Best Stoplights Poems
Teapots that whistle on chilled Winter morns
Calling the day to begin as it scorns
Wake up you sleepy head, make room for love
Walking to work as the sun shines above
Thinking of happy and thinking of you
I think I’ll paint it and skies will be blue
Tipping my hat to the songbird that sings
Feeling so blessed for so many sweet things
Hot dogs with mustard and friends who stand by
Watching new parents with babies that cry
Stoplights that muster the traffic that flows
Bakeries that summon to follow my nose
Dinners with Mama, then home to my pet
Help me remember and never forget
Life is a blessing though sometimes a pain
Just like a flower, we sometimes need rain
Cuddles and kisses and good books to read
Pillows for dreaming, ideas that are freed
Grateful for love and the goodness it brings
Feeling so blessed for so many sweet things
Categories:
stoplights, blessing, happy, heart, life,
Form:
Rhyme
Through closed eyes, I see what has become of your land.
I hear flutes, blessings drifting across a land filled with
highways and stoplights, never silenced.
Through closed eyes, I see children screaming and running,
smoke from soldier's muskets settling upon their fallen bodies.
Through closed eyes, your drums still beat, Warriors still dance,
and strength of your Elders lives on.
Through closed eyes, flutes are heard,
and Spirits
never die.
Minnesota
12/26/12
Categories:
stoplights, beautiful,
Form:
Free verse
I SAY LIBERATE ME!
free me from a
bondage known all
too well
free me from those
chain-links felt way
too much
free me from a world
that's so out of
touch,even though it
manages to stay in
touch
free me from those
dungeons and allow
me to roam
roam like this
signal on my phone
that's holding me in
captivity with fees
I SAY LIBERATE ME!
liberate me from the
wonderful big
brother who looks
over each and every
one of us
the same big brother
that captures us
rebelling against
the stoplight and
before we can get
down the street and
around the corner
our tag is
photographed,
placing us in line
to receive notice
that a fine has to
be paid,cash,credit,
or debit; however
they can get it
PLEASE BRING ON THE
LIBERATION!
liberation from the
debt that's been
kept on the books
every since I
completed that
credit application,
at the time not
knowing that I was
applying
high-interest rates
to my budget, which
is no longer a
budget but a conduit
for companies having
fun extracting funds
from a paycheck
that's already
heartbreaking to
look at
Liberate me from the
from the
fines,fees,interest-rates,stoplights,nightlights,
the debt acquired
through a
misunderstanding of
APR policies, from
the policies
themselves imposed
by the powers that
be
I say,liberate me
Categories:
stoplights, angst, emotions, farewell, spoken
Form:
Free verse
She grew up just 20 minutes southwest of Tulsa..
In a small town with 2 stoplights and a Tastee Freeze...
Everyone gathered at the First Baptist Church every Sunday morning...
Remember, if you haven't got anything good to say about somebody...
Please come and sit by me...
The years passed quickly and she couldn't wait to leave that town behind..
It's funny how time always brings you back to the Tastee Freeze and a
Root Beer float....
In a small town....
Categories:
stoplights, growing up,
Form:
Lyric
The woman steps out on the balcony of her high rise apartment and among the buildings and streets and stoplights witnesses a fulcrum, an edge.
An edge, the edge, the intersection of beginnings and endings,
The moment when crops are ripe for harvest.
The edge calls to us and invites us to forsake what is known,
The edge calls us to test the limits of our understanding,
And step into an abyss of possibility,
Sinking down into relaxed awareness of beauty,
The edge awaits us.
The edge, where race no longer matters and neither does popularity,
The edge, where souls delight in the magic of music,
The edge, where souls delight in the power of seasons to change and death to beget life,
The edge is where we are neither disappointed at what we have not done or anxious that we will not continue in doing,
The edge is where we can see a life, a leaf, a soul for what it is without a biased back story of prejudiced contrivance,
The edge is where babies go when they are awakened in the womb,
The edge is the horizon where sunrises and twilight take our breath to the height of admiration,
For only God can make this atmosphere to shine just right as the sun and moon dance their dance of gratitude,
The edge is what I wish for now and always,
The woman steps out of her house in the mountains and among the stars hidden in sunshine and premature butterflies hidden in billowy leaves on trees she witnesses an edge, a fulcrum.
Where divinity and gratitude explode in the praise of creativity and the worship of life anew.
Edges, edges where comfortable platitudes have no voice and ignorant assumptions are ostracized,
Come quickly edges, come quickly edges and embrace me.
Categories:
stoplights, nature, nostalgia, sea, seasons,
Form:
Blank verse
The rain-soaked road is deeply black
and shiny, like it's been shellacked,
the stoplights yellow, green and red
reflected, streaks of color bled.
Blindly, cars go flying by,
the beauty lost on jaded eyes,
this scene, it takes my breath away,
the light and water's interplay.
Each edge is sharp, each hue intense,
my heightened senses seem immense,
I wonder if my sight's so clear
because the end is drawing near.
©Danielle White
Categories:
stoplights, death, introspection, urban, visionary
Form:
Rhyme
On my way back home, I thought of you. Your face flashed in an instant. I heard whispers of your voice, so gentle I wanted to listen more. And then I felt how you vellicate my face, my neck. Your hand had its own brain it managed to go more downward. Your name flaunted like street signs, your eyes shimmered like stoplights.
I thought of you on my way back home. But you were never my home, and I was never your possessor. And now, I forgot the directions.
Categories:
stoplights, art, feelings, for her,
Form:
Prose
Lights dawning
Sleepyheads yawning
Babies crying
Mothers sighing
Coffee pouring
Busses roaring
Winds shifting
Debris drifting
Laborers hurrying
Rats scurrying
Teen-agers snoring
Alarm clocks ignoring
Stoplights blinking
Drivers unthinking
Airplanes arriving
Passengers surviving
Tender hearts
Works of art
Lovers part
A new day starts
Categories:
stoplights, city, life, love, morning,
Form:
Rhyme
I-95
“Ya got the horse race
Ya got the dog race
Ya got the human race —
But this is a ratrace”
~ Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Ratrace” from the album Rastaman Vibration (1976)
Across Boynton Beach ran a popular road known as Gateway Boulevard.
Commuting to work on it each weekday morning the traffic moved like lard
Cruising past Motorola, eastbound vehicles mostly went single-file
In the right lane starting at Congress Avenue, dragging through all the half-mile
Along Quantum Boulevard and High Ridge Road, where long stoplights delayed the dull drive
Until the right turn to the onramp that dropped to the highway called I-95.
We’re getting on I-95, in line, we’re getting on I-95
The road never ends but as long as we’re friends we’re all getting on I-95.
Florida drivers were cool and unhurried; some surely could be terribly slow.
Old codgers wearing old hats had no clue they impeded the old traffic flow.
I’d blow past all of them, taking the left lane; I most every day made the pole
Up at the High Ridge Road light. Once it turned, I’d just kick it in and quickly roll
Forward, ahead of the slouch to my right, so that at the onramp I’d arrive
Long past the long line of travelers waiting to turn onto I-95.
We’re getting on I-95, my friends, we’re getting on I-95
It makes us feel proud to be part of the crowd all for getting on I-95.
In the South Bay there’s no waste of a chance to exploit the available lanes.
Drivers move quickly to block one another from realizing possible gains
That may have been realized, had lane-changing tactics let somebody else take the lead,
Yet for all that I have nothing to say of this crowd in its ruthless stampede
Than that it’s just like that past Florida crowd in the sense that it’s no more alive
In any real way, whether faster or meaner, than those back on I-95.
You’re getting on I-95, old crew, you’re getting on I-95
All throughout life, in each gladness and strife, you’re just getting on I-95.
~ Thanks Always Returns
Categories:
stoplights, america, humorous, nature, psychological,
Form:
Verse
Afternoon, late March, delivering promise
of downtime from errands, long lines at the post,
queues of cars at stoplights, what, if anything, is in
the pantry for supper. A glass of wine is nice, will suffice
against the mind's continuous monolog, news of unrest
in distant lands, world hunger, and men on South
Africa's wild coast who believe raping small girls
will cure them of their AIDS. For respite, I turn
to the wood storks and two world-class pines, sending
a blessing of straw and symmetrical cones into protective
lake growth, sealing its borders with a scrim
of airy viridian; birthright of sea birds seeking evening
asylum. So, what to do about an invasion of enormous
jaws that take no prisoners on a battlefield of buzz saws?
Machetes, felling pines, wild shrubs, and indigenous
palmettos with which landscapers decorate yards
of costly homes. Development, Progress, New
Construction? Words to glamorize rape of wetlands.
The storks are flying away, now, from across the lake,
where once in heart-stopping numbers they bivouacked
against the advent of night. This day, this hour,
they take wing, bird by bird in a ghostly exodus,
taking their "Reflection of nearly all light
from all visible wave links," purer than masses
of lilies on an Easter grave.
Categories:
stoplights, easter, bird, bird,
Form:
Free verse
I remember one night last winter when we thought it was snow falling, but we were wrong. It was ice.
We went out that night and stayed out too late -- unusual for folks our age. We got caught in the ice storm and had to navigate home on streets made of glass.
Driving home those few short miles from St Paul to Minneapolis was so very scary. How could such a short distance become so incredibly long? How could staying out late go so terribly wrong?
We planned the most constant route home as we skated to our parking place. Multiple accidents dotted the street and dread filled my heart as I climbed behind the steering wheel, envisioning us sliding down some hill into a car or tree.
“I will not take the freeway!” I exclaimed as I eased the car from its moor, intent on what seemed a very distant shore. Wheels spinning, tires sliding, silently screaming, I eased ahead gingerly as vehicles all around us seemed to be loosing their way.
Cars slip sideways into ditches, up on curbs and into each other. One car slithered past us as we inched slowly down an inclined avenue. Please God, Please God, my silent chant . . . at stoplights and curves, with white-knuckled grasp upon the steering wheel, I steered through like filling a narrow edge with a stick of glue.
My spouse, the navigator, said “Turn here and take this other route.” I prayed we’d make it home. We saw a bus slide toward us sideways down the street as we approached the intersection. It seemed like a dinosaur run amok, landing sideways at our corner with a gentle buck. My light turned green and we eased forward, leaving the saurischian behind.
Hoping there would be no cars and that we’d be all alone on the city streets.
“Please God, help us make it home. Don’t let anyone or thing meet or greet us.”
At final last, the garage insight, I prayed that I could get into that tight spot without crunching the parked truck inside or the garage as I skated in. Stopped and safe finally, I realized I had held my breath since we began. My teeth hurt from clenching them so hard. And I prayed Thanks to God! I’m glad to have you navigate the treacherous roads of my life.
Categories:
stoplights, adventure, car, introspection, january,
Form:
Prose Poetry
Life is a journey with many different paths
Love is one such path that everyone likes the glory of walking on
Love's path is full of thorns,hurdles and barriers that prevent many from travelling such path
Another path in life is success very few take that right turn
Success is the joy of not quiting
Stoplights fill this path
The ability to keep going despite stoplights is called determination
There are many road to life but the most joyous road to me is the one that leads to everlasting life
And the most important rules of this path is faith, salvation and the fear of the Lord and the willingness to keep his commandments
Categories:
stoplights, christian, courage, devotion, encouraging,
Form:
Free verse
The chancy countdown clock of my mortality
is ticking toward some unknown preset alarm.
I’m aware of every taciturn tick tock
in unrecoverable moments spent waiting
for something to happen…
and I do not wait well.
I wait for stiff slices of tanned toast to pop up.
I wait for the microwave’s proclamatory ping.
I wait for endless dreary drizzle to stop.
I wait for supplemental shoes to drop.
I wait for stern scarlet stoplights to glow green.
I wait for stalled responses to emailed queries.
I wait for weighty debts to be repaid.
I wait for market losses to regain.
I wait for unsure recovery from illness.
I wait for a time and place of serene stillness.
I wait to watch news that makes me feel happy…
instead of sadly numb from unrelenting horror.
I wait for a time when love and peace…
are not hammered by hate and violence.
I wait for our warming forests to stop catching fire.
I wait for AI to prove its promise rather than peril.
I wait for a clogged Congress to civilly meet in the middle.
I wait for common sense and facts to regain a following.
I wait for a time when cynicism concedes to optimism.
I wait for the long dark night of our collective souls to end.
I wait for the culmination of all things, large and small.
I wait for a time when all our waiting concludes.
I wait for anticipatory hope of Advent and Eschaton
to authentically, faithfully, finally, feel real to me.
But I’m mired in my own limited perception.
I need another perspective for waiting well.
I recall my life spans just an eye-blink slice
within deep, astronomical, cosmic time.
From the Big Bang to the Bethlehem star
over thirteen billion years passed by,
a very long Advent time indeed.
God must be very good at waiting.
(First published in Valiant Scribe Literary Journal (Issue V, Winter 2024) 46-47. See also my poems “Star of Wondering” and “Bringing Heaven to Earth.”)
Categories:
stoplights, courage, death, faith, mystery,
Form:
Free verse
Drive
Spending hours on the road
Going here and going there
Arm out the window
Driving without a care
No place must I be
Not sure to where I’ve been
Looking for adventure
The lies around the bend
Drifting through the curves
Counting stoplights just for fun
Not a clue to the hours
That I’ve been on the run
Chasing down the sunset
Got the radio turned up loud
Johnny Cash as my partner
Singing something crazy and wild
There is freedom in the lines
That runs between the roads
No commitment needed to follow
No payment for what is owed
I’ll drive just as far
As a tank of gas will get me to
Sometime in the wee hours
I’ll return home to you
Categories:
stoplights, life,
Form:
Rhyme
I was watching a humble man
Roll down hid window.
He pulls back his seat in recline.
A sigh escapes just past his teeth
In an attempt to turn my head.
I reluctantly look his way
As he slowly drops his
Ebony flip flops free from
The fast paced car with it's
Weathered glass windows.
We shared a sharp studying stare
As a fat dimpled spider crawls
Aimlessly across the dashboard.
We mindlessly breathe in the 5:am air
As we continue on down the road with no stoplights,
Leaving his tired soles behind,
Waiting for a California sun deterioration.
Categories:
stoplights, imagination, introspection, life, time,
Form:
Free verse