Abandoned
on the road of distant sorrow
mile markers bloody from the vagrants
it has claimed
All names
inscribed with crimson warnings
on devil written
eulogies
Their cries
entombed within an
eastern wind
— that blows away the dawn
(The Devil’s Highway (666): June, 2002)
If lost in yourself,
there’s no need to be found
As the self-disenfranchised,
circle around
They question and lecture,
and spew out their grief
To lure you within,
their false broken beliefs
“You really don’t get it, man,”
they sing from their bus
They say “You’re unhip”
and “You need to be us”
The chanting of laughter,
they march to inane
Where a prank on themselves
—waits in drug induced shame
(Villanova, Pennsylvania: December, 2019)
Pictures at an Exhibition
I recently saw the ghosts of beat poet visionaries
staring lonely, from pictures at an exhibition
Ginsburg, Corso, Snyder, Kerouac, and Cassady
the murderer’s row of the desolation angels line-up
smoking cigarettes on dingy New York fire escapes
eyes squinting into the brutal mid-day sun of Tangiers
chanting Buddhist mantras in Golden Gate Park
posed with arms around each other in Mexico City
with the fires of holy imagination burning in their faces
My heroes, the ones that lit my blaze of spirit
and urged me to write with their heat and passion
burdened souls, searching out the mysteries
of rhythm and god hidden inside hip, jazz phrasings
My heart swelled with gratitude
and for a moment, they were friends
ghosts grown much larger than life
urging me to walk in their footsteps…
VAN GOGH’S BLUES
We wake up on the same day
a hundred years later.
It's a very long first date.
The kind you hate to miss.
Now I'm up against the chocolate bars
playing symphony fantastique
in my lines going nowhere
walking the dirt walk towards Van Gogh
making my way
back to that concrete road
where I crossed
to the candy store
with the dollar in my hand
running from speeding Limousines
heading for their movie deals
into Kerouac's life screaming for more details
and wondering about Cassady
not wanting to go on without his
funny arrested stolen drunkeness
They say we can work with you
say that's fantastic, we'll take it.
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.