
And I think about the good old days
The days before freedom from the nut sac
The days I swam with millions
The days I never spoke a word
Life was easy
Life was ...
I...
Can't breathe...
Mar 6, 2013
Mar 6, 2013 at 9:25 PM UTC
Everything fades.
forgotten elements compile,
neglected .
I never thought,
I would be tossed aside like a rusted hubcap.
Amongst all the *******
corroding silently
Mar 29, 2012
Mar 29, 2012 at 2:51 AM UTC
ghost are jamming in the witches house
See dark visions forced to come out
There is a fox in the hen house
What'll we do to bring it down?
You opened the cage and let the monster out
You'r the prey in its mouth
Theres a rat in the dog house
How will we chase it out?
Ghost are jamming in the witches house
What was done to bring them out?
See em run, see them scream and shout
I see it all burning down
Time heals all wounds & it also will leave scars
Old memories fall like dying leaves
Rust metal minds junkyard
Minds masked in a maze, couldnt see that far
Old memories fall like dying trees
Twisted metal minds junkyard
Grotesque faces of pure pain
Empty hearts of unwarrented rain
Souls of the dead called to the purge
Can you feel the weight of this world?
I see deformites of this life
Skulls of the dying, solid is the mind
Feel the air passing by
Holes in happiness lined in social class
Old memories fall like dying leaves
We all fall like dying tree
The dogs of war are on the prowl
Should have escaped, but cant leave now
For there is nothing left of my youth
Nothing left to hold on to
There is a mouse in the walls
The hounds of hell are on the loose
the dogs of war are on the prowl
?Should have escaped but cant leave now
The ghost are jamming in the witches house
See the visions forced to come out
Pick the locks then break it down
Welcome the hardships to this house
Apr 30, 2016
Apr 30, 2016 at 5:25 AM UTC
Junkyards are cemeteries too
they're just the ones no one brings flowers to
or visits after they've said goodbye
and they are filled to the brim
with forgotten wheels and empty bodies
and I am sick of these wheelbarrow operations
and the way the mice eyes sparkle
as they wait by the mailboxes
that don't even belong to them
for love letters from the cats that will never come
because when she said "I love you"
it was a junkyard kind of goodbye that she meant
Jan 6, 2016
Jan 6, 2016 at 3:16 AM UTC
On a dark, dank desolated street pavement
Stands a street lamp.
Made to guide those in need of the light.
Groomed to be brave, fearless and unwavering
Manufactured specifically to be aids
In the dark times that the city faced.
Served its purpose in the many years it stood
Lighting the way for cars as best as it could.
It shone for carriages, for kings and queens
Keeping them from harm whilst vesting the unknown
It shone for great leaders in the front line of their battles
Served as a safety sign for everyone at night.
In recent times it’s started to flicker
On and off and on and off and on and off it goes
While the mist in the streets grow thicker
No longer did it hold its eminent glow
Neck seemingly bent unlike it’s natural curve
Once flawless skin covered in blotches of dirt and rust
Its wires exposed, veins pressed against the skin
No more muscle or fat hide it
Vandalized by the impurities this world had to offer
Seemed as though it’s the people it kept safe that turned on it
He deserved a better way to die.
Not buried in forgotten memories and set aside
It served a great purpose in the hopeless tears that everyone shed in the dark
Now uprooted and thrown in the junkyard
More or less to be used like scrap metal like the rest of its kind.
Sep 5, 2016
Sep 5, 2016 at 1:20 AM UTC
A mother who listens to soft classical Mozart
Reclined against the soft, worn pillow from ages
slender fingers easily flicking through a catalog,
while a father is hunched over
in the cold den, racked with coughs and pains, trembling fingers trying to hold on to the metallic foil of medicine.
And a child, barely 4
playing with stuffed animals on the couch
a victim of Tay Sach
A car, and a windowpane, that have both seen too much,
ragged advertisements fluttering in the wind,
advertising a movie coming out yesterday,
A burger shop ad that had already long closed,
and deals long gone.
The downtown urban forest, turned into a junkyard
full of scraps of rusted silver and infected bronze.
A bystander who can do nothing but laugh
as a boy's nose gets crushed in,
a ****** lip,
A swollen, purple eye
A boy of 18
who is still waiting for her somewhere
to see her colored smile
and eyes of glass
bitter and emotionless, glazed over with sterling silver,
who has a family, siblings,
who is now turned into nothing but a ragged playtoy for the sick, sick entertainment of others
A broken air conditioner that can do nothing but clack clack clack over and over again, metal blades spinning vainly for nothing,
while a broken family is screaming in the other room,
and a child is crying, hands to his face, covering his eyes
as a father hits his wife, knocks her against the sharp, tiled kitchen counter,
and the screaming intensifies, accompied by the hurtful insults that are thrown at each other-by the father and the teen.
and still the air conditioner goes on and on
oblivious to nothing.
A world that is so breathtaking and cruel at the same time
where little, insignificant families are torn apart without a second thought,
where the 'strong' prey on the 'weak'
Where the most beautiful sprawling cities turn into rejected second handers just because of a rumor
And,
A mother who listens to soft classical Mozart
Reclined against the soft, worn pillow from ages, ages ago
full of tears and stiches
slender fingers easily flicking through a catalog, searching for the most effective medicine, eyes flickering in worry
while a father is hunched over
in the cold den because
he doesn't want to risk spreading his sickness to anyone else
racked with coughs and pains, trembling fingers trying to hold on to the metallic foil of medicine.
Working hard to support his family because the economy is going down again
And a child, barely 4
playing with stuffed animals on the couch
a victim of Tay Sach,
dead at 6.
Nov 27, 2013
Nov 27, 2013 at 5:53 PM UTC
Were all just machines, bound for the train station that’ll hightail us out and over
To the junkyard where we never sleep and the foundry melts us down to make room
For the new undead, but non-living, to starve for what their computers say they need.
But when you smile, your eyes show me that you have a soul inside that’s beautiful,
And it proves my heart is something more than what the factory made it for;
That my love means something more than a series of chemical reactions in my brain,
That the mornings and nights we spent were worth more than we ever knew,
And that you are someone more special to me than I have ever known.
So, as we fly down the track of grayest metals and coldest weather, into the north country
To God knows where to as the sun is at dawn and dusk at the same time,
Remember that your heart doesn’t need to be held like coal, that your eyes are soulful,
That someone, somewhere thinks you’re more than a piece of electric meat,
That I think you’re worth more than my life,—my holy hunk of steel—but don’t let that
Get to your head missy! And that when we’re laid upon the cutting board
To be scraped and melted down, I want to be laid there next to you
To kiss you one more time, while I look into your eyes, searchingly.
Nov 3, 2014
Nov 3, 2014 at 10:33 AM UTC
It was an ostrich who asked me
to give stick my head in the ground.
He looked like what you think
an ostrich would look like, with his head in the dirt,
and the bright, pastel lights,
that come with things
from your imagination.
I colored him with crayon.
I could make rainbows with crayons back then.
I wish someone told me
what it meant, to get lost
in the dirt. I became a stray dog
digging all those holes.
I lived in a junkyard. The one on the side
of the highway next to the billboard
the Christians put up to help stop divorce that said
"Honey, Come home. The kids and I love you."
I slept in the back seat of a car with fleas
and ticks, stealing my food from a truck stop diner
until the day someone took the car away.
I had nowhere to go so I stopped
licking myself and left the junkyard to become the man
I am today. I got myself a job and started sitting
in the front seat. I even have a bed now with nothing
between me and the mattress but a sheet.
I have a taste for gin and girls who are buried
in borrowed wedding dresses.
I still lick myself sometimes because
old habits aren't easy things
to quit, like asking for extra
fortune cookies, hoping I will get something
good this time.
I shouldn't have been a man. I should have
been a bird, like the one who told me to
write stories in the dirt and whisper tales to the gnarled roots
of unnamed wild flowers. And never illustrate, he told me,
especially with crayon. You could get lost searching
for fortune at the tip of a crayon.
Mar 7, 2010
Mar 7, 2010 at 4:23 PM UTC
Junkyard dogs
We play
Our PARTS
so miserably well
..
The impresario smiles
So sarcastically
-----
Dogs
-------------
Looking fierce
Tough and mean
--
Puttin on a show!
Tough and mean
------
In the junk heap of the yard
Falling in love with our pain
--
Junkyard dogs
Playing with misery
Making it our own
May 14, 2013
May 14, 2013 at 5:16 PM UTC
Justin: Born On Wheels
@2012 Linda Barrett
You always lived on wheels:
a newborn infant
perched in a car seat
beside your mother
when she drove
Her 1973 Green Impala
The toy Knight Rider car
was your first one
It cursed at you
from its imaginary dashboard
You hummed your open road song
while holding onto
the sides of the Red
Wheel barrow
as I bumped you along
our back yard’s stone walkway
Out in Chester County,
you roller bladed
and skate boarded into adolescence
Every Spring Break,
You traveled in
your grandparent’s station wagon
down to Florida
One winter,
you drove to Colorado by van
to snow board the mountains
Other guys chose college,
you took your mechanic grandfather’s cue
studied up in Boston
learned how to fix cars
inside and out
then put them back together again
You inherited the 1973 Green Impala
with its torn off vinyl top
let it go to rust and to the junkyard
then bought Red 1968 Ford pick-up
Your mother gave you a motorcycle
so you could scream down the Turnpike
with your Independence Day spirit
Nothing out on the road
can stop you
as if you were born
on wheels
Jul 7, 2012
Jul 7, 2012 at 8:06 PM UTC
I hope that our few remaining friends
Give up on trying to save us
I hope we come up with a failsafe plot
To **** off the dumb few that forgave us
I hope the fences we mended
Fall down beneath their own weight
And I hope we hang on past the last exit
I hope it's already too late
And I hope the junkyard a few blocks from here
Someday burns down
And I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away
And I never come back to this town
Again in my life
I hope I lie
And tell everyone you were a good wife
And I hope you die
I hope we both die
I hope I cut myself shaving tomorrow
I hope it bleeds all day long
Our friends say it's darkest before the sun rises
We're pretty sure they're all wrong
I hope it stays dark forever
I hope the worst isn't over
And I hope you blink before I do
Yeah I hope I never get sober
And I hope when you think of me years down the line
You can't find one good thing to say
And I'd hope that if I found the strength to walk out
You'd stay the hell out of my way
I am drowning
There is no sign of land
You are coming down with me
Hand in unlovable hand
And I hope you die
I hope we both die
Dec 22, 2021
Dec 22, 2021 at 3:01 PM UTC
She was quite the looker, her eyes a cold blue steel.
Her legs went on forever and that’s just part of her appeal.
He met her in a magazine, then in a glossy print.
He painted her, from Memory, on his plane and off they went.
She flew with him into battle. She was his lucky charm.
17 bombing missions they came thru without harm.
They flew over Hitler’s Germany way up high and cold.
They faced fearful odds against the chance of growing old.
Then, when the war was over and her boys went home
The wings of war were mothballed; decades she spent alone.
The years of wind, sun and rain faded the old girl.
By the time I finally found her she was not long for this world.
I looked at my Grandpa’s photo of the bomber he once flew.
Despite the faded colors I was certain it was you.
The owners of the junkyard looked with favor on my quest
As I set out to battle the years of grime and rust.
Then I set out my palette to restore each shade and hue
I cannot make grandfather young but I can restore her to you
Her legs are lithe and beautiful just as I ‘d been told
her eyes a cold blue steel,and her hair a platinum gold.
Aug 2, 2018
Aug 2, 2018 at 10:13 PM UTC
Nothing gets crossed out -
A collection of the worst jokes you ever told (something about LSD and shellfish) rolls and rolls and rolls and rolls into dust bunnies (whispering my secrets) snatched up and molded with vegan butter until a collective comet increase, increases, IGNITES into flames and is suddenly the rising sun you rose up underneath from six times in my bed where the butterflies in my stomach shivered and shook and made their way to the walls at eye level with your tiny ears
-
Tie a tin-can telephone to the door of your own personal world from my mailbox and I'll leave a message on your carrier pigeon (answering machine?)
I'm confused.
"Jennifer wants you to know that she wants you and her to move into a postage-stamp house in a postcard of Italy - she says to make sure you know that the house has no walls and lots of ladybugs."
-
I think we're breaking up - "What do you mean, you know what I look like without my face? Jesus, Jenny, you're ******* nuts."
-
It's okay though, I got like, ten cents for recycling those cans. Anyways
CRASH! From behind a junkyard ~
Sounds that I will drown out with my erectile-dysfunction pills.
-
There's a candle from something called (Ireland?) here and I can't ******* blow it out, there's like twenty, or twelve years probably, you are repeated here doing sunrise stretches in fluttering orange flames
Green slime oozes from the cracks in your shower tiles and I try to pin it back up with clothespins; just in case it helps you save the world. By the way - I will write my name in the unethical fog left behind an Indian-ocean's worth of water and say I fell asleep, wasn't me, astral projection did it (!!)
-
(Are you still with me?)
-
The last chapter - the Queen of England will buy your burial site under a fake name and I will fingers crossed decompose into one looooong-winded aperçu.
Sep 22, 2013
Sep 22, 2013 at 2:13 AM UTC
You were letters of a time away and floating on my air as rain pelted our windows and soaked my hair.
Cold with our own ambition and the sky swarmed by grey clouds ridden with my nightmares, dreams, essays that i turned in past the due date and wine you took from the back of your mothers liquor cabinet.
Your car sneezed and coughed cancer cells perpetuating when you turned the key. from the dents on the side and the tobacco scent on the seats i knew you took this from the junkyard on the south side of the boulevard.
You thought you were the problem but I was the one snacking on empty prescription bottles and then chewing glass for dessert blood running down my chin and giggling at the hopelessness that I felt in my soul.
I swallowed broken vases and cut up my esophagus as you spoon fed me unrequited love. i thought we were going to
make it but we only got to the gas station before the car broke down and i went home.
Oct 3, 2018
Oct 3, 2018 at 3:39 PM UTC