"riders" poems
Thoughts in time and out of season
The Hitchhiker stood by the side of the road
And leveled his thumb
In the calm calculus of reason.
Hi. How you doin’?
I just got back into town,
L.A.
I was out in the desert for awhile
“Riders on the storm”
Yeah. In the middle of it
“Riders on the storm”
Right…
“Into this world we’re born”
Hey, listen, man, I really got a problem
“Into this world we’re thrown”
When I was out on the desert, ya know
“Like a dog without a bone
An actor out on loan”
I don’t know how to tell you
“Riders on the storm”
but, ah, I killed somebody
“There’s a killer on the road”
No…
“His brain is squirming like a toad”
It’s no big deal, ya know
I don’t think anybody will find out about it, but…
“take a long holiday”
just, ah…
“Let your children play”
this guy gave me a ride, and ah…
“If you give this man a ride”
started giving me a lot of trouble
“Sweet family will die”
and I just couldn’t take it, ya know
“Killer on the road”
And I wasted him
Yeah.
50.2k
Are you listening to the whispers? are you feeling scandalised?
Harbouring ***** little feelings that you wanna sanitise?
Walk through the swinging doors of a catholic franchise
Ask em for that sailors knot a black-n-white man-ties
To the pairs of prying eyes his practical rebuke
Is a marital disguise and a tactical puke
Throw the garter ‘mongst the pigeons, the voluntary victims...
Whose single minds are filled with matrimonial conviction
Paired up poets pool their miseries; the price of art
Each miserable synergy - the sum of its parts
Did he swear that he’d hold you ever dear to his heart?
To love and to cherish til your knees did part?
If she wants you like her father and you want her like your mother
What the hell are you gonna do when you’re bored of one another?
There she stands on ceremony all silk and sinew
While the vow evicted from his Adam’s apple continues
To stutter as the panic builds like stifled farts
Til it splutters its devotions on her lady parts
Her eyes sentence you to sit though your neck-hairs stand
She’s the ****** ****** written in the lines on your palm
Old scores squeeze sideways through her gritted teeth
And he takes on the debt of every promise she believed
Hide the love-bites in a polo-neck, your love life in a Rolodex
When the ***** hand of happen-stance runs its evil down your keks
Cos like the indelible digits on your bathroom mirror
Love is for life until you dress it with liquor
If she wants you like her father and you want her like your mother
What the hell are you gonna do when you’re bored of one another?
We are but experiments, seven billion shades of wrong
The clever ones stay celibate, the others pass it on
That’s an easy line to settle-on in present company
Single-riders in the peloton to pick up the debris
Mar 7, 2018
Mar 7, 2018 at 5:44 PM UTC
beyond Montana’s yellow lines
there is a field
~a field of painted soles
and laces rubber tread
~a field of ****** curls
and fallen headlights
where kaleidoscope lenses
look onto twisted frames like origami halos
where teddy bears hug stop signs like pickets
fringed in anger
runaway childhoods sleep cautionary tales
beyond Montana’s blushing acne
there are red cup melodies
blasting from blacked out tints
weaving blues notes through Rock & Rap
distant cries are drowned by Bass
or maybe Bud (light)
a haze of teenage eyes
they might as well be ghost riders
whip game copped from GTA
these pubescents are a Vice to their City
blooming sidewalk sloths
like flowerbeds
beyond Montana
is a country of bar stools
where bar tenders play therapists
and therapists play coroners
precedents are shots of whiskey - taken to the head
and reflected in flooded eyes
beyond Montana
is a country of MADD mothers and SADD students
beyond Montana
is a country of unexpecting pedestrians
beyond Montana
is a field
~a field of wing-clipped snow angels
That field is Mariah's home now
and she challenges you to change
yourself
your friends
your country
she challenges you to
STOP DRUNK DRIVING
Jan 6, 2013
Jan 6, 2013 at 2:22 PM UTC
The posters said tomorrow
At eleven on the dot
The Mishkin Brothers Circus
Would be here ....on this spot
There would be no carnival or midway
Just one tent and three rings
And all of the excitement
That a good old circus brings
There would be elephants and lions
Trapeze artists overhead
Dancing dogs and ponies
And zebras painted red
Clowns of all description
Answering to just one man
In the center of the circle
Was Mishkin brother....Dan
He'd run the show for twenty years
Gone from town to town to town
In one day they would get set up
And in two, they'd tear it down
One day to show the locals
The circus still was an event
With magic, form the Barnum Days
All housed inside one tent
The sideshow barkers and their geeks
Were not with this fine group
Dan Mishkin had assembled
Only the finest circus troup
From Russia he had jugglers
Knife throwers, just the best
******** riders from Decatur
Along with all the rest
Fourteen trucks and trailers
Pulled into town the night before
Breaking ground once they arrived
Working right through until four
Just old time entertainment
No travelling gypsy band was this
It was the Mishkin Brothers Circus
It was something not to miss
The show was started promptly
At twelve o'clock, like the sign said
A parade of all the players
And the zebras painted red
Two shows and it was over
The whole routine began anew
The field was once more empty
Gone was the Mishkin rolling zoo
A year from now, we'd see the signs
And we'd all go to the tent
To see the Mishkin Brothers Circus
The best money ever spent
Jun 13, 2015
Jun 13, 2015 at 4:48 PM UTC
I wrote a poem on a bus
but to hear it you must
climb to the top
of the bouncing metal stairs.
Slither snake-like
past the rail
and sit
on the rainbow nylon bench.
I'll be there
at the top of the bus,
reciting my rhyme,
written as we ride along,
past shops and houses
with musty nets
and peeling paint
on dingy doors.
There's the old woman who
lives in a house no bigger than a shoe box
who had so many children she didn't know what to do!
But they've all grown and flown now and she's all alone
with no-one to talk to but herself.
Look at that kid: grimy smile and mischievous eyes,
skateboard-scuffed knees,
darting out from the roadside.
Screech!
As we stop and angry words.
The kid glances back and tosses a vee
leaving just his smile behind.
The bus lurches on
at a snail's pace and stops at a stop
for a giggle-girl-gang
to chatter up the stairs
with a clatter of feet and voices:
weekends and boyfriends,
music and laughter.
The bus trundles and sways
past shops all shuttered,
old folks gathered by doorways
talking about people
dead and forgotten ...
except by them.
Into the town now:
a river of road-rage
as our bus ambles onward
toward car-parks and markets
and rat-racing shoppers
And stops by a brown pigeon-stained temple
of public philanthropy,
a gift from a long-dead civic leader
and now proud home
to dogeared tomes of PC persuasion.
Our bus, like some Trojan horse,
disgorges its riders
who spatter and scatter
like rays of dawn light
to shop till they drop.
So, just me and you seated
atop the steel stairway
and you say to me sharply,
“So where's your poem then?”
I look at you strangely:
“It's happened around you,” I tell you quite curtly.
Sep 23, 2012
Sep 23, 2012 at 11:35 AM UTC
Redneck bikers munching sliders.
Looking mass unfettered riders.
Stars & Stripes and girls in Stetsons.
Cows in buns and boys in Westerns.
Jun 25, 2014
Jun 25, 2014 at 1:35 PM UTC
August, the Red Line,
connected tanks
of bolted plastic vertebrae.
Every seat gone except
five rows up, where a sea lion
sprawls across two,
stuffed backpack, yellow jacket
spread out like caution tape.
His grunt a wet bark
at the glow of his screen.
Middle-school deer slip into the aisle,
chatter clipped when the sheriff drifts past,
their ears flicking, smiles bitten shut.
Not a predator- just a gelded ox,
chest puffed, badge sagging, glass-eyed,
chest rig clattering with blanks.
Two lemur-children cling to their tortoise elder,
her shell steady against the sway of the car.
She shepherds them from the surge of riders:
loud Dodger blue parrots in cholo socks,
moth-women with plumed lashes beating the stale air,
a stray dog, gutter musk dragging at its haunches.
And one gray bear
muttering alone,
arguing with her reflection.
Between Koreatown and MacArthur Park,
somewhere the sea begins to breathe again,
then, feathers forcing through my skin-
an alley gull knifing into this clamour,
scavenging inside its exhaust.
The car rattles, its ribs plated with blistered posters:
museum wings open to no one,
‘register to vote’ fading into graffiti script,
flu shots promised by smiling ghosts.
