Best Tarmac Poems
Marooned on the island of loneliness
Shadows of delusion confront me
In a stormy sea, I got shipwrecked
And the sea has robbed everything from me
What unanticipated change comes over
When people let you down
What a shocking realization it is
To know that there is nobody around to care.
On coming face to face, will anyone acknowledge me
Or will a happy smile light upon any face?
I am now a drying brook
That once has been a river in spate
A deflated balloon unable to soar high
A blind bird that cannot see a dawn
Nor sing a song to wake the sleeping world
My scars are like deep cuts
On an ill-maintained tarmac road
I sleep in endless weariness,
And grope among dark spaces
I vacantly look into the far horizon
When the broken shards of moonlight
Paint pictures of dark demons around me
Like a bird that with nightfall
Returns to a tree to call out its solitude to the stars
I sit here alone,
Alone, alone,
Not knowing to whom I shall call out!
Will the stars keep me company?
Tomorrow, should I go into exile or wake up
With the hope that my pain will go into remission
And my soul’s cry will be heard by some attentive ears!
Or will my frozen inside thaw by itself in time?
Categories:
tarmac, angst, depression, emotions,
Form:
Free verse
The warmth of Nairobi in January is gone now.
Here it's cold and drizzly, a savannah
of tarmac and metal jumbos before me.
My natural rhythms have given way
to this soaring erratic chase of the sun.
But I return to warmth—the desert heat
of southern Arizona, and the ardent glow
of my heart when I hold you in my arms.
Categories:
tarmac, love, places
Form:
Verse
How to describe the color of love? Might you frown in surprise if I spoke of brown? Dull, pockmarked, ocherous brown.
A tarmac of grain, stained the color of earth, that never saw rain.
One humble old table, from an oak that would fall. Who could have known the
moments recalled?
Just a scarred weathered plank, with a warp in the middle. Blight she would hide with a bright checkered cloth. Those who would sit, night after night, greeting with eyes, meeting with ears,... filling the gaps with laughter and tears
Decades were spent, over string beans, and potatoes, bridging the gap of a mid-day mishap, a chat after school, or a new family rule.
Resurrecting a family, at the end of the day, while chomping away on unidentifiable casseroles, that filled the belly, as well as the soul.
Consuming wisdom and noodles, in the comfort of home.
Who would have noticed this shabby antique, wearing wax from Crayolas, white coffee cup rings. Ink spots, and dings. And three winking holes made by father's misdeed!
(His picture-frame project, misjudging the nails! Three slender digits pierced in without fail! Hammered tight, to the top. While mother's shot through the roof!
Who could have ever guessed that a well-worn, weathered old piece of grainy brown oak could be the glorious color of love?
____________________________________
Categories:
tarmac, home, nostalgia,
Form:
Prose
War Heroes
Between black wheel tarmac
the crossing reflects a figure in polished paint
at the stagger of his old loose feet
crosses the barrier of traffic
with the beacons conversation meaning nothing
its flashing occupation signals his lolled neck stumbling
sucks the bottle for one last time
and forgets
Sighting on blurred reactions
sipping the spit of his dribble he stares at his daughter mannequin
wincing past his performance
begging her to listen
while her attention is fixed ahead
the traffic rolls slick full of monoxide toxic
breathes the waste of her distress
she ignores the principal wave of his bottle
releasing her breath with the clutch
the zebra smells like a mouse trap
the white ladder bars and black adder cars
bump pristine edges on his boots
he sways across
The market trolleys squeak echoes the ache
she steps on tender ankles
swollen while he eases her past the cardboard
the plastic bags of her life crammed to full
the tatters of memories
she thinks of china cups and lost children
on blazing streets that lived on rations
Some where in her mind he is a hero
medals adorning his battered uniform
the traffic roars as loud as the blitz
some where in his mind he sees her yellow skin
the gunpowder struggle and the munitions factory
have worn away her beauty but still her eyes are sweet and lovely
and the traffic blasts like the blitz
on the people they were before
Categories:
tarmac, history
Form:
Free verse
The wind is break dancing with the trees.
beating a rapper’s song.
Limbs flail on the tarmac.
Rain flies like sweat from corn rows
across the expanse of asphalt.
A barrage precipitates
against the window pane
with the rata-tat-tat
of a machine gun’s bullets
as the front passes.
Categories:
tarmac, introspection, nature
Form:
Free verse
The road
It stretches out before me,
the yellow center line
holding my attention.
It tells me that humankind has tried
and made its mark known and imprinted here.
