Best Billboards Poems
River Findings
The Ohio winds around hills
and streams down the hollows
passes steel mills, brick yards and scrap yards.
It carries tug boats, pushes barges, and hauls
black coal stripped from the mountainsides.
The Ohio’s littered banks
are home to train yards
filled with graffiti-covered box cars
rusting relics of the Southern Pacific
and the Norfolk and Southern railroads.
Erector set bridges span
the murky river and link Ohio
to “Wild, Wonderful, West Virginia,”
the Weirton Mill,
and Homer Laughlin China Company.
In towns called Powhaton Point,
Shadyside, Bellaire, and East Liverpool,
houses are stacked on hillsides
with an array of slate,
tin and asbestos shingled roofs.
Ball fields and corn fields,
concrete parking lots and shopping malls
are full of busy people
who fail to appreciate
the river’s charity.
There are roads with cryptic names like Goose Run,
Pinch Run, Riddles Run, and Rush Run.
There are towns named Brilliant,
Costonia and Calcutta,
each with their own secrets.
North on Route 7 bars advertise Karaoke
and all you can eat fish fries.
A plethora of car lots and gift shops,
bait stores and gun supplies
dot the countryside with
a never-ending display
of marketing profanity,
but the river rolls on
never compromising her dignity
never surrendering her boundaries.
White-steepled churches
stand like beacons of redemption,
while billboards promote“Hell Fire Fireworks,”
“Gentlemen’s” clubs, sleazy motels
and the “Forbidden Zone Exit.”
Still the river moves along
around the hills and down the hollows
proud and powerful
chanting and rippling with satisfaction
a stalwart testament to her tenacity…
Surfing through social media
it's a wave coming atcha in speedia,
forward motion becoming a blur
clickity clack there is no cure
scrolling fast, getting motion sick,
oh look another cute cat pic
it's a cheap click, a blue like
thumbs up like hitch hike
blazing fast again on the highway,
there's some ads flying our way,
like billboards on the roadside,
x them away, they don't hide,
now it's a bumpy ride,
what is up with that chic, no pride,
blindsided by that news story,
click on the link and it's gory,
not what the story was suppose to be
another cheap click got to me.
smiles turn to frowns then laughter
the two cents everyone is after
every emotion in a powerful punch
let's check on that link after lunch
like pacman chomping the bits
youtube video has how many hits
does that make its content true
this looks like something I could do
cooking up a steak on truck hood,
yum yum that meat looks good
seeing a clip from mythbusters busted
guess not ...I got husted,
didnt' work, ain't going to,... why post
a cheap click from an eager host
can't tell truth from fictionary
dang, this internet world is scary
anyone can make up anything you see,
just look at my post, half the words arent in the dictionary
but that is alright cause it's online,
heck ya ain't even know if these words are mine
but i got ya now with a cheap click
keep on clicking cause something will stick
Starry skies over Damascus
Like a star chart for the
bomber pilots eating
Milky Ways and lives
Chocolate in the desert
for desert in consumption
The poem could stop here
its pretty clear not pretty
Petty lives perambulating
hiding hobbling around
on what was their feet
foundations souls and
is their ruin's wreckage now
The planes feature logos
“Just do it”
“Whiter than white”
“Put the tiger in the tank”
“Eat confectionary be happy”
What an advertising space
for the daily news rounded
up like the refugees
refusing to be refuse
“Powered by democracy”
“Fuelled by share holdings”
“Rocket launches for a better world”
in the weeping nights and days
lactating for another holiday
of some on sunny beaches
oozing oil wells wealth
and inequality
Milk where it needs not be
in luxury not infant powder
hungry breasts run dry by hunger
sapped empty in the face
of some lives counting
more than others where
camouflage is but
a distant varnish
in the pursuit of power
Soon their will be billboards
“Baghdad was not built
in a moment” “Invest in
Kabul” “Concrete for Allepo”
“Live the dream”
“Life liberty and the
pursuit of happy-mess”
“Constructing globality”
Munching away in my
cushioned arm chair
built from greedy land mines
I collude
“You can have your milky ways”
if the bomber pilots did not
eat them all
Whose wives implant their chests
with silicone from
the valley of evil
that forgot
Instead the artificial brain
the heart transplant
Mindful disposition
of humanity
Looking
instead at the stars
spangled banners
of Damascus
Milky ways
I SAW the death creep three hooves and a beat!
A pregnant silence above violins stressed
strings--||dancing frets ~~~~~~~
A gnome drunk-walk scattering blackbirds
and neon-lit billboards ;a humid Mother Earth
(with no protection)
vaginal-air of sleepy fatigued wooden scents
Post-rain meltdown exhaustion sleeps
in hungry-soil love.
But the gnome cries, "I've no reflection
to redeem...no troll to toll beneath
fire-speaking coins upon my eyes!
Make the Earth Scream. Make the Soul dream.
It is eating me!
:: ~ ::
(in Branson, Missouri)
I've seen Santa on billboards,
in store windows,
on street-corners, ringing tiny bells.
I've seen Santa on TV,
in sales magazines,
in parades with funny little elves.
I've seen Santa in lights,
as blow-ups on front lawns,
hanging on walls or doors,
as painted statues, decorating shelves.
When breezy chill hits the air,
Santa Claus is everywhere.
Kids really dig Santa,
in their hearts, he's real.
Whatever will they think
of Santa, riding on a wheel?
Neon billboards scream a symphony of
images
in attempts to sell
happiness
by bleeding dissatisfaction into her mind.
Glossy, crisp pages remind her that she isn't
good enough
to be accepted by a
society
that values celebrity over individuality.
Reflections in the mirror only
reinforce
her perceived
inadequacies
as mascara stains her fair cheeks.
The gears of discontentment crush
us all
and in our attempts to
rebuild ourselves
we realize just how broken we are.
But there exists a deeper truth:
Within our eternal
soul
is a beauty that no amount of make up can hide.
8.30.18
(The Hollow City Cycle include:
The Hollow City
I Remember You -- the city speaks
Last One Left)
No footsteps echo on broken stone,
only wind dragging secrets through dust.
The city sighs—
its breath made of ivy and rust.
Windows gape like hollow eyes,
watching nothing, remembering everything.
A carousel groans beneath twisted vines,
still waiting for laughter
that will never return.
Billboards fade into ghost stories.
Sidewalks crack like old skin.
Somewhere, a music box plays
a broken lullaby
to the bones of joy.
This place is a tomb
with the scent of childhood chalk
and the silence of too-late prayers.
Whatever happened here
left no fire,
only
quiet.
A prayer is like seduction to your soul
Your church is the glamour the world bestowals
Your bible is the flashy neon lights and billboards
Your truth is the multiplicity of greedy
Your salvation is fruition of materialism
Your retribution is its finitude and lost satiety
Heaven becomes invisible through the eye of a needle
Think globally, act locally,
The desert shall rejoice
And blossom as rose,
Man has been endowed with reason
With the power to create
So that he can add to what he's been given.
But up to now he has only been a destroyer,
Rather than being a creator
Forests keep disappearing
Population keep increasing.
Rivers dry up
Landslides occurring from the top
Glaciers are melting
Water is vanishing,
But shame on humans
They aren't improving.
Wildlife's become extinct
The climate's ruined
Everyday the land is growing poorer
And the crops are growing uglier,
Make it a green peace
Thats the point
But what to do,
We are just lost in a woo.
The poor tread lightest upon the earth
The higher our income
The geater the outcome,
The more resources we control
The more havoc we wroke.
What would the world be
Once bereft
Of wet and wildness,
Let them be left,
O'let them be left.
Long live the weeds and the wilderness,
Kindly be possessive towards the environment
After all the destructions,
When we will be left sans of (sans- Pronounced sone meaning without)
Every natural beauty
All that remains for us
Will be of no utility
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel.
A boutique, and a swinging hot spot,
What have we done to the earth?
What have we done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and did her.
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences and dragged her down
I think that i shall never see,
A billboard lovely as a tree
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all
Its a sincere request in the end from my side,
Save the Environment, save our Mother Earth!
Inspired by a tremendously bold & powerful track, “Who we are” by Machinehead
Once upon a misery call
Deception broke bread with diabetic circumstances
Sugar
Coating
Half-assed smiles
Phantoms of a listless fortitude
Haunting today’s unfulfilled promise
As they wear silken layered Khakis
With African cotton dreams
And unclaimed pocket protectors to share their wealth
Amongst other wealthy failures
They ask to make “change”
While folding up heroin-laced $50s under Cabernet bodies of Christ
Once, twice, three times a deceiver
Who dares draws irradiated chalk upon broken billboards
Not the educated teacher
Satisfying extra-curricular agendas
Grading heat-stroked ovulations
On jezebel’s curve
Nightmare of the philanthropist
Giving unto others’ unexplained wishes
The “hungry”, fed
The lonely, shed
S
h
e
d
Shedding retinal rejections
Over misguided wisdoms
As they listen for audible sanity
Wandering within the bellows of an insatiable burden
(Cricket sounds)
©Drake J. Eszes
A Valentine Write For My One & Only Street Angel -
I met you in a town of a thousand hustles,
a big stage supporting a million words,
a large world where the hunted & hunter interchange desires,
our souls touched eachother electrically, gently
long before compliments & reasons garnished the billboards,
you were an invisible passion simmering within me,
you've become a woman strengthening my very Being,
creation is the ambition that excites us most,
revelations and truisms scampering and giggling
up and down the streets, all about the universe,
angels couldn't ignore us even if they wanted to, wings with no frost,
Poetry, our vehicle for adventure, the stich to our begining,
on this Valentine's Day I need you to be mine, with Love unrehearsed -
J.A.B.
