"tennessee" poems
I'm a simple man
A country boy north of the Mason Dixon
I don't look for much
There's only the little things I that I yearn
Like the love of a good woman and a smooth whiskey
Maybe a reliable old truck and some folks that would miss me
I'm comfortable anywhere I go
From the corn fields of Illinois, to the mountains of Tennessee
I travel light, some blue jeans and some shirts
Perhaps with a few bucks for a little fun
I listen to some old country every day
Like No Show, Hank and Mr. Conway
I'm cut from old school cloth
Just like my folks before me
Yeah, I'm not fancy
I just am who I am
A lover and a fighter
A son, brother, uncle, and lover
Oct 30, 2014
Oct 30, 2014 at 8:43 PM UTC
Memaw & Pepaw ..Mason Dixon Saturday night,
Just sippin' muscadine wine by the Tennessee moonlight
Rockin' chairs...Zenith Black and White
Roy, Buck, Minnie Pearl a Hee Haw delight.
Crickets a chirpin' and a Frogs a croakin'
Toe tapin' rhythm's got em all in motion.
Corn fields swaying like a metronome
Watching those two dance to cotton eye Joe!
Sunday mornings best at the Church of Christ,
Me, I'm Thinkin' bout Memaws country gravy, my fav-o-rite!
Fried Chicken, taters, eggs sunny side right,
These are the memories I like to recite.
Jun 5, 2016
Jun 5, 2016 at 12:19 PM UTC
i wonder, at what age
you became out of my reach;
i wonder, if i even
tried reaching for you
i know that history leaves its mark on everyone
(but not many have been hurt by the tracks
left behind in the dirt
like you have)
you can sit there for days, weeks, months
while we contemplate your fate,
tossing the choices in our hands
like dice
you hear the word expendable
mumbled in countless conversations
and wonder, at what age
you became in our reach
you think of the family you left behind
and hope they will find their way to tennessee
to a better life that is
quiet. peaceful.
will they miss your selflessness;
your keen, incisive way with words;
the bumps and hills of your rough skin;
the smell of your perfume?
i miss your evergreen smile;
your poetry;
your skin against mine;
the wonder in your eyes
Jun 21, 2018
Jun 21, 2018 at 2:43 PM UTC
I want you to put me on your tongue and let me dissolve into you like the tiny white squares that turn those glossy hazel marbles into black holes and intense stares. I want you to kiss me and see negative colored rulers in the corner of your vision and I want you to have trouble making a decision between kissing me and observing me while I'm sitting on your chest and I want you to laugh like you did with your cherry colored lip curled over your childish grin over and over and over again and I want you to forget the conversation topic every time you close your eyes because the world inside of your mind is filled with blinking images that you can't quite explain aloud so you settle for little talks about Rosa Parks and Indian style kisses and how the ocean is the Earth's thing or the complexity of butterfly brains and whether or not they remember their caterpillar memories (they do). Describe to me the first time you saw your favorite color and what developed the affinity for it: yours, a glacier blue toy that resembled the ocean and mine, a lavender Easter dress that twirled when I spun. Tell me about your school crushes when you were four and what you got your clothespin moved to the sad face for and I'll write it all in ink on my knee caps because "God, we're such writers" and you'll check the clock in the gaps and search for tunes or lighters and I'll want time to slow down because the nights spent with you usually seem as though minutes are just a few seconds shy of sixty, which turns the little hand pretty quickly.
I want hours, weeks, decades, to analyze the freckles on your face or the pace at which you move your tongue and precisely how it tastes.
I want you to tell me that your brother would like me and about the mountains in Tennessee and maybe next time I'll try to stay awake, unless you want to listen to the way I breathe so fully when I dream.
When I close my eyes, I want to be able to see what you see.
I want you to keep burying the numb parts of you into the warm parts of me.
May 29, 2015
May 29, 2015 at 4:32 AM UTC
Come with me, lets runaway darling.
Let's get out of this old town,
& see what comes our way.
Grab nothing princess, let us just go.
Our whole world is a show.
We can fall in love in Paris,
or roam the streets in Venice.
We'll sleep in the hills of Tennessee,
& wake up & see the sun in your eyes.
Come & run away with me, darling.
The world is our destination.
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 4:08 PM UTC
I Grew Up on Country Music
When Rock and Roll was king
My friends all liked the Beatles
But, that was not my thing
I liked to hear the fiddle
To hear the joy burst from the strings
I Grew Up on Country Music
When Rock and Roll was king
I remember me and Grandad
Listening to the radio
We would listen to the Opry
While my friends went to the show
Johnny Cash, The Gatlins,
Grandpa Jones, and Old Hank Snow
I was raised on country music
I just wanted you to know
I loved the feeling I would get
when I heard a country tune
Singing about trucks and girls
And a golden Tennessee Moon
Charlie Daniels, Jimmy Dean
The Judds, and Roger Miller
Willie, Waylon, Tom T. Hall
and Jerry Lee...the Killer
I Grew Up on Country Music
When Rock and Roll was king
My friends all liked the Beatles
But, that was not my thing
I liked to hear the fiddle
To hear the joy burst from the strings
I Grew Up on Country Music
When Rock and Roll was king
Country lost it's western
and Rock it lost it's roll
But, still old country music
Those tunes just made me whole
I learned all of the lyrics
And I love to hear them sing
I grew up on Country Music
When Rock and Roll was King
I Grew Up on Country Music
When Rock and Roll was king
My friends all liked the Beatles
But, that was not my thing
I liked to hear the fiddle
To hear the joy burst from the strings
I Grew Up on Country Music
When Rock and Roll was king
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 1:34 PM UTC
Gorgeous,
verdant,
with more waterfalls
than any other state
Jun 25, 2015
Jun 25, 2015 at 3:31 AM UTC
We marched to the words of "We Shall Overcome"
courting justice to walk at our side,
seared into memory with the heat of sun
brothers and sisters, arms linked one to one
beneath that day star's unblinking eye,
we marched to the words, "We Shall Overcome."
We swore an oath to forego the gun,
to carry only freedom's cry
beneath the impassive afternoon sun,
through bludgeon and cudgel one by one,
each truncheon summoning others to rise,
to join in the words "We Shall Overcome."
As we embraced, the marching done,
a crosshairs trained a sniper’s eye
to wrench malice from the indifferent sun
to hew a path in blood and bone,
to rend flesh
and a rasping
fatal sigh . . .
in the fading caress of the afternoon sun.
Beneath the eternal arc of the sun,
again we will muster side by side,
a sanctified chorus, whose song will be sung,
let our marching echo...
"We Shall Overcome.”
Copyright © 2018 Gary Brocks
Conceived after visiting the LORRAINE HOTEL (Memphis, Tennessee), the site of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Thursday, 4 April 1968.
In 1991 the NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM at the LORRAINE HOTEL was opened to the public.
"We Shall Overcome”, an anthem, title and refrain, of the American Civil Rights Movement of the mid 20th century.
Aug 26, 2018
Aug 26, 2018 at 4:18 AM UTC
Caroline loves the ocean.
Her soul sails on a Carolina breeze.
But her music's in the mountains,
and her heart's back home
where it needs to be.
I'm stuck here
in a Carolina wind,
wading in the ocean
with my heart in Tennessee,
and my mind on Caroline.
Carolina's got everything
a man could want.
Everything he needs.
It's got the mountains and the ocean.
It has a Carolina breeze.
He has everything but Caroline;
everything but Tennessee.
r ~ 6/22/14
Jun 22, 2014
Jun 22, 2014 at 6:49 PM UTC
She sat by me, in her skirt, hand grenade green,
And an off-white blouse obscured by a jacket with dust in its seams,
Like leather, like elderly skin, like a crossword puzzle with half the letters filled in,
She sat by me and spilt her sentences and her tea:
She claimed her husband had been killed by a cabal of spiritualists,
Killed by a bull elephant in the streets of Nepal,
Killed by the seven plagues,
And never killed at all,
That he was once a number
Somehow both perfect and prime,
That he was Prime minister of the sea,
And independent of time,
That his bones were cracked marbles
Bought from a widow in Tennessee,
That his name continued to escape her,
But that he looked something like me,
Leaving I saw her wings drag her heavenward,
I saw her terrible wings,
As I stumbled and veered from concrete to tarmac
I heard the pavements start to sing:
“I was once a flowerbed,
My father was a field,
My mother was a source of light,
Before which all the people kneeled.”
Then lost in the eye of daytime and night,
Drawn to the moustache of a Spanish racketeer,
He was once abandoned by his books and his babies
In the boot of a broke-down cavalier,
His pasts and ideas caught up to him,
And gripped him by his belt and his teeth,
His pasts gripped him in quiet of his nightmares,
And slashed his arms in the street,
Visions shook me by the bleeding palm,
Her terrible wings now pinpricks for the moon,
Visions shook me as deities died,
With eyes like a card-trick and fingers like doom,
Then stuck in the endless space between words;
She sat by me, in her skirt, hand grenade green;
Stuck in the endless space between words;
And an off white blouse obscured by a jacket with dust in its seams...
Mar 11, 2018
Mar 11, 2018 at 9:11 PM UTC
I was lying on Summer Set Drive
I was alive
The stars flew past
And I lost my grasp on life
But it felt so right
Let's die tonight
I was speaking to an old, wiser man
He had a gun in his hand
He taught me how to understand
That if I try as hard as I can
I will still die a man
I was broken down somewhere in Tennessee
Lucky me
And if I see the sun
Shining on my gun
This will be my time come
Dec 20, 2015
Dec 20, 2015 at 12:38 AM UTC
The fading state lines spells memories,
as the rain comes down,
a clutch of fallen gratitude
may possibly release the pain.
Spent embraces dissolve
those hard shouldered highways.
Let your tumblers of Tennessee cry resolution,
as the doe eyed Gypsy Inn
dims low,
receding as this one night stand.
Sep 20, 2013
Sep 20, 2013 at 8:29 AM UTC
Hare Krishna's
In their Pickups
Depressed Comics
Down on their Luck
Teenage Girls
Screaming Meme's
****** Pinko's*
Leftward Leaning
Vincent Price
Flo and Eddie
Rodger Rabbit
Priscilla Presley
Nuns in Habits
Dwarf's in Ponchos
Deadbeat Dads
Munching Nachos
Right-Wing Nut Jobs
Trading Slogans
A few Hero's
Including Hogan
Are just a few of the sights you see
At the front gates of Graceland
Memphis, Tennessee
Buddhist Monks
With Electric Banjos
Holding Signs Up
Of Marlon Brando
Taxi Cabs
Blaring Show Tunes
Pregnant Women
Down-loading Soon
Derby Jockeys
Flying Monkeys
Kool-Aidholics
Skittle Junkies
Bozo The Clown
Bumper Stickers
Psychedelic
Crazed Toad Lickers
Rhinestone Cowboys
In their Skivvies
Gothic Girls
Heebie Jeebies
Are just a few of the sights you see
At the front gates of Graceland
Memphis, Tennessee
Blue Haired Granny's
In pink Moo Moos
Ballerina's In
Tattered Tutus
Mathematician's
Number Crunchers
Even have Some
Out to Lunchers
Model 50's
*Do *** Daddies*
One More Round Of
Flo and Eddie
People Sneaking
Across the Border
Lonely Fry Cooks
Taking Orders
A Few Wannabes
Not Saying Much
Will The Real Elvis
Please Stand Up
Are just a few of the sights that you see
At the front gates of Graceland
Memphis, Tennessee
Thank you...Thank you very Much
Ladies and Gentlemen
Elvis...Has Left The Building
Mar 12, 2013
Mar 12, 2013 at 8:59 AM UTC
KEEP a red heart of memories
Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;
All starlights of cool memories on storm paths.
Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say.
Other faces rise on the prairie.
They are the unborn. The future.
Yesterday and to-morrow cross and mix on the skyline
The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets. One waits.
In the yellow dust of sunsets, in the meadows of vermilion eight o'clock June nights ... the dead men and the unborn children speak to me ... I can not tell you what they say ... you listen and you know.