But from the woods, the trees stretch their trunks angling across the tarmac,
A canopy of leaves umbrella across the lanes
dropping leaves upon the blackness,
The colors blend the black macadam
into reds and yellows and greens.
The sun etches streams thru the branches down to the lines
and flows around the bends.
the road disappears and nature reclaims its place
If only for the moment, the world is clean and pure again,
alive with living and life.
Squirrels and birds clatter in the trees and brush,
running and racing thru the leaves.
A truck rumbles in the distance.
Everything suddenly scatters
and man leaves his mark
yet again.
Categories:
tarmac, humanity, nature,
Form:
Free verse
This responds to “Operation Raise the Colours,” where some have painted the St. George’s Cross across streets, roundabouts, and takeaway shops. Claimed as patriotism, these acts are vandalism and an attempt to erase community spaces and stirring division.
Red bleeds across zebra lines,
slick on high street asphalt,
smearing over takeaway shutters,
stretched across roundabouts, stubborn as lead.
Rollers scrape and flake,
pigment cheap, sunlight shakes it loose,
drips into puddles,
history seeping through plaster,
like damp under primer that never hides the past.
The streets run red and white,
paint claimed by hands insistent on marking stone, brick, asphalt—
silence made loud in streaks and drips.
Roundabouts stand proud under fresh layers.
Slash Dulux over despair—
coverage meant to hide, but failing.
Paint bleeds over more than tarmac—
onto takeaway windowpanes, footpaths, shop signs—
a mural of identity, impulse, defiance.
Undercoat logic tries to cover the past,
but no sealant ever lasts.
Brushstroke patriots,
emotion disciples,
armed with rollers like substitute rifles.
The painting’s wrap is hollow,
decorating decline as if it were fate.
Every slogan,
a stencil sprayed on the breeze.
Pigment flakes with ease,
truth showing through the layers.
Heritage red becomes eviction scarlet,
brilliant white papered over target.
Crowns drip Crown paint onto stone,
monarchs in tester pots,
empires reduced to monochrome.
Borders cut by shaky hands,
masking tape straining against the straight line of intention.
Private bleeding edges,
lines never straight.
Revolutions run off into puddles of hate,
mirroring the sky distorted,
clouds stretched, colors torn thin.
Tins are stirred, paint slapped on the ground.
Every revolution circles round,
because property cannot be glossed,
despair cannot be mapped.
Whitewashed roundabouts cannot hide the cracks.
Paint peels, drips, bleeds into puddles,
but the fissures of history remain—
veins in stone, stories in asphalt,
layers no roller can erase.
Crowns, crosses, streaks of red and white
twirl and fall like the last dance
over streets that remember,
over walls that refuse to forget.
The cracks take the floor,
silent but insistent,
and they will not be painted over.
Categories:
tarmac, word play, writing,
Form:
Free verse
I wrote this as a tribute to all those injured and killed in the bombing. Get well soon people, rest in peace those that were murdered.
Manchester will never forgive
Manchester will never forget
The few that carry the bomb
The few with the terrorist threat
Manchester will never forget
Those that were caught in the blast
Manchester understands
That it isn’t the first time or last
The Provo’s they gave us a warn of attack
A few precious minutes for the hordes to drawback
Now our blood stains the tarmac and union jack
From a cowardly nail bomb packed in a backpack
But Manchester will stand, like the tree called the Oak
Rising up tall from the fire and the smoke
Manchester has been there before
Surviving but battered and sore
So Manchester’s message to those with the bomb
Bring it on, bring it on, bring it on
Categories:
tarmac, anger,
Form:
Rhyme
It was only a few days
On their barren soil
Through a doorway he went
So many lives now spoiled
An explosive device
Plastic in design
Could never be detected
Now a life resigns
The regimental medic
Rushes to his aid
To stem his internal bleeding
Through his eyes he fades
His lifeless soul lies lonely
As he is gently stretchered away
Where he will be flown back home
To where the angels play
In honoured ceremony
As he is carried to his carriage
On the tarmac awaits
His fiance, without marriage
In the chapel of rest
She stands in a tear laden pose
Her tribute to her lost one
With him goes a Rose
For tomorrow she will awake
A new day in her life
As she remembers her love
Who would have made her his wife
http://www.thehighlanderspoems.com/loss-2.php
Categories:
tarmac, angst, death, devotion, family,
Form:
Rhyme
CLOSE OF THE DAY
Another evening void
Of friends or lovers
Ending in the well lit
Road silent down
To the gut bridge
No cats no traffic
Tarmac surface curving
Down and right
Lots of space without movement
Windows unlit doors unopen
Belisha beacon invites
Its call unanswered
Beer can empty
Rolls in the breeze
Rattles down to the bridge
Waiting to be crushed flat
Under a tyre to end
Its random wandering
24 October 2019
Categories:
tarmac, night,
Form:
Imagism
Hardness softens under serpents eyes of gold.