A maze of tall ascending fingers pierce the sky
Prominent and conceived as seeds
In someone's fertile mind
Crowded together packed in vertical line
That overshadow the pavement below.
Temples of finance and commerce
Amassed in concrete and reflective glass
As tiny moving dots like ants scurry and hurry below
Metal boxes of all shapes and colours
In the city like a river stop and flow.
A array of stores billboards and eye catching signs
Forming linear line
The pavement wet with rain makes them shine.
The hustle and bustle of traffic
Horns And police sirens make a awful din
But just normal and ignored by the residents and crowds
That tread the pavement and reside within
The collage of busy hectic city life
For the lucky and affluent a shoppers paradise
But for the homeless sleeping rough
On the cold concrete
Life is tough.
Peter Dome.Copyright.2015. May.
If Broken Were A City.
If Broken were a city, it'd be so far away.
No one would want to visit yet many there would stay.
Not by choices that they made but by love they somehow lost.
Oh how they long to leave, but can't pay what it cost.
The weather's dark and dreary, it rains there every day.
But no one seems to notice. Nothing matters anyway.
Flowers very seldom grow, when they do they go unseen.
Trees are stripped of leaves, the grass no longer green.
There's rivers all around it, there's no bridge that they can cross.
They can't swim the river, for the drowning in their loss.
The water races fierce and wide, but sometimes still and deep.
It's fed by the tears they cried on nights when they can't sleep.
The streets have names like lonely and there's one called sadness too.
With billboards to remind them of all that life has put them through.
There are no trains and buses, they never go nowhere.
Except a park called empty, where they just sit and stare.
No one there has much to say but if they talk at all.
Overwhelmed with their emotions the teardrops start to fall.
Their eyes are far from empty, you can see right from the start.
In the city they call broken, they all have a broken heart.
There's seldom any lights turned on, it's dark as it can be.
Because when you live in Broken there's really nothing much to see.
So if you find you're in Broken, you won't be bothered much.
It's void of all the things you loved, you can look but you can't touch.
There are no celebrations, people come here just to grieve.
No one knows until they get here, that they can never leave.
Don't send no cards or letters, no one ever gets their mail.
Cause this city they call Broken. Is just another name for hell.
Edwin C Hofert
Along the curb, brownstones stand silently
Once proud facades diminished by time
Peeling sashes peer from weathered faces
Granite steps bowed neath the tread of generations
Where once a family lived now dwell many
Colors collide, cultures blend, new tomorrows bloom
United in a dream of new horizons
Believing in the promise of our land
Signs and billboards vie for our attention
Calling to the minions as they pass
Designed to take possession of our eye
Bold attempts to influence the mind
Aromas from the street invade the senses
Vendors with their carts, hock their wares
Shops, aligned in rows, seduce the buyer
Everywhere, a sea of yellow vans
The city, without pretense, stands before you
Behind it's arrogance, a softer side abides
Daring you to listen to it's heart
Embracing you until it owns your soul
New York City
Any Morning
Oft' I've traveled on interstate highways to reach my final destination,
With white knuckles grasping the steering wheel in great trepidation!
I whiz along at seventy-five and for my safety offer a fervent prayer.
'Tis akin to driving the Indy 500 speeding like a bat out of you know where!
I prefer to whiz along at 25 miles per hour on a quaint country road,
Enjoying scenery sans billboards and such in a more relaxing mode!
I can stop by an eatery for good ol' country grub run by Mom and Pop,
And browse among other peoples trash at my leisure in an antique shop!
I stop by to fill up on gas and happily discover something rather rare;
The man fills the tank, cleans the windshield and checks my tires for air!
Fields of amber grain gently wave at me depicting a scene so bucolic,
And a herd of deer in a yonder copse contentedly graze and frolic!
A farmer waves to me as he tends his field of melons and cantaloupe,
And I'm thrilled to see across the way a magnificent herd of antelope!
I enjoy the witty verse of poets on Burma Shave Signs along the way,
And faded Mail Pouch Tobacco signs on barns filled with scented hay!
At the whim of each vagabond breeze, old windmills turn and creak.
Timbers rumble as I cross a wooden bridge above a rippling creek.
Although my automobile gathers dust along a road that is graveled,
How I relish traveling along quaint country roads that are less traveled!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired