"sidecar" poems
I remember paper lanterns with small red candles floating down the river
but I don't remember the festival or in who's honour they were lit.
I remember roadside shrines and little envelopes of money, not proper
money but a special kind who's name I don't remember either.
I remember the big pagoda but couldn't tell you where it was.
I remember so much about those years but there's so much I forgot.
I remember warm rain and warm puddles that we jumped in with flip flops on.
I remember the little guy on the motobike and sidecar that used to come
round selling soda and taking caps for prizes and the bubble stuff in a
tube.
I remember the paper pucks with feathers in that the local kids would
play with like hacky sacks.
I remember the smell on incense in the temples
I remember the markets. The sights, the smells, the sounds of so many
things never seen or heard or smelt before or since.
I remember Hong Kong
And I'm sure its changed since I was 5 but I want to go back and see
just how much.
Jul 2, 2011
Jul 2, 2011 at 8:42 AM UTC
.
warm breeze island street
stern squeezed man steers red scooter
sidecar girl texting
.
Dec 30, 2012
Dec 30, 2012 at 2:26 AM UTC
writing life on the upbeat
no mean feat
when riding pell mell
down to bowels of hell
on a harley fatboy
bought as look at me ploy
with a kooky sidecar
of sarcastic sidebar
talking of friends
my god are
we are all just lemmings
to mediocracy in the end
Aug 3, 2014
Aug 3, 2014 at 8:02 AM UTC
A sink of ***** dishes
Empty bottles on the floor
Fly strips black with corpses
And a broken down screen door
Glasses, full and empty
cigarettes drowned in stale beer
I look around, then I wonder
How the hell did I get here?
I'm Somewhere going nowhere
Or that's the way it seems
A place you couldn't make up in your dreams
I'm somewhere going nowhere
At least that's how it seems
I'm in a place you couldn't make up in your dreams
Tobacco in the sunshine
Corn reaching for the sky
Vices grown of beauty
You couldn't write this if you tried
I'm hooked on beauty's evil
I live on the dark side
I've the devil in the sidecar
And this is how I ride
I'm Somewhere going nowhere
Or that's the way it seems
A place you couldn't make up in your dreams
I'm somewhere going nowhere
At least that's how it seems
I'm in a place you couldn't make up in your dreams
I look into the future
And I just see the past
The tunnel now is narrow
The time just goes so fast
My yesterday's are many
Too many to be sure
Ten thousand pounds of ashes
Dropped and stamped into the floor
I'm Somewhere going nowhere
Or that's the way it seems
A place you couldn't make up in your dreams
I'm somewhere going nowhere
At least that's how it seems
I'm in a place you couldn't make up in your dreams
I'm Somewhere going nowhere
but, hell it could be worse
I think nowhere going somewhere
could be worse
yeah, maybe
Nowhere going somewhere could be worse
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 4:08 PM UTC
California 1925
and it was Soper
who was in the sidecar
of the motorbike
and his dark haired
wife Sophie
who was
beside the bike
getting ready
to ride it.
I want to ride
on the deserted beach
she said.
He was in
his black swim suit.
She in that
swimming costume
black with white stripes.
The beach is
empty of people
she said.
He looked at her
guess you can
no harm can be done
he said
looking out
at the sea
on the long stretch
of beach
yellow sands
making sure
he could see
no boulders anywhere.
She put her
25 year old leg
over the bike
and started it up.
He held on tight
to both sides
of the sidecar.
She looked
ahead of her.
Keep your eyes squinted
he said
in case you get
sand in them.
She nodded
and smiled.
He closed his eyes
he knew
when he met her
she was kind of wild.
Jul 12, 2017
Jul 12, 2017 at 3:27 AM UTC
S Creeker
Just have to say
read your poems
and it was a wild ride.
from the hunter
onwards,
you laid down your words
in a pattern,
i read as truth...
at the moment,
your book here is small,
but i hope you stay....
and create a sheaf
of poetry so freakin tall.
you take me...
where i have never been,
or likely to go
and with style
and flair.....
i see it all.....
i be a ****** standing, gaping in the corner there.
so please,
take these words,
as a compliment due...
and encouragement,
to let me again
ride pillion
on your mind's wild side.
Nov 23, 2014
Nov 23, 2014 at 6:06 PM UTC
The world looks much better
from behind your eyes,
and I would love to view it
in that same light, myself,
but all those little lights
have their own dark corners
from my perspective,
so I'll follow you instead,
out of the dark and into the light,
a passenger in your love of the world.
May 28, 2015
May 28, 2015 at 12:36 PM UTC
you bleed stars
I stare into your eyes
you are lonely
you want to leave
the forest.
you are dim
flying around in your sad sidecar
looking for a settling ground
I will hold your mask.