Concrete becomes her;
Crystallising lakes of,
Oceans of,
Serenity
What may we envelop with our softness
When our branches cannot reach the sky
For fear of an axeman’s careless wielding.
I will be hurt.
My iron will shatter into feathers, falling as crescent moons in a breeze,
Before I chance to dent you with
The knife edge of my tongue.
You believe in my horizon.
My sinking sunbeams throw out shades of golden reds and bloody orange.
The belly of the beast; illusion under seas that hath no space nor space constraint.
In my drowning sun you see a female devil,
Residing in her lair of fire.
You see her sleeping,
Beneath a stage of watery glass.
She is not retiring.
She is halving,
From the final throws of her fire,
That you drank like drops of sugar.
How much can you see?
A steely serpent drinking from versuvius in drunken sin.
When snakes wake from their poisoned mist
are they clear enough to see that their volcano-
Is a puddle from a broken tap,
Warm from the burning reflected in your gaze.
I feel myself drip like storm water,
Hiding under tarmac from the thunder.
Categories:
tarmac, abuse, allegory, betrayal, boy,
Form:
Free verse
I know that I have called this a sonnet, and I recognise that it falls short of such an esteemed form, but it is my first attempt, please forgive me.
in SUPPORT of GOOGLE'S SELF DRIVE CAR
a black tarmac warrior
a technology killing humanity worrier
plotting a course at one hundred kilometres an hour
his fatigued mind begins to wander
they want to take away his freedom
to replace his skills and wisdom
superseding his brain with one of silicon
technology supplanting humanity beyond his reason
Isaac and I Robot showed the way
when with technology protecting humanity we will rue the day
while his mind remains resolute, his car begins to sway
because humanity in control is the only way
then in his old age, his is the first generation
with no licence, but independent automated motion
Categories:
tarmac, anxiety, betrayal, car, judgement,
Form:
Sonnet
How much stark evidence, how many proofs
will be dismissed before conceit it fails;
and of His mercy decide to avail
this presumptuous species from faith aloof.
Flashbang rumble! A thousand unseen hoofs
galloped overhead, as clattering hail
mass-pogoed as if emptied from some vast pail
upon unsuspecting Tarmac and roofs.
Mercy, I swear I heard the atoms split
from molecules to create ozone
as, outside close nearby the lightning hit;
its acrid tang prevalent in a home,
which for a charged instant that bolt lit:
thrilling spectator as he watched alone.
Categories:
tarmac, allusion, god, nature, rain,
Form:
Italian Sonnet
the devil is calling
a cigarette you call it
as the airplane flying the sky
to sit ten is late waiting
surprise soon to be twenty or more ********
flying the sky to reach the tarmac
of evil with a glass of lemon juice in the morning
shame on you my dear you are acid
fancy plates from past century
I drink your wines with crystal glass
and make a madeira of your life
as I pet a cat my dog in need of a pee
no crave here to call your name
shame on you with your botox
to look sublime as I live a life
of desire and glee
as I in a box chose not to fly your plane
but eyes opened for the reveal I count on you
to make it right my dear devil.
Categories:
tarmac, funny love, i am,
Form:
Free verse
One April day, that changed my life
You lived nearby, a drive not far
I picked you up, with nerves a rife
Blessed my dad, had loaned me his car.
I drove you slowly, together alone
Savoring each moment, you smelled divine
I loved your accent, the kind words you spoke
Upon Air Base now, while I on cloud nine.
Together on tarmac, we strolled and made small talk
Watching planes fly, fortunate in your presence
Inside one huge plane, upon stern gate we walked
Clasping hands and hearts, my first glimpse of Heaven.
It was our first date, the initial of many
Thirty-seven years ago, on this April tenth
Since then, our love remaining solid a plenty
Selflessly sharing each’s unlimited strength.
My lifetime a thank you, for giving me love
Being the one, my affectionate soul mate
Through mostly good times, quite many thereof
Defining the source, it was that very first date!
Categories:
tarmac, anniversary, april, celebration, cute
Form:
Couplet