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Best Famous Driveways Poems

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Written by Allen Ginsberg | Create an image from this poem

A Supermarket in California

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit- 
man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees 
with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. 
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, 
I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of 
your enumerations! 
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole fam- 
ilies shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives 
in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, 
Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the 
watermelons? 

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old 
grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator 
and eyeing the grocery boys. 
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed 
the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my 
Angel? 
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of 
cans following you, and followed in my imagination 
by the store detective. 
We strode down the open corridors together in 
our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every 
frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier. 
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors 
close in an hour. Which way does your beard point 
tonight? 
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the 
supermarket and feel absurd.) 
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? 
The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, 
we'll both be lonely. 
Will we stroll dreaming ofthe lost America of love 
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent 
cottage? 
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage- 
teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit 
poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank 
and stood watching the boat disappear on the black 
waters of Lethe? 


Written by Margaret Atwood | Create an image from this poem

The City Planners

 Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.

But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things:
the smell of spilled oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows


give momentary access to
the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plaster


when the houses, capsized, will slide
obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.


That is where the City Planners
with the insane faces of political conspirators
are scattered over unsurveyed
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;


guessing directions, they sketch
transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
on a wall in the white vanishing air


tracing the panic of suburb
order in a bland madness of snows
Written by Stephen Dunn | Create an image from this poem

Story

 A woman's taking her late-afternoon walk
on Chestnut where no sidewalk exists
and houses with gravel driveways
sit back among the pines. Only the house
with the vicious dog is close to the road.
An electric fence keeps him in check.
When she comes to that house, the woman
always crosses to the other side.

I'm the woman's husband. It's a problem
loving your protagonist too much.
Soon the dog is going to break through
that fence, teeth bared, and go for my wife.
She will be helpless. I'm out of town,
helpless too. Here comes the dog.
What kind of dog? A mad dog, a dog
like one of those teenagers who just loses it
on the playground, kills a teacher.

Something's going to happen that can't happen
in a good story: out of nowhere a car
comes and kills the dog. The dog flies
in the air, lands in a patch of delphiniums.
My wife is crying now. The woman who hit
the dog has gotten out of her car. She holds
both hands to her face. The woman who owns
the dog has run out of her house. Three women
crying in the street, each for different reasons.

All of this is so unlikely; it's as if
I've found myself in a country of pure fact,
miles from truth's more demanding realm.
When I listened to my wife's story on the phone
I knew I'd take it from her, tell it
every which way until it had an order
and a deceptive period at the end. That's what
I always do in the face of helplessness,
make some arrangements if I can.

Praise the odd, serendipitous world.
Nothing I'd be inclined to think of
would have stopped that dog.
Only the facts saved her.
Written by John Betjeman | Create an image from this poem

An Edwardian Sunday Broomhill Sheffield

 High dormers are rising
So sharp and surprising,
And ponticum edges
The driveways of gravel;
Stone houses from ledges
Look down on ravines.
The vision can travel
From gable to gable,
Italianate mansion
And turretted stable,
A sylvan expansion
So varied and jolly
Where laurel and holly
Commingle their greens.

Serene on a Sunday
The sun glitters hotly
O'er mills that on Monday
With engines will hum.
By tramway excursion
To Dore and to Totley
In search of diversion
The millworkers come;
But in our arboreta
The sounds are discreeter
Of shoes upon stone -
The worshippers wending
To welcoming chapel,
Companioned or lone;
And over a pew there
See loveliness lean,
As Eve shows her apple
Through rich bombazine;
What love is born new there
In blushing eighteen!

Your prospects will please her,
The iron-king's daughter,
Up here on Broomhill;
Strange Hallamshire, County
Of dearth and of bounty,
Of brown tumbling water
And furnace and mill.
Your own Ebenezer
Looks down from his height
On back street and alley
And chemical valley
Laid out in the light;
On ugly and pretty
Where industry thrives
In this hill-shadowed city
Of razors and knives.
Written by Paul Laurence Dunbar | Create an image from this poem

Accountability

 FOLKS ain't got no right to censuah othah folks about dey habits;
Him dat giv' de squir'ls de bushtails made de bobtails fu' de rabbits.
Him dat built de gread big mountains hollered out de little valleys,
Him dat made de streets an' driveways wasn't shamed to make de alleys.

We is all constructed diff'ent, d'ain't no two of us de same;
We cain't he'p ouah likes an' dislikes, ef we'se bad we ain't to blame.
Ef we'se good, we need n't show off, case you bet it ain't ouah doin'
We gits into su'ttain channels dat we jes' cain't he'p pu'suin'.

But we all fits into places dat no othah ones could fill,
An' we does the things we has to, big er little, good er ill.
John cain't tek de place o' Henry, Su an' Sally ain't alike;
Bass ain't nuthin' like a suckah, chub ain't nuthin' like a pike.

When you come to think about it, how it's all planned out it's splendid.
Nuthin's done er evah happens, 'dout hit's somefin' dat's intended;
Don't keer whut you does, you has to, an' hit sholy beats de dickens,--
Viney, go put on de kittle, I got one o' mastah's chickens.


Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Where We Live Now

 1 

We live here because the houses 
are clean, the lawns run 
right to the street 

and the streets run away. 
No one walks here. 
No one wakens at night or dies. 

The cars sit open-eyed 
in the driveways. 
The lights are on all day. 

2 

At home forever, she has removed 
her long foreign names 
that stained her face like hair. 

She smiles at you, and you think 
tears will start from the corners 
of her mouth. Such a look 

of tenderness, you look away. 
She's your sister. Quietly she says, 
You're a ****, I'll get you for it. 

3 

Money's the same, he says. 
He brings it home in white slabs 
that smell like soap. 

Throws them down 
on the table as though 
he didn't care. 

The children hear 
and come in from play glowing 
like honey and so hungry. 

4 

With it all we have 
such a talent for laughing. 
We can laugh at anything. 

And we forget no one. 
She listens to mother 
on the phone, and he remembers 

the exact phrasing of a child's sorrows, 
the oaths taken by bear and tiger 
never to forgive. 

5 

On Sunday we're having a party. 
The children are taken away 
in a black Dodge, their faces erased 

from the mirrors. Outside a scum 
is forming on the afternoon. 
A car parks but no one gets out. 

Brother is loading the fridge. 
Sister is polishing and spraying herself. 
Today we're having a party. 

6 

For fun we talk about you. 
Everything's better for being said. 
That's a rule. 

This is going to be some long night, she says. 
How could you? How could you? 
For the love of mother, he says. 

There will be no dawn 
until the laughing stops. Even the pines 
are burning in the dark. 

7 

Why do you love me? he says. 
Because. Because. 
You're best to me, she purrs. 

In the kitchen, in the closets, 
behind the doors, above the toilets, 
the calendars are eating it up. 

One blackened one watches you 
like another window. Why 
are you listening? it says. 

8 

No one says, There's a war. 
No one says, Children are burning. 
No one says, Bizniz as usual. 

But you have to take it all back. 
You have to hunt through your socks 
and dirty underwear 

and crush each word. If you're serious 
you have to sit in the corner 
and eat ten new dollars. Eat'em. 

9 

Whose rifles are brooding 
in the closet? What are 
the bolts whispering 

back and forth? And the pyramids 
of ammunition, so many 
hungry mouths to feed. 

When you hide in bed 
the revolver under the pillow 
smiles and shows its teeth. 

10 

On the last night the children 
waken from the same dream 
of leaves burning. 

Two girls in the dark 
knowing there are no wolves 
or bad men in the room. 

Only electricity on the loose, 
the television screaming at itself, 
the dishwasher tearing its heart out. 

11 

We're going away. The house 
is too warm. We disconnect 
the telephone. 

Bones, cans, broken dolls, bronzed shoes, 
ground down to face powder. Burn 
the toilet paper collected in the basement. 

Take back the bottles. 
The back stairs are raining glass. 
Cancel the milk. 

12 

You may go now, says Cupboard. 
I won't talk, 
says Clock. 

Your bag is black and waiting. 
How can you leave your house? 
The stove hunches its shoulders, 

the kitchen table stares at the sky. 
You're heaving yourself out in the snow 
groping toward the front door.
Written by Paul Laurence Dunbar | Create an image from this poem

Accountability

Folks ain't got no right to censuah othah folks about dey habits;
Him dat giv' de squir'ls de bushtails made de bobtails fu' de rabbits.
Him dat built de gread big mountains hollered out de little valleys,
Him dat made de streets an' driveways wasn't shamed to make de alleys.
We is all constructed diff'ent, d'ain't no two of us de same;
We cain't he'p ouah likes an' dislikes, ef we'se bad we ain't to blame.
Ef we 'se good, we need n't show off, case you bet it ain't ouah doin'
We gits into su'ttain channels dat we jes' cain't he'p pu'suin'.
But we all fits into places dat no othah ones could fill,
An' we does the things we has to, big er little, good er ill.
John cain't tek de place o' Henry, Su an' Sally ain't alike;
Bass ain't nuthin' like a suckah, chub ain't nuthin' like a pike.[Pg 6]
When you come to think about it, how it 's all planned out it 's splendid.
Nuthin 's done er evah happens, 'dout hit 's somefin' dat 's intended;
Don't keer whut you does, you has to, an' hit sholy beats de dickens,—
Viney, go put on de kittle, I got one o' mastah's chickens.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry