Famous Short Car Poems
Famous Short Car Poems. Short Car Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Car short poems
by
Langston Hughes
COLORED CHILD AT CARNIVAL
Where is the Jim Crow section
On this merry-go-round,
Mister, cause I want to ride?
Down South where I come from
White and colored
Can't sit side by side.
Down South on the train
There's a Jim Crow car.
On the bus we're put in the back--
But there ain't no back
To a merry-go-round!
Where's the horse
For a kid that's black?
by
Paul Eluard
The wind
Undecided
Rolls a cigarette of air
The mute girl talks:
It is art's imperfection.
This impenetrable speech.
The motor car is truly launched:
Four martyrs' heads
Roll under the wheels.
Ah! a thousand flames, a fire,
The light, a shadow!
The sun is following me.
A feather gives to a hat
A touch of lightness:
The chimney smokes.
by
Spike Milligan
So they bought you
And kept you in a
Very good home
Cental heating
TV
A deep freeze
A very good home-
No one to take you
For that lovely long run-
But otherwise
'A very good home'
They fed you Pal and Chun
But not that lovely long run,
Until, mad with energy and boredom
You escaped- and ran and ran and ran
Under a car.
Today they will cry for you-
Tomorrow they will but another dog.
by
Linda Pastan
When our cars touched
When you lifted the hood of mine
To see the intimate workings underneath,
When we were bound together
By a pulse of pure energy,
When my car like the princess
In the tale woke with a start,
I thought why not ride the rest of the way together.
by
Susan Rich
Xhosa women in clothes too light
for the weather have brought wild flowers
and sit sloped along the Claremont road.
I see her through rolled windows,
watch her watch me to decide if I’ll pay.
It’s South Africa, after all, after apartheid;
but we’re still idling here, my car to her curb,
my automatic locks to her inadequate wage.
by
Raymond Carver
It's August and I have not
Read a book in six months
except something called The Retreat from Moscow
by Caulaincourt
Nevertheless, I am happy
Riding in a car with my brother
and drinking from a pint of Old Crow.
We do not have any place in mind to go,
we are just driving.
If I closed my eyes for a minute
I would be lost, yet
I could gladly lie down and sleep forever
beside this road
My brother nudges me.
Any minute now, something will happen.
by
Gregory Corso
Last night I drove a car
not knowing how to drive
not owning a car
I drove and knocked down
people I loved
.
.
.
went 120 through one town.
I stopped at Hedgeville
and slept in the back seat
.
.
.
excited about my new life.
by
Spike Milligan
Philip Le Barr,
Was knock down by a car,
On the road to Mandalay.
He was knocked down again
By a dust cart in Spain
And again in Zanzibar.
So,
He travled at night
In the pale moon light
Away from the traffic growl
But terrible luck
He was hit by a duck
Driven by an owl.
by
Robert Bly
There has been a light snow.
Dark car tracks move in out of the darkness.
I stare at the train window marked with soft dust.
I have awakened at Missoula Montana utterly happy.
by
Allen Ginsberg
That tree said
I don't like that white car under me,
it smells gasoline
That other tree next to it said
O you're always complaining
you're a neurotic
you can see by the way you're bent over.
July 6, 1981, 8 p.
m.
by
Gary Snyder
Snowfall in March:
I sit in the white glow reading a thesis
About you.
Your poems, your life.
The author's my student,
He even quotes me.
Forty years since we joked in a kitchen in Portland
Twenty since you disappeared.
All those years and their moments—
Crackling bacon, slamming car doors,
Poems tried out on friends,
Will be one more archive,
One more shaky text.
But life continues in the kitchen
Where we still laugh and cook,
Watching snow.
by
Walter de la Mare
Over the fence, the dead settle in
for a journey.
Nine o'clock.
You are alone for the first time
today.
Boys asleep.
Husband out.
A beer bottle sweats in your hand,
and sea lavender clogs the air
with perfume.
Think of yourself.
Your arms rest with nothing to do
after weeks spent attending to others.