A bruised hatchling staring out beside the words
See something, say something.
The warning lights glow
like eyes hunting in the dark.
From its flanks the train
unfurls iron claws.
They rake
the tunnel walls,
the city’s bones,
the dark itself.
Sep 29, 2025
Sep 29, 2025 at 10:00 PM UTC
C'mon out to the rattled caves
the deep-sea malaise
rested in the grey metamorphs
of an ancient coastal chain
Where Sisyphean slips of tectonic rifts
pull the molding clay
like play-dough
and old rock that turns anew
churned into
great catacomb stele
Babylonian towers far away
from the great
Mesopotamic
interstate
Surrounded by the immumerous trees
the military sharpness of their pine
quills writing their mark in the dirt
for a hundred turns or so
only to be rearranged
into the great intercontinental soil
Truly
multisolipsistual
And on the aggregate
held open the mists
of the vast expanse of ocean
beyond L.A
and stole the fruits of the tiny parceled condominium rainwater
from distance far away
angry men shouting--
"Give us back our life blood, GOD **** YOU!"
Filling the tanks of their fleshomobiles
running around and sweating it out
trading it for cloth and wiping their brow on
brown shirts
perturbed and disobeyed
But that great man with the chin muscatche
brought the rough riders out of their dome
into the frontier, riding trains
Off they go!
Seeking paradise in the sands
and the trees
and the coastal breeze
dreaming
of a world owned and seen
by the world
by man
and by all these things
It would be grand
But that rock has been seen before
in Luarentian islands long ago
or perhaps a great FUJI-SAN of the west coast
worshiped by critters and dinosaurs
You are late to the game, sweet dreamers, you!
These monuments give to honor due
not you,
no sir did you build these things?
did you mold these things
with the patience of a father
with the consequentiality
of the womb
and a motherly affection
for all things true?
the gift is for you,
remember your father's gifts
sweet princes of the earth
because they will outlive you.
And I walk along the stream
stepping upon these little bits of Yosemite
Pulverized mountain rocks
Renal Stones of the diseased
to which the water flushed out deeply
and cured the grey things from all that left them
displeased
hoping for more than just selfies
and sticking it to god's face
laughing at half-dome
climbing it and getting the better of ourselves
Believing we have achieved bliss
When in reality,
there is nothing to this which we can reach.
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 5:19 PM UTC
reverence in poetry. everything to every person.
reader claims they can a necessary skill for
uncover the reverence. successful hypothecating and
in the scripts that (buying)poetry-creation outta nothing,
life straight hands me, tell them what thy want to hear,
for collection & correction, and they’ll call you laureate,
secretarial transcribing, instead of good listener
binding, typo correction or just a keen observer-fakir
mundane are the tasks, just take what they give ya,
that’s all them muses ask, dress it like Joseph in a
don’t interfere, taken what’s given, coat of many colors,
bow, curtsy, show respect, don’t let on your plagiarism
treat its aspects/instincts correctly is all them, redressed legally
you’re just the pass through agent, true you, gotta be smart about it,
patient for no payment expected, variant spellings, swinging verbs,
be our adherent, not our truant, be discreet, they’ll call your script
we appoint don’t disappoint, a real keeper and give love or sun,
accept our patent, render legit mucho poem emojis accoladeya
as for this reverence thinge devil in a blue dress, walk the streets
if I do my job ok, on any day, grabbing snatches of overhearings,
any poem could save a life, pressed into a single tunic, you think,
if I get the commas placed, he a genius, knows my thinking,
just right, the periods period, exactly, what a great poet and
while obeying the speed limit con/hu-man par excellent
them muses so **** pleased even fool muses, too full themselves,
by this true confession released, muses who think we stink and
and self deprecation, couldn’t do it without them
they call me reverend, great pretenders by stealing
imagine them silly folk, everything in everybody and
calling a big fat liar. all thieves and cape riders,
reverend, duh, the end original liars, pants on fire
before midnight and after 3:20am April 7~8, two oh nineteen
any message you send becomes my intellectual property, fool....
