Graveled Poems | Examples

Hard Times

I was raised, like many others, on the wrong side of the tracks.
Parents poor, thru generations, hopelessly, broke their backs.
The holes in our walls, patched, with mud and road kill skins.
Our roof made up from cardboard boxes and corrugated tins.

We ate old, ice cold, cockroach stew, tho pigged out on toad.
The rusty bucket, we used out back, lovingly called commode.
As a young lad, I went bad, ran with wild gangs in the streets.
But soon, found myself running, with drunks, liars, and cheats.

In time, untrusted, got busted, cuz I was the one who went in.
The Judge, graveled, quickly gaveled, got five years in the pen.
In one cage, pent up rage, every day had to fight for my life.
Dreading showers, rival powers, and a toothbrush for a knife.

Made up my mind, when I got out, to fly straight as an arrow.
Like a fool, was hard to get by, on just the straight and narrow.
My life's been no picnic, it's true, but I won't sing a sad song.
Now busted again, back in the pen, I'm sure I probably belong.

Too Old To Be A Narci!

When beauty’s gone bye bye and slack flesh becks
            Jowls, crow’s feet, graveled voice and turkey necks             
Too old to be a narcissist
what’s left is a pacifist
*Tender genteel haters do not make good peaceniks!

Locusts in the Alley

In the old graveled alley, overgrown with weeds,
at footfall, locusts sprang and leaped,
triggering a riot.
But soon their swelling motion
subsided like fried popcorn on a skillet.

monorhyme for fun

At the Des Moines River’s Road End
There was a sharp tricky right bend
Prickly pines there were ready to defend
Graveled middle, a modern MODOT trend

Weeds that flittering faeries often tend
Mushroom homes, upon whom elves defend
Mother nature sat on haunches to mend
Torn sage weeds, beavers had chewed to extend.

My Road

My Road
By: Miracle Man
9/26/2024

My road in life, by choice, I have traveled,
without any vision of where it might end.
Many miles were smooth, some were graveled,
with unforeseen things I had to contend.

But early on my miles began to turn sour,
and while young in years I became perplexed.
Without reason I found myself looking glower,
not understanding why I was feeling so vexed.

But then one day, still seeking an answer,
and spending many days just slumming.
At twenty-eight I was told that I had cancer,
and I couldn’t fathom what was forthcoming.

I felt like a hitcher on the highway thumbing,
I accepted Jesus’ hand and gave him control.
Faith became mile one on my road to becoming,
I embraced for my life, God’s long desired goal.


Was 28 when Born Again, 85 now.
Thank you Jesus

Outdoor Classroom

Jump, thump, six graders jump
from stone to pebbly stone.
Chirp chirp the robin flies
Across the sky alone.
Crunch chunch the graveled feet,
Sh. . . shoo, a breathy whisper,
Hard, cold bench for a seat,
Rough wood, perhaps a splinter.
Puh, puh, puh, a boy spitting,
Mosquito slap
A girl is hitting.
Scarlet leaves on willowly stem
Dance in the crisp fall air.
I hear a chuckle.
Is it he
Playing over there?
The last bright orange, Autumn mums
Await their yearly demise.
A glance at my watch.
Oh, no, it’s time,
I’m thinking as I rise.
Fall day, sublime
God’s perfection.
What a task to study!
Until next time,
We’ll have to leave
Renewed, refreshed, unhurried.

         ~ Judy Bausch

A Dying Winter

It was a harsh, hard going season.

“It’s a dying winter, lad,”
he said, crunching words around,
a gnawed pipe stem.
Briefly embers sought a place to disappear.
Cinder gray eyes, set deep
into the crumpled grit of age.
A wry off-set smile.

Then one day he went back up
the clinker graveled path
to his small, low-roofed cottage,
with its squat, darkly puffing chimney,
oily cans, coal dusted kettles,
the fumy, over-stuffed parlor,
with its feet-warming, black,
fire-baked grate,
and one sooty cat.

Never to be seen again.

Vision

I can see a country road lightly graveled
Curved and lined with autumnal leaves
See myself walk hand and hand with my lover
This cool, crisp fall, in a gentle breeze

I see a warm hearth with dying embers
As the hot chocolate cups are finally drained
And sticky roasted marshmallow remnants
Are left upon the wire hangers to be used again

How long until we are joined in a perfect union
In a life to be loved for its fantastic form
A life where no problems linger
And a perfect love is newly born

Right of Passage

Meandering along a graveled road
I saw an opossum with six young’uns
Hanging from her tail, quite a load
Meandering along a graveled road,
She was probably seeking a safer abode
I stopped, letting her pass, her luck runs
Meandering along a graveled road
I saw an opossum with six young’uns.

Written October 11, 2022

Life Is An Adventure

Down long lonesome roads of life, I traveled
only resting when I've grown weak and weary
or stumbling on memory lanes, pea graveled
that cause my mournful eyes to become teary.

