Best Turnpike Poems

SILENT ROOSTERS SLEEP

Dads don’t sleep.  They drive over-packed cars, and sip coffee from a thermos cup. Kids in backseat mull over grandma’s home ~ roosters never move, cuckoo clock never quits, and grandma’s always at the door, waiting. Front passenger divvies out cheerios and...

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Replace this heart of soiled sedition.
This junkyard filled with ugly treason.
Forgive, o Lord, embattled reason, 
at the turnpike,  chosen left ...off course.
His smoke went up with no remorse,
where my jealous hate, my brother slain,
branded brow the mark of Cain.

Now thoughts are choked by desert...

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Yo Lauren,

From faith, to fugees, to fantastic lyrics against abortion and the senseless
extermination of black babies under the guise of family values making slave prisons for
profits.

I know your heart, as it spoke to a young brotha with a baby on the way, with way too...

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He turned twenty-one on that beautiful fall day
Driving to his home from college, he got an early start on his way
The father who raised him since his mother died at his birth
Wanted to have his first beer with him that afternoon after work

He reached the...

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Snow Falls.

The street is loosing its battle from the skyward white invaders.
It steady quite rain,
White blankets its white, fluffy, frozen cleaner across the hardened frozen road below
punctuated  by its crisp air and consistent  advance.
Millions of little invaders landing at once, dampen the normal...

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There were two
Acting role written as ‘cool’
One from the first state
Other an empire whose façade outside looks great
Table chances inside the beachside resorts
A drive through free federal highway really short
Rest in peace trip place where it ended
Airline industry needed young American Donald as a defendant
Amusement...

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MY FIRST OF WHEELS



Remember that sense of freedom?
Your keys, you free, in your very own teen-aged kingdom.

If older, like me, seats then, were made of fresh new leather.
Oh, that scent just tickled my young  soul like a peacock feather.

You graduated from the bicycle crowd, now.
How...

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The chilly North Pacific:
we build a fire for the moths,
a lamplight. Their wings, angry
with flames. Sky: dim and small.

In your standing stillness, you are
an old clock
that has run out of chimes.
The small hours of the past,
a fossil, a nerve. I hand you a flask.

You say:...

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It's raining I look at my window and wonder is it wrong to think so fondly of my youth,
Is it wrong to keep on looking so tenderly back to younger days to my ‘once upon a time,’
An old fool, a sentimentalist thinking so perseveringly, looking...

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Stepping through its beaded door
was like walking into a time cloud, 
whiffs of marijuana and hashish pipes
lined up by color in the cabinet 
to the right, behind which stood
a hippie and his girl, with beads
and long hair, who lived in the VW van
parked in the...

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A hound bus in the maintenance garage
But it was the thief thinking in his own barrage
When the workers weren’t around
The Thief stole the bus without making any sound
The Hound’s slogan, “Leave the Driving to us”
The Thief’s slogan, “Steal the Hound Bus being a must”
That is...

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I remember the thaw 
when I headed South to crawl 
through Carnegie's tunnels 
in a Saab that would stall 
in the mist or the rain 
Spring, Winter, and Fall-- 
O I remember the thaw 
and the chance of a change 
if I could move what...

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Driving home for a visit long overdue
 along the NJ turnpike, the Delaware, straight away I flew,
down to Baltimore once more while leaning on the horn
 scenery consistent and familiar with the road weather worn.

The exits looked unfamiliar, tolls now increased and gained
 the road...

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Grouping here to plan retreat, 
the redcoat officers smelled defeat: 
the boards complained beneath their feet, 
on entering Wright's Tavern. 

They game was up. They understood. 
All that remained was noise and blood, 
and limping back as best they could, 
the fifteen miles to Boston....

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New Jersey was just a pass through state
From Boston to Myrtle Beach
Just a turnpike in our rear view mirror
Before the final destination we could reach

We never gave her a second thought
Only stopped to get some gas
Every time they said we couldn’t pump it ourselves
This would...

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