Apr 8, 2019
Apr 8, 2019 at 5:24 AM UTC
The anvils rang and the hammers rose
To beat out bright blades of dwarvish steel
These were blades for elven kings
For soon the wars would rage
The Mordor hordes were marching
From the blacklands they would come
Bringing death and desolation
To the green and pleasant lands
But the elven hosts were marching
Alongside dwarves and men
And the eagles circled above them
Eyes searching every vale and glen
Bright were the swords of the elven kings
Tightly strung the bows
Heavy the axes and hammers of the mountain dwarves
Long and fierce the spears of men
The horse lords rode there on the flanks
And also in the van
They would be the first to fight
When the orchish hordes came into sight
Orc riders the target for their spears
Wargs the targets for their swords
To buy the times for the elven kings
To form their battle lines
Feb 7, 2015
Feb 7, 2015 at 4:01 PM UTC
Inside the Rainbow Forest
Where unicorns are born,
And fairy dust floats on the air
From sundown until dawn,
There dwells in royal splendour
Yet very rarely seen,
The king of all the pixies
With his pretty pixie queen.
His palace is a mushroom
As tall as any tree,
With bright red spots upon it
That will make you squeal with glee.
A winding golden staircase
Stretches to the very top,
In a mesmerizing spiral
That you think will never stop.
All those brave enough to climb it
Would soon chance upon a door,
With the most enormous knocker
That you really ever saw.
One hard tap summons the butler,
A polite and friendly gnome,
Serving tea and fondant fancies
That will make you feel at home.
Through a maze of vaulted chambers
Each more lavish than the last,
Passing walls lined with the portraits
Of kings from the distant past,
That dear gnome shall gently guide you,
With much merriment and song,
To the Great Hall of his master
Who resides there all day long.
From beneath a silver archway
Set with precious gems galore,
You will enter to the fanfare
Of ten trumpets, maybe more.
Dainty apple blossom petals
Shall be scattered at your feet,
As you bow your head in homage
To the king you are to meet.
With a heart bursting with wonder
You will hastily be brought,
To the throne of his most highness
Far across the royal court,
Threading through the marble towers
Of an ornate colonnade,
And a troupe of prancing dragons
With their riders on parade.
Seated high upon a pumpkin
In a matching orange gown,
Curly shoes of bright green velvet
And an elderflower crown,
The king shall bid you welcome
With a beaming toothy grin,
As he beckons to the minstrel
For the music to begin.
With his beard like cotton candy
Waving wildly in the air,
As he slides down to embrace you
From atop his lofty chair,
Both your arms shall link together
To the fiddler's merry tune,
Clicking heels and laughing loudly
As you skip around the room.
In the magic of the moment
You will give yourself to fun,
As the mischief making monarch
Tweaks your ears and cracks a pun,
All those cares your heart now carries
Shall dissolve and simply be
Lost in wondrous celebration
Of a pixie jamboree!
Sep 27, 2014
Sep 27, 2014 at 6:38 PM UTC
I think, Lorraine, it was the rain
gently pattering upon my pane
creating rhythm in my sleeping brain
encouraging chaos bordering insane
I blamed it ,Lorraine, on the falling rain.
A vison arose of a windswept plain
saddleless riders in the north of Spain
granting a stranger a sultry dame
standing in the pouring rain…
I think, Lorraine, it was the rain.
Her eyes expressed complete distain
looking at fools pretending to reign
over lands with dragons left un-slain
me, I could only sit and complain
I blamed it, Lorraine, on the falling rain.
I heard a ghost howl in pain
bitten by a rabid Dane
fleeting images of regret and shame
flashed across my face again…
I think, Lorraine, it was the rain.
I blamed it, Lorraine, on the falling rain
the day you told me I was your bane
you wished to see me die alone in pain
with nothing but the falling rain….
I think, Lorraine, it was the rain.
Like the blackest tar running through my vein
the three a.m. creature threw me on a plane
sent me sailing down the next of a Crane
U-turn careening into the oncoming lane
I blamed it, Lorraine, on the falling rain.
When at last our eyes met her dusty mane
created an aura I can’t explain
but enveloped the world in love without shame
giving the people joy without pain
I think, Lorraine, it was the rain.
I think, Lorraine, it was the rain
which fed the stranger on the train
looking to rob the Spanish Main
a thought I considered to be to framed…
I blamed it, Lorraine, on the falling rain.
Left in the twilight listening without restrain
these visions creep into my insomniac brain
as drip after drip crash upon my pane
I think, Lorraine, it was the rain…
I blamed it, Lorraine, on the falling rain.
Aug 29, 2015
Aug 29, 2015 at 5:02 PM UTC
buffalo head cloud
rawhide drums
saline rollers at tantalus cross
ominous light
forms a short mile away
head lice
and peckers
tap the metal track
shovel train pings
the night quiet
moonlight
shines in
geometric form
arches and skiddles
and skirting reflections
(a vast connection of
grand design)
7 horns
at the passing
(oh that cold metal joy!)
stirring the blades
and ground cover
you better not turn old friend
just nod,
and cut what you need
it’s a bitter run
on the winter line
(with the finest
of wheels
and runners)
hold tight
on the pulley
the canyon wires
are clipping
there’s a gateway
to the copper town
*with a key held
by coveted few*
you can spot the
riders in their
box cars
watching closely
at the chunnel’s
dark turn
we’d walk
the lines often
(and put an ear to the ground)
the mine town still
and barren
hidden treasures
and pocket *******
settled deep
in a tranquil, stolid place
Feb 3, 2017
Feb 3, 2017 at 12:03 AM UTC
In Rome on the Campo di Fiori
Baskets of olives and lemons,
Cobbles spattered with wine
And the wreckage of flowers.
Vendors cover the trestles
With rose-pink fish;
Armfuls of dark grapes
Heaped on peach-down.
On this same square
They burned Giordano Bruno.
Henchmen kindled the pyre
Close-pressed by the mob.
Before the flames had died
The taverns were full again,
Baskets of olives and lemons
Again on the vendors' shoulders.
I thought of the Campo dei Fiori
In Warsaw by the sky-carousel
One clear spring evening
To the strains of a carnival tune.
The bright melody drowned
The salvos from the ghetto wall,
And couples were flying
High in the cloudless sky.
At times wind from the burning
Would driff dark kites along
And riders on the carousel
Caught petals in midair.
That same hot wind
Blew open the skirts of the girls
And the crowds were laughing
On that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.
Someone will read as moral
That the people of Rome or Warsaw
Haggle, laugh, make love
As they pass by martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
Of the passing of things human,
Of the oblivion
Born before the flames have died.
But that day I thought only
Of the loneliness of the dying,
Of how, when Giordano
Climbed to his burning
There were no words
In any human tongue
To be left for mankind,
Mankind who live on.
Already they were back at their wine
Or peddled their white starfish,
Baskets of olives and lemons
They had shouldered to the fair,
And he already distanced
As if centuries had passed
While they paused just a moment
For his flying in the fire.
Those dying here, the lonely
Forgotten by the world,
Our tongue becomes for them
The language of an ancient planet.
Until, when all is legend
And many years have passed,
On a great Campo dci Fiori
Rage will kindle at a poet's word.
3.6k
Handicap suburban hippies
Cruising like hyenas
Trampoline ******
****** tissues in ashtrays
Natural born riders
Liquid courage makes little peanuts
Alien Nation
Infomercials on mute
Strange thugs and dark markets
Needles and pixie sticks
Under the manmade weather
New types of bullet holes
Slaying the jabberwocky in
The new Transylvania
The Yes monster
Cranium stadium
Swords and roses
Barren space
Insolent minx
Holidays gone bad
Continental drift
Jun 29, 2012
Jun 29, 2012 at 1:15 PM UTC
- It's simple, Life Isn't fair. You grow
Believing
It Is
Until the world Releases
It's
Wrath.
Equality
Doesn't
Come
Easily
It most definitely won't
come
without
a Fight.
Every
Fight
Comes
With
a consequence. It may seem hard
However
It's worth It
Barack Obama
Ridiculed
So I can
become a
president
Rosa Parks Imprisoned
So I can sit
wherever I
choose
Martin Luther
King Assassinated
So I can befriend
anyone I choose
Malcolm X Murdered
So I can be accepted
Freedom Riders
Arrested So I can eat
wherever I choose
Black Panthers
Abused So I can be
treated fairly
These fighters died, On the front line, On the battle field
So I wouldn't have
To. And yet, Where am I
Fighting, On the front line
Of the battle field
So what ever young
aspiring African American
won't be deprived
of their education
Of their History
Of their right to vote;
For standing up
For what they believe In
It's simple
Life Isn't fair
However you
don't know
Until life
unleashes It's
wrath
On You
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 8:31 PM UTC
I'll tell you a story about two young brothers.
Like fire and smoke, that's what was said.
Always together, laughing and singing,
Sharing adventures, sharing their bread.
One day these two brothers both became lovers.
Yes! They both fell in love at the very same time.
Though always before they'd shared all their secrets,
This was a secret they would not confide.
Each of the brothers went into the garden.
One picked a red rose, the other a white.
They rode off at sunset, not one word between them
In opposing directions, into the night.
At the balcony window of her father's veranda
Rosa is anxiously scanning the street
Pablo is late now, soon Hector will ride up
This cannot happen! They surely will meet!
Rosa hears hoof beats from different directions,
Riders approaching along cobbled streets.
Each bearing a rose, and a heart full of passion
Brothers no more, but two rivals that meet.
A challenge is offered and is quickly accepted.
Their swords are both drawn before Rosa can speak.
She cries out to stop them, their blood's screaming louder.
They fight like two madmen and fall at her feet.
Their life ebbing from them, they lie there before her,
Rosa is sobbing, "Oh what have I done?"
She kisses their lips, so cold now and pallid,
And sheds her tears on them, so soon to be gone.
Bending over her lovers, they whisper to her,
"Take these two roses, and plant them tonight
on each side of your window, they'll grow up together.
Our love will be with you, though we die in this fight."
That's the story he told me, when I was a small boy,
When I asked my papa of that house on the right,
With it's balcony window grown over with roses,
Twining together, the red and the white.
And each day at sunset, Rosa goes to the old church.
She kneels at the altar to say her long prayers.
Lighting two candles before the Mother of Mercy,
One red and one white rose she lays gently there.
Nov 26, 2010
Nov 26, 2010 at 4:39 PM UTC
Got 0 followers, but one tongue, and that's perfectly ok...
cause I got
two eyes
two nostrils
two hands
two ears
two ventricles
they all
follow me
all riders
on the one tongue
that speaks my piece
that finds poetry
on ***** streets
in closed places
and in the
if's of our lives
that makes writing
in one common tongue
so **** desirable
Mar 1, 2015
Mar 1, 2015 at 9:06 AM UTC
Caught the vampire's failing smile,
cracked by teeth & venom,
wind-walking among the trees,
talking to the vipers
& the rats & the bats & the
men of the old bonetown.
Mr Mann had the right idea,
burn your books & get the hell outta Dodge.
Do not pass go & do not stop,
do NOT make out in the back of a beat-up old auto
parked next to the hypermarket on Dawn & Vine.
Mr Mann up front,
peering through the cracks in the windscreen,
the cracks in reality.
He can see the vampire's slow smile,
the shadows passing across the face of the TV screen,
& hear the old ghost voices,
the old radio voices, the 1949 voices.
Blood on leather,
black roots rising,
saliva on after-effects & after-echoes,
the apocalypse riders chasing the moon up the old dark valley,
the moon chasing the apocalypse riders right back
down the old dark valley to whatever hell they came from.
The vampires! The vampires!
Children beat hasty retreats,
hide under the boxes back of the laundromat,
not daring to peek
as black boots crunch gravel.
Mr Mann has the right surmise,
get outta the books & into guns,
get into heavy metal & iron drag,
get into lead & something magickal,
long forgotten lore & hoodoo voodoo
from years & years ago.
The vampire's smile turns awful yellow,
fades as the stars wheel & that tired old sun begins its ascent,
fades as the dawn breaks over the desert winds & cacti
& the lovers wake in their motel room in the back of beyond
& fumble for their stakes & knives & garlic *****
Easy now for Mr Mann in the sun-kissed big blue.
Hunt it down in the tumbledowns & old desert towns.
Kick off the jams, break open the locks.
Hose it down with oil & strike a match.
Burn the reality right off that face
& that face right off reality
Splat on the sand. Grue on the sand. Black on the sand.