Mar 4, 2014
Mar 4, 2014 at 5:42 PM UTC
Wavering.
Seems to be stuck in the sidecar.
With doubt in in back.
And fear spilling out of every pocket.
Where can anything else fit.
It always seems like the only option is to floor it.
And hope.
The next experience isn't.
A wreckage.
Time seems to slow in this moment.
As if to give you one last replay.
Of what can never change.
Tumbling end.
Over beginning.
Through logic.
And past the last chance.
Lementing choices and decisions.
Hate flowing through burning veins.
Igniting the very air.
Causing a caustic reaction that seems to backdraft the entirety of it all.
Leaving only the ash to tell the tale.
And then there are those who see this very disturbance.
And find something within themselves never before used.
Touched.
Or seen.
And alter the very fabric of repetition.
With nothing more than a smile and.
Willingness.
Fear knot the emotions that entangle others.
For it only takes one to wade through the murky echoes of the past.
To ensure.
That The insanity will recede.
There are no shackles.
Only encumbering thoughts.
The only impass.
Is the very reflection staring back.
Mar 18, 2016
Mar 18, 2016 at 10:39 PM UTC
I was chasing down the moon
Burning concave, sickle bow ahead
They thought you were cheese
They praised you
They feared you
They studied you
They tried to lasso you
They landed on you
They forgot you
And now I'm staring you down
Plain and laid in my sights
The deer to my lonesome, vague headlights
As I barrel into her labyrinth
I'm yielding onto her, and as I go
She eclipses the sky beneath her
And it's shrinking in my view
It's as so the distance
Barring us both,
Is fracturing with every inch of every mile
By time, we will collide in beautiful unison
The explosion wound send to fragments,
The line dividing
The candor of life
And the uncertain ether
Celestial dust and shrapnel
Will rain down a new gravity
Heaven involved itself;
Instead I am now driving with the moon
We team south as she occupies
The passenger side
She's my hitch hiker
Or if she were Bonnie
I'd have to be Clyde
We're gonna rob that big bank in the sky, baby
Weaving stories of home and the road
And love and loss and time and hope
And destinations and longings
And belongings and beginnings
And we disagree and we fear things
And we share dreams and we lose sleep
And we split gas and we drive fast
And we smoke grass and she laughs
But time passed
And she was due a few miles ahead
So she climbed to the back seat
To rest for a moment
And I drove on
With the familiarity she shone
She was quiet now
And so I kept to my thoughts and the road
I'd look back on occasion just to assure
She was still a pendant on the drapery of night
I glanced about enough to spot her
From the corner of my eye
And I sigh at the strike of reticence
But flood with saccharine
I remember her glow as a child
She was in a sidecar on every road trip
Again I turn to her,
But she made no appearance
Like a thief, she fled by window,
Not even a disturbance to the wind
I smiled for our ride together
And the protection she laid over me
It was finished now,
But everything always is
I caught the blemish in my rear view
As I moved on
She was a speckle behind me
And being swallowed by the hills and buildings
I couldn't know what anticipated in the remote
But I remember my old friend
As the slack between us
Became taut and expansive
Oct 25, 2017
Oct 25, 2017 at 12:03 PM UTC
Sometimes I wish I had one thousand midnight hours all at once
or better yet,
a wristwatch full of the ticks and tocks of
all of the pre-dawn smallnesses for the next
decade or two.
These could be used to converse
with owls or coyotes,
foxes, hawks, ravens
or
river trout.
Our talks could be remembered
sweetly,
in the heat of a summer day
or
the dreariness of a wet, fall afternoon.
It is wished to not rely
on window sill,
moonlit memory,
mimeographed message
folded in half.
No;
my boots would rather
chew earth,
pebble,
and
puddle,
seeking out strange nutrients.
Monday morning stanzas
are well and good,
yet
Saturday night
sonnets,
soliloquies;
those are the real
meat and potatoes
of a weekend
word ******
Thursday night poems
are pretty ******
impressive too.
The Thunderbirds,
the phoenix of
the composition notebook.
Thursday poems and poets
ask for a sidecar of whiskey…
it shows up on the house.
Words and the working of them
should be fearless, eventually.
The best stories,
poems,
come from shadowed,
pained,
or
pining places
anyway.
***
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2021
Feb 14, 2021
Feb 14, 2021 at 7:32 PM UTC
When the skylarks would warble hover and sing
at about a hundred feet, high on the wing, and we…
on a heat clicking Sunday between Salt End and the sea,
well we knew - just from the ozone, on the breeze
that we’d be off …a shimmering heat haze convoy of old crocks,
Bud, Margaret, Brian and me to Tunstall,
a diminishing, mystical land of sun, sand, sea - and tumbling rocks.
But it wasn’t just us…it was a cavalcade - motors galore.
Uncles, Aunties, Cousins, Grans, Grandads and more
in Austins, Morris’s, Vauxhalls and Fords,
And a big old Rover wi’them wide running boards,
a motor bike’n’sidecar with Maurice, Denise & our Val
to wring the best from the day a’la Plage de Tunstall’…
The beach crackled in the heat…
if you walked too slow it’d burn your feet.
and our Dads, our ‘civil engineers’, built a brick oven and in a
giggling gaggle… Mums cooked a real Sunday dinner.
Kids’d run back & forth to the sea and back
buckets & spades, hacking big holes and shots in goal,
cricket with fallen rocks for a wicket and,
after pudding, burying drunken dads in the sand.
Heavy, wet woolen cozzies, sand in groins,
...changing in turn, under a soaking wet, gritty towel.
“Don’t dry me with that, Ow! Buddy hell - watch my sunburn.”
Then, all back in the cars, for our return
into the sunset and driving away.
Chaffing sore shoulders.
Chuffing good day! - yeah…Parfait!!
Apr 17, 2020
Apr 17, 2020 at 12:07 PM UTC
Never can be
but always will be,
still we can only try.
buy a sidecar
ride a tramcar
slide your fingers in the jam jar
marmalade tastes great.
A Legal high?
legal to die?
sanctioned.
They sell poppers to boppers
and coppers come calling,
I'm nearly not quite though
falling through light
oh
it's shiny.
It's time we went
the rent's due
and I'm new
at this game.
Dec 8, 2016
Dec 8, 2016 at 4:21 PM UTC
BUT THAT’S...ANOTHER STORY!
Her mother died
giving birth
so from that day to
this
we considered her OURS
one of the family.
Ok, so...she was
a pig
but oh such
a pretty pig
and we kept her
in the caravan
reared her as one
of our own
almost considered her as
human.
Oh the squeals of
children &...pig.
Well, she grew & grew
until the day came for her
to be serviced.
Our maiden pig
a fine Welsh White gilt.
Now, being English
amongst the Welsh
I knew you needed
a license
to move a pig
from area to area
so, I presented my self
to our two man police force.
Well, of course
they had licenses
for the this of that
or the that of this
but alas
no license
for the moving of
a pig.
They had somehow
run out.
The licenses not the pigs.
So, they gave me
a license for a crane
& crossed out the bit
not pertaining to a pig.
I thought they might
ask me
how many wheels
on your pig or
what type of machinery
is your pig?
But when it was done
it was done
a kind of
Frankenstein form
half crane/half pig.
And I was free now
to move my pig
where so ever I wished.
And so I brought her
to the boar.
And then there was the time
there was a pig born
without an ********
( not an uncommon
occurrence they told me ).
And so I set off for the vets
on my motorcycle and sidecar
but
that’s
. . .another story.
Nov 13, 2019
Nov 13, 2019 at 5:19 PM UTC
To ride a bike
To run wild and free
To play hopscotch and marbles outdoors in the sun
To laugh and run
To eat Jamaica *** and Raisin chocolate on a Saturday night
To wait up late to watch a man walk on the moon
To hide behind the settee when Dr Who comes on the T.V
To climb trees
To watch cricket played in the park
To roller skate
To swing as high as the cross bar
To grow your hair as long as your knees
To try and get it to curl with rags in your hair, desperately
To have your family motorbike and sidecar towed home by a taxi
To run on the sand
To watch the Royal Marines marching band
To swim in the sea
To walk on the moors
To be free to explore
And some people don't and that's okay. These experiences are unique to me. Allowed by my parents to play wild and free. Free of the shackles, growing up with epilepsy.
May 5, 2021
May 5, 2021 at 5:11 AM UTC
i birthed one of my famous dreams
last night and invited the
whole town. every inconsiderate
thought came and the flat shadows
of my dearest fears.
the Child with no face on the sidewalk
outlines in broad strokes
Despair. a piece of dove of peace
smothered in regrets on a wooden table
served on a terrace of blinding terror.
only the smallest of facts carry
the greatest stories of which this one
is condemned to 3 o'clock each mourning.
before heaven awakens.
before sizzling strains
of gravity prove awakened
minds are too heavy.
as the rest of the town hides everywhere
that sanity has escaped i press
hard into my eyes by thumbs to forget.
manifested dreams is a sidecar
of my mental vehicle. again at sunrise
to find that one last star yet devoured
by daylight. a wish upon that remaining
survivor -- allow this to be me!
:: 09-10-2018 ::
Sep 10, 2018
Sep 10, 2018 at 11:27 PM UTC