I don't care who you are, man:
I know a woman is looking for you
and her soul is a corn-tassel kissing a south-west wind.
(The farm-boy whose face is the color of brick-dust, is calling the cows; he will form the letter X with crossed streams of milk from the teats; he will beat a tattoo on the bottom of a tin pail with X's of milk.)
I don't care who you are, man:
I know sons and daughters looking for you
And they are gray dust working toward star paths
And you see them from a garret window when you laugh
At your luck and murmur, "I don't care."
I don't care who you are, woman:
I know a man is looking for you
And his soul is a south-west wind kissing a corn-tassel.
(The kitchen girl on the farm is throwing oats to the chickens and the buff of their feathers says hello to the sunset's late maroon.)
I don't care who you are, woman:
I know sons and daughters looking for you
And they are next year's wheat or the year after hidden in the dark and loam.
My love is a yellow hammer spinning circles in Ohio, Indiana. My love is a redbird shooting flights in straight lines in Kentucky and Tennessee. My love is an early robin flaming an ember of copper on her shoulders in March and April. My love is a graybird living in the eaves of a Michigan house all winter. Why is my love always a crying thing of wings?
On the Indiana dunes, in the Mississippi marshes, I have asked: Is it only a fishbone on the beach?
Is it only a dog's jaw or a horse's skull whitening in the sun? Is the red heart of man only ashes? Is the flame of it all a white light switched off and the power house wires cut?
Why do the prairie roses answer every summer? Why do the changing repeating rains come back out of the salt sea wind-blown? Why do the stars keep their tracks? Why do the cradles of the sky rock new babies?
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My dear Mimi,
Hey baby, are you an electron cause I feel a covalent bond between us. Did you fall from heaven? Because you're the only ten I see. Wanna know my favorite color? Its you. Hey girl, how about me and you go to Tennessee because when you fell from heaven it hurt. Smooth. I'm a genius. All these pickup lines and I'm still on the floor. All these chargers and you're still not a lithium battery. Why the **** is this so cheesy and inaccurate? Maybe its because Everytime I'm near you I get nervous. I start to shake. I start to become anxious. I start to worry. I start becoming self conscious and insecure because I want to be perfect for you. I want you to want me all the way. I want you. I just want to look at you because I see the stars in your eyes. I want to hold you because I feel the burn of your beauty and wonder on my fingertips and up my arms through my shoulders and down to my appendix, because to end at the heart has been said before. I can't explain it. I guess I just...love youuuuu. kissy faceheartpussy
Aug 1, 2014
Aug 1, 2014 at 1:23 PM UTC
Sitting in a café in mexico
Listening to French songs on the radio
Drinking a pacifico and trying to remember how I got here
I think I caught the ship in San Francisco
After I caught the blues in Tennessee
And then I got kicked off down here in southern mexico
Yea, I think its finally coming back to me
And im
Sitting in a café in mexico
Listening to French songs on the radio
Drinking a pacifico and trying to remember how I got here
Well I watched Singyn ride the rail
so I jumped on that train
had close calls and broke some laws
never even felt the pain
ran all over town that night red paintbrushes in hand
I cant explain no more cuz I don’t think you’d understand
Well the ‘One Stop Mariachi Shop’
Is where we bought our leather vests
Tried our luck at bullfighting and lost but did our best
Found out roller skates don’t work when you’re on cobblestone
All out of pesos and I just want to go home
(c)2008 CJG
Sep 22, 2012
Sep 22, 2012 at 12:37 PM UTC
have you left yet?
are you gone?
i miss you.
i love you, koala.
you're free.
wrap your knuckles around the steering wheel & don't look back.
think of me as you drive into a west texas sunset.
shout my name as the thin mountain air puts pressure on your lungs.
stop at traffic lights & expect to be enlightened.
look at the clouds every day. i mean really look.
stop & cry by yourself on the side of the road somewhere.
stare into the fantastic sun & don't blink first.
return light to the world like a universal mirror.
take a bath in a hot mountain spring & learn to breathe underwater.
fly in vulture circles over the deadness of your past.
never stop writing & painting & singing & reading.
turn around & surrender your heart to the void.
take the list you wrote of the things you learned here & burn it for fuel.
cut up that credit card & use a sharp piece as a guitar pick.
laugh at your warped reflection in a rippling pond's surface.
let light dance around you in a lush green valley.
look at life through a thrift store camera lens.
abandon the road before the road abandons you.
go chase a rabbit up a mountain in tennessee.
go nowhere & i'll meet you there someday.
go find your friends on couches & balconies.
talk to strangers every chance you get.
pull them back from the ledges they're on.
hug a quarter million people.
by the time you hit kansas i hope you love it.
by the time you hit asheville i hope you love yourself.
Nov 3, 2015
Nov 3, 2015 at 6:58 AM UTC
The cemetery was my circus I found
After outgrowing fantasy and the playground.
Golden afternoons in the country after school,
My blood having no resemblance, no ancestors,
To all the Sutton's and Smotherman's and Suddeth's
Who here resided with Tennessee pride. Inside and outside.
The still silence of my childhood cemetery carried an eerie air. I wanted to be here.
The peaceful calm, it called me back,
The king cawing crow, attending in black.
As for any of the lost, perhaps content, Confederate souls,
Who have yet to cross over, lamenting or dozed.
I suspect now, that it was I who startled those ghosts.
My blood, my frequency, my scent of the coast,
Sent from a Union ancestry my vibration still boasts...
How unexpected was I to those Tennessee ghosts.
Apr 6, 2016
Apr 6, 2016 at 3:52 AM UTC
The Man in Black
The Silver Fox
Brad Paisley shows
That Country Rocks
Western's gone
But Country's not
Remember those
Who time's forgot
From Red Georgia Clay
To the Tennessee Hills
From Kentucky Blue Grass
I still get the chills
When the music goes through me
It's a feeling so strong
That can only be born
From an old country song
Loretta Lynn
Dottie West
Patsy Cline
They were the best
Old time country
Tennessee tunes
Mountain Bluegrass
My favorite tunes
From Red Georgia Clay
To the Tennessee Hills
From Kentucky Blue Grass
I still get the chills
When the music goes through me
It's a feeling so strong
That can only be born
From an old country song
The singers change
The tunes do not
They still sing the music
That others forgot
Williams and Jones
Acuff and Dickens
Old Buck and Roy
Still Pickin' and grinnin
From Red Georgia Clay
To the Tennessee Hills
From Kentucky Blue Grass
I still get the chills
When the music goes through me
It's a feeling so strong
That can only be born
From an old country song
Aug 26, 2012
Aug 26, 2012 at 11:19 AM UTC
Some say, we don't need black history month.
When in truth we do.
Would the contribution of African American be taught truthfully.
If we had to depend on you know who?
Obviously, they very unaware of several successful black that contributed to America's greatness.
We, very well aware they edited down facts to be turn into fiction.
Like that president that chopped down that cherry tree.
Many doesn't know the plight of Washington, Dubois, Carver.
Let alone know their first name.
It's hardly taught, if it's about us.
George Franklin, Grant-dentist
Ernest Everett, Just.-Scientist
Josh Gibson, one of the greatest baseball player.
We know very well about George, Thomas and James and John Q.
Some say, we all Americans
And in truth, they completely right.
But for reasons very well known.
We are not all equal in sights of others.
When needed, they call upon us to join in.
Some still, say-why do Black history month exist?
But all cultures knows none was eliminated through times.
Than those captured to come here and renamed after their masters.
And facts be told, this cultures lives to embrace into their children's if nothing is ever mention by certain teachers about their cultures.
Than they will keep it before them.
Matthew Alexander, Henson-Explorer
Billie Holiday-singer
Duke Ellington and Count Basie and Cab Calloway.
Greatness, we can't let fade.
Vernon Jordan
Shirley Chilsom
And hosts of present days teachers that push the issues to educate.
Those that say, we don't need Black History months.
Be crying , if we try to eliminate theirs.
Cause that's all they ever known.
Howard University.
Tennessee State and Fisk and various others came to be because of discrimination.
And has turned out some brilliant African Americans.
So our history is needed.
Cause it's about us.
Like Latin History and various others is about other cultures.
Feb 7, 2016
Feb 7, 2016 at 10:12 AM UTC
Oh, the sensation, the media frenzy,
The spotlight, the fame, the hullabaloo,
When anti-evolution laws
Were challenged by the ACLU!
The year: 1925.
The place: Dayton, Tennessee.
To say it was an extravaganza
Wouldn't be hyperbole.
For many people it was hard
To find a way to reconcile
Biblical accounts with science,
So science found itself on trial.
A young teacher, John T. Scopes,
Was willing to face prosecution
For breaking a Tennessee law for having
Given a lesson on evolution.
The "Monkey Trial" it was called.
The challenge meant swimming upstream
For the feisty lawyer Clarence Darrow,
Who helped to lead the defense team.
A prosecutor was William Jennings
Bryan, who with no apology
Loved to stir up outrage against
Evolutionary biology.
Defendant Scopes quickly found
It wouldn't take long for him to know
What it was like to have a part
In a multimedia reality show.
The courthouse received a make-over:
Platforms for newsreel cameras were built;
Extra spectator seats were added.
They were playing the trial to the hilt.
Concession stands sold food and drinks;
Toy monkeys were on display;
A chimp was dressed in a suit and fedora;
The clergy also joined the fray.
The media and the public loved it!
The country watched the trial progress.
What would win: science or scripture?
The answer was probably easy to guess.
After an eight-day trial, the jury
Deliberated. Nine minutes later
They had their verdict: guilty! How
Could someone question THEIR creator?
Scopes had actually never given
The lesson. That's what he later said.
Strangely, five days after the trial,
Williams Jennings Bryan dropped dead.
Laws later changed, but even during
Current times, some people feel
That stories from the Bible should be
In science textbooks. Now THAT'S surreal!
-by Bob B (11-6-18)
Nov 6, 2018
Nov 6, 2018 at 9:00 AM UTC
She had moonpie eyes
and a wildcat smile,
draped by slow
smooth sip of whiskey
hair, the color of corn
in the wispy July air
And she wore purple
and white Irises speckled
with yellow as her dress,
flowing in the tall grass
beneath a willow sky
Her feet embraced
the earth between her toes,
as she twirled a whirl
of moonlight, shadowing
the daytime's blazing sun
And like a cradle rocking,
held me
like I was newborn
Aug 2, 2016
Aug 2, 2016 at 5:31 PM UTC
“She toddled in the mighty Duck
And almost never was”
Whether by design or luck
Or maybe just because
Summertime in Tennessee
So scorching hot and dry
The family thought a swim could be
Relief so we would try
While swimming came so easy
For most of us that day
But Mom was water queasy
So on the bank she lay
My friend and I, we swam like fish
In the deep Duck River
A day that would make you wish
This fun could last forever
My baby sister was so small
She could barely walk
She toddled and then down would fall
And jabbered with her talk
So Dad had moved into the deep
That’s when I saw it well
My sister ran without a peep
Into the Duck she fell
Momma screamed and I just froze
And out of sight she went
The muddy Duck would now propose
Another life be spent
My Dad had sprung to action
On hearing of the scream
He dived as a reaction
Into the muddy stream
.
.
.
And many years would pass us by
She studied hard and long
Nothing was too tough to try
She never got it wrong
A Ph.D and drug design
She makes the pills you need
If you were really in a bind
And needed meds indeed
She plays piano and reads the books
And knows so much inside
She sews and cleans and then she cooks
With logic as her guide
Accomplishments on every level
Complete and tried and true
But humble, never would she revel
In all that she could do
.
.
.
He came back up and looked around
His eyes began to beg
He dived again and there he found
And grabbed her by the leg
Upside down he pulled her up
And water did pour out
And soon we heard her cry startup
Relief without a doubt
.
.
.
Remembering that day and so
A blessing to repay
That was sixty years ago
But feels like yesterday
I sometimes think of all the luck
That happened just because
“She toddled in the mighty Duck
And almost never was”
Nov 1, 2022
Nov 1, 2022 at 5:18 PM UTC
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around; no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing. else in Tennessee.
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