Mr Mann walking back to the autombile, back to happiness,
radio playing a little something from 92,
or was it 93, he really can't remember now.
Feb 20, 2012
Feb 20, 2012 at 3:16 PM UTC
Where Gloria lies
Lydia once lay
Gloria's boyfriend
sleeps beside her
(Gloria)
& Lydia having to sleep
in the cot bed
feels the aches and pains
in a bed too small
and sits moodily
on the red tiled
front door step
gazing at the Square
chin in her small hands
pouting lips
the baker with his
horse drawn cart
goes by
the man with his boxer dog
walks on by
waves as he
is wont to do
his dog sniffing
the ground
her father's voice
sounding from indoors
her mother's voice
bellowing above his
Benny rides along
on his imaginary horse
& rides over to her
sitting there
what's up?
he asks
fed up
she replies
staring at him
my big sister
& her boyfriend
still have my bed
& I'm stuck in
the cot bed &
I ache & feel angry
& I could spit
I see
Benny says
getting off
his pretend horse
anything I can do
to help?
only if you kidnap
her boyfriend
& send him off
some place
Lydia says
what you doing
anyway?
she asks
standing up
& rubbing her behind
which had become
pins& needlely
I was going to ride
my blue scooter
but you can come
& we can share it
along & down
Rockingham Street
he says
she looks at him
& says
ok if I can
have a ride
even if it is blue
or
he says
I can ask my sister
if you can borrow
her red one
will she let me?
Lydia asks
sure to if I ask
nicely & promise
her some sweets
he says
ok
Lydia says
let's go then
so they walked up
to the flat where
Benny lives with his
parents & sister
& brother
& he asks his sister
who says yes
& so Benny & Lydia
ride off across
the Square
on the two scooters
& Benny has
(for safety against
bad cowboys)
his two 6 gun
shooters.
Jul 29, 2015
Jul 29, 2015 at 3:16 PM UTC
Freedom Riders were Civil Rights Activist who were on the move
Supreme Court ruling in what they had to prove
Segregation that should be cut out
The added response would be a loud shout
Interstate buses were used in making their point
This was an outgoing mission and the Freedom Riders were not going to accept a disappoint
Freedom Riders in their voices on the road
This was a challenge to the Supreme Court
Greyhound Bus Lines was the Freedom Riders mode
This is was determination and the Freedom Riders will be undersold
The message was “We won’t be silent, and do as we are told”
The Freedom Riders journeyed on with no time to tire
Their voices were full of fire
The motto being their desire
There certainly was no time to retire
Freedom Riders carried on
Greyhound Buses were bombed in getting the Freedom Riders attention
But that wasn’t going to stop their platform stand
Civil Rights for all needed to be carried out throughout the land
We will not stop because our Greyhound bus has been destroyed
This just makes us strong and totally annoyed
The movement is a multitude strong
Civil Rights was finally confide
But let’s move Civil Rights today
We cannot let anyone stand in our way
What Washington objects is not ok
Civil Rights must remain active and focused
All nationalities belong
This is a call for Justice, and the world is letting it be known
Freedom Riders being the floor plan had shown
This is everyone’s time to let it be known
Voices have, and will continue to be, “We Shall Overcome”.
Feb 15, 2017
Feb 15, 2017 at 11:59 AM UTC
HE lived on the wings of storm.
The ashes are in Chihuahua.
Out of Ludlow and coal towns in Colorado
Sprang a vengeance of Slav miners, Italians, Scots, Cornishmen, Yanks.
Killings ran under the spoken commands of this boy
With eighty men and rifles on a hogback mountain.
They killed swearing to remember
The shot and charred wives and children
In the burnt camp of Ludlow,
And Louis Tikas, the laughing Greek,
Plugged with a bullet, clubbed with a gun ****
As a home war
It held the nation a week
And one or two million men stood together
And swore by the retribution of steel.
It was all accidental.
He lived flecking lint off coat lapels
Of men he talked with.
He kissed the miners' babies
And wrote a Denver paper
Of picket silhouettes on a mountain line.
He had no mother but Mother Jones
Crying from a jail window of Trinidad:
"All I want is room enough to stand
And shake my fist at the enemies of the human race."
Named by a grand jury as a murderer
He went to Chihuahua, forgot his old Scotch name,
Smoked cheroots with Pancho Villa
And wrote letters of Villa as a rock of the people.
How can I tell how Don Magregor went?
Three riders emptied lead into him.
He lay on the main street of an inland town.
A boy sat near all day throwing stones
To keep pigs away.
The Villa men buried him in a pit
With twenty Carranzistas.
There is drama in that point...
...the boy and the pigs.
Griffith would make a movie of it to fetch sobs.
Victor Herbert would have the drums whirr
In a weave with a high fiddle-string's single clamor.
"And the muchacho sat there all day throwing stones
To keep the pigs away," wrote Gibbons to the Tribune.
Somewhere in Chihuahua or Colorado
Is a leather bag of poems and short stories.
2.8k
For it is written to grant forgiveness
No matter difference or malfeasance
To never speak ill of one another
Or deny each other our subsistence
All men are created equal parchment
Holding these truths to be self-evident
The oppression of the Kings colony
Patriotic revolutionary
Migrating minds irrational to sane
Reserved safe harbor but to others pain
Land of self-righteousness and victory
Exceptionalism and destiny
Ships billowing with holds of chattel slaves
Fractional human beings ordained graves
Until brother killed brother for freedom
Assassination emancipation
Forty acres and a mule recompense
Jim Crow separate but equal pretense
Lynch mob street justice terrorism rope
Vietnam veteran unable to cope
James Earl Ray bullet Memphis balcony
Bull Connor another dead Kennedy
Black power fist raised Mexico City
Malcolm X panther Muhammed Ali
White supremacy freedom riders dead
Mississippi white cross on fire dread
Rodney King can’t we just get along plea
Is skin color all we will ever see?
Should they get over their Mockingbird past
Should they burn the city or should they fast?
Oh Lord should we turn a cheek in silence
Or fight with Kings dream of non-violence?
Nov 25, 2014
Nov 25, 2014 at 10:39 PM UTC
On almost the incendiary eve
Of several near deaths,
When one at the great least of your best loved
And always known must leave
Lions and fires of his flying breath,
Of your immortal friends
Who'd raise the organs of the counted dust
To shoot and sing your praise,
One who called deepest down shall hold his peace
That cannot sink or cease
Endlessly to his wound
In many married London's estranging grief.
On almost the incendiary eve
When at your lips and keys,
Locking, unlocking, the murdered strangers weave,
One who is most unknown,
Your polestar neighbour, sun of another street,
Will dive up to his tears.
He'll bathe his raining blood in the male sea
Who strode for your own dead
And wind his globe out of your water thread
And load the throats of shells
with every cry since light
Flashed first across his thunderclapping eyes.
On almost the incendiary eve
Of deaths and entrances,
When near and strange wounded on London's waves
Have sought your single grave,
One enemy, of many, who knows well
Your heart is luminous
In the watched dark, quivering through locks and caves,
Will pull the thunderbolts
To shut the sun, plunge, mount your darkened keys
And sear just riders back,
Until that one loved least
Looms the last Samson of your zodiac.
2.7k
I am a traveler commuting on life's rails,
going station to station.
Disembarking at different destinations,
each time spent differently.
The car can be claustrophobic with passengers,
suffocating me in anxiety.
Other times, just a few of familiar faces,
friends, families, locals, daily riders.
Some talking, of life, nonsense, all or nothing,
each making their way.
There are times of light, above ground and of sun,
the rest tunneled, falsely lit, dark.
The sights of open land, buildings, and of the day,
the faces of love, hurt, hurried and grind.
Day in Day out this cycle goes on,
different,yet the same.
I am part of this mass exodus to get somewhere,
yet my commute is my own.
At times I arrive with many at the platform
bustling towards their tasks.
Trains for life come and go, expresses to locals,
roaring with noise, movements, purpose.
However, there are times i am the only one there,
Occasional train, in silence, alone.
Those are the days that my commute seems fruitless,
leaving me to wonder,
Have I just been passing it all by?
© J.L.Gonzalez75 09/2016
* this is a rough edit... am not a poet, but just write.
Sep 27, 2016
Sep 27, 2016 at 7:28 PM UTC