My life is a library of memorable adventures.
I look back on those that brought me sorrows,
notwithstanding the rough and rocky ventures,
I’ve always looked forward to brighter morrows.

Courage always serves me as a faith restorer.
Then I'm off on another journey in which I pretend
that I'm a brave adventurist, a vagabond explorer,
hoping to discover serenity around the next bend.

Life offers us many of those up-and-down times,
but I have reached the crest of the highest hills --
sat there, meditated, and wrote poetic rhymes,
about sorrow's depth and how happiness fulfills.

I've learned how to be both malleable and shrewd,
relying on my senses and what nature will provide.
Life can be felicitous, and if I have the right attitude
I will accept my optimism to be a trusted guide.


October 3, 2022
[a collaboration of Jenna Logan and L Milton Hankins]

Life Is An Adventure

Down long lonesome roads of life, I traveled
only resting when I've grown weak and weary
or stumbling on memory lanes, pea graveled
that cause my mournful eyes to become teary.

My life is a library of memorable adventures.
I look back on those that brought me sorrows,
notwithstanding the rough and rocky ventures,
I’ve always looked forward to brighter morrows.

Courage always serves me as a faith restorer.
Then I'm off on another journey in which I pretend
that I'm a brave adventurist, a vagabond explorer,
hoping to discover serenity around the next bend.

Life offers us many of those up-and-down times,
but I have reached the crest of the highest hills --
sat there, meditated, and wrote poetic rhymes,
about sorrow's depth and how happiness fulfills.

I've learned how to be both malleable and shrewd,
relying on my senses and what nature will provide.
Life can be felicitous, and if I have the right attitude
I will accept my optimism to be a trusted guide. 

[a collaboration of Jenna Logan and L Milton Hankins]

Written October 3, 2022
[My thanks to Jenna for
initiating this little venture!]

Ezekiels Witness

Ezekiel’s Witness
David J Walker

It was the Spring before Eddie died that Fall
The graveled back road leading to the 
end of the airport runway and an audible adventure 
In the perfect evening air 
		
        no wind 
                as the light defused
                           into the equinox sky

we parked his Buick on the leeward side of
the barbed wire fence just beyond the runway
and stood in the chilled and perfectly stilled night air 

Where 
we became four animated fixtures 
beckoning to the coming Continental Airliner

watching it grow nearer  
			      bigger
				   louder
                              roaring 

	rattling our bones in the backwash of
a passenger jet landing on time in 
the middle of nowhere

Ezekiel bore witness to the wheel in the wheel 
Way up in the middle of the sky
Ezekiel bore witness in the valley of bones 
Dry but not lifeless 

Eddie left a note naming the boys who would 
Bear the pall of his casket 
It was the fall of our senior year

While Driving At Night

rabbits leap across
loneliest graveled dirt roads
barely missing tires
~
possum shuffle past
the white lines along the curbs
hopes fill their belly
~
raccoon dart out from
beneath laurels and pine trees
hustling toward hills
~
bear lumber along
awaiting hibernation
along forest trails
~
deer travel quiet
sighing soft in the headlights
through misty night fog

Just An Old Photograph

It was only an old photograph;
But your black heart thought only of you,
You slipped my wallet from my purse,
Shame on you, Shame on you!

Your charges on my card stopped so quickly,
In a matter of minutes I’d phoned, theft found.
The worth was in one sentimental picture,
All I had dumped on graveled ground.

You didn’t win, dear thief, you have my prayers, tho
You took all I had left of him, thought you were clever, 
But in my heart lies every detail, his smile, my dress, his suit,
He was gone, and so’s your conscience forever.

Tracking the Past

Tracks stretch across
barren winter fields
yet their steel trace
like a snail's trail appears polished,
glinting in dying light,

stifling your breath,
towards a dark shed
doors creak
like a sprinter's graveled gasp.

However, birds don't sing 
above the stretched tram lines,
you cannot speak
in jolting cattle wagons,

screeching their approach
fingers like frantic worms
drilling between their 
wooden slats.

Then doors release
the cargo then funnels
into iron holding pens

in quick-step lines
each is tagged 
prodded into wooden sheds

you're now in narrow single beds
tettering on sharp edges
lurking behind screens.

Pressing,
your warm flesh 
on windows iced,
watch the blackbirds gathering,

as neatly labeled 
gas canisters haze
like mustard seed 
clouded in emerald mold. 

Peppered panes 
dusted by mottled-ash, 
steamed by your breath, 
shuddering into deeper tones. 

Clutching
in Cumbrian wrestler grasp
your herded panic reverberates. 
The rolling cloud cloaks
the silent sleeping earth.

Our final clench
is warm flesh on flesh

• Short Graveled Poems
• Famous Graveled Poems
• Best Graveled Poems
• Read Graveled Poems
• Long Graveled Poems
• Graveled Quotes