Long Nebraska Poems
Long Nebraska Poems. Below are the most popular long Nebraska by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Nebraska poems by poem length and keyword.
Fiona and her pup Scar decided to go on an adventure
They hit the Pacific Highway at four in the morning on Tuesday
There is nothing like the open road! Fiona sang to Scar.
Scar was happy, there were doggie treats in his sidecar.
Many people honked and waved as they journeyed.
They ran out of ocean soon enough, but saw other things.
Dusty dirty tumbleweeds blew into them in Wyoming.
No worries, Fiona told Scar. Things will get better.
Scar was not worried. He had a new t-bone now.
Thanks to the generosity of the cook at the truck stop.
“We are on the road to somewhere!” Fiona sang.
They were steering through Nebraska now.
It was the tornado season, so they might have to lie in a ditch.
Scar did not care. He has his bone, and he had his memories.
He loved traveling “the road to somewhere”.
It was his favorite thing to do in the summer time.
Everyone told him to come out
His LTBGQ friends anyway
All six of them
For that is how many lived in his small town
in the Midwest
in the heart of Nebraska
The pressure was great,
and part of him yearned
To say something to his parents
To test the water,
To see if they would still love him
It was a quandary
But his heart kept saying no
His friends did not let up.
They hounded him for years.
Everything in his heart said no.
He did not feel ready
Until he was seventeen.
When he finally did
Thinking it would be a relief.
They loved him after all.
He spent the rest of the year
Sleeping on friends couches
Waiting for high school to end
So he could leave town
Never returning
I had seen photos of one of these whirlwind monsters
This one was just a corn field away, and we were running
Furiously furious, it sucked up livestock and farm equipment.
There are probably rats down there, my aunt had said once.
Rattlesnakes too, said my brother.
I noticed him scrambling inside the second the hatch was flipped.
My parents and I were in our pajamas, I did not have on slippers.
Daddy flipped the hatch with a bang
It was totally silent and dark.
No light.
I could smell mold.
I wondered if a rat would bite my foot.
I had heard they can bite off toes.
My mother said “Listen”.
Except for heavy breathing, there was silence.
Maybe it’s over said my sister.
Then we heard a train
A train in a Nebraska corn field?
Something big landed on the cellar’s hatch.
BAM!
The tractor, Mommy said.
Or the combine, said Daddy.
We did not have much of a house left when we were freed a few hours later.
But we were all alive.
Nebraska
Nightfall littered with confetti stars, glitter spilled down from the Heaven’s above
Echoes roaring in with the wind, wailing across the great open plains
Bountiful soil, producing our grains, praying for rain
Raging rivers weaving throughout our land, fishing on the bank, floating on a tube, summer fun for everyone
Autumn foliage earthly hues, winter snow blinding you, spring flowers sprouting up, the summer sun to get that farmers tan - a season for everyone
Skipping rocks across the pond, a slower pace helps us appreciate His grace. That we have “The Good Life”
Kicking back with family and friends is usually how our day ends.
Attached to the