Your thoughts turn to whether
butter will last the week, how much
longer the car can run on its partial tank of gas.
by
Wang Wei
Round a turn of the Qin Fortress winds the Wei River,
And Yellow Mountain foot-hills enclose the Court of China;
Past the South Gate willows comes the Car of Many Bells
On the upper Palace-Garden Road-a solid length of blossom;
A Forbidden City roof holds two phoenixes in cloud;
The foliage of spring shelters multitudes from rain;
And now, when the heavens are propitious for action,
Here is our Emperor ready-no wasteful wanderer.
by
Geoffrey Hill
He drove at evening through the hushed Vosges.
The car radio,
glimmering, received broken utterance from the horizon of storms.
.
.
'God's honours - our bikes touched: he skidded and came off.
' 'Liar.
' A
timid father's protective bellow.
Disfigurement of a village king.
'Just
look at the bugger.
.
.
'
His maroon GT chanted then overtook.
He lavished on the high valleys its
haleine.
by
Carl Sandburg
THE owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echo
From building and battered paving-stone.
The headlight scoffs at the mist,
And fixes its yellow rays in the cold slow rain;
Against a pane I press my forehead
And drowsily look on the walls and sidewalks.
The headlight finds the way
And life is gone from the wet and the welter--
Only an old woman, bloated, disheveled and bleared.
Far-wandered waif of other days,
Huddles for sleep in a doorway,
Homeless.
by
Richard Brautigan
We stopped at perfect days
and got out of the car.
The wind glanced at her hair.
It was as simple as that.
I turned to say something--
by
Carl Sandburg
Night from a railroad car window
Is a great, dark, soft thing
Broken across with slashes of light.
by
Richard Brautigan
Thinking hard about you
I got on the bus
and paid 30 cents car fare
and asked the driver for two transfers
before discovering
that I was
alone.
by
Delmore Schwartz
"Trash, trash!" the king my uncle said,
"The spirit's smoke and weak as smoke ascends.
"Sit in the sun and not among the dead,
"Eat oranges! Pish tosh! the car attends.
"All ghosts came back.
they do not like it there,
"No silky water and no big brown bear,
"No beer and no siestas up above.
"
"Uncle," I said, "I'm lonely.
What is love?"
This drove him quite insane.
Now he must knit
Time and apperception, bit by tiny bit.
by
Lew Welch
Dear Joanne,
Last night Magda dreamed that she,
you, Jack, and I were driving around
Italy.
We parked in Florence and left
our dog to guard the car.
She was worried because he
doesn't understand Italian.
by
James Wright
Along the sprawled body of the derailed Great Northern freight car,
I strike a match slowly and lift it slowly.
No wind.
Beyond town, three heavy white horses
Wade all the way to their shoulders
In a silo shadow.
Suddenly the freight car lurches.
The door slams back, a man with a flashlight
Calls me good evening.
I nod as I write good evening, lonely
And sick for home.
by
Robert Creeley
As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking,--John, I
sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what
can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,
drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.
by
Kalidasa
His neck in beauty bends
As backward looks he sends
At my pursuing car
That threatens death from far.
Fear shrinks to half the body small;
See how he fears the arrow's fall!
The path he takes is strewed
With blades of grass half-chewed
From jaws wide with the stress
Of fevered weariness.
He leaps so often and so high,
He does not seem to run, but fly.
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
A rumpled sheet
Of brown paper
About the length
And apparent bulk
Of a man was
Rolling with the
Wind slowly over
And over in
The street as
A car drove down
Upon it and
Crushed it to
The ground.
Unlike
A man it rose
Again rolling
With the wind over
And over to be as
It was before.
by
Carl Sandburg
IT’S a lean car … a long-legged dog of a car … a gray-ghost eagle car.
The feet of it eat the dirt of a road … the wings of it eat the hills.
Danny the driver dreams of it when he sees women in red skirts and red sox in his sleep.
It is in Danny’s life and runs in the blood of him … a lean gray-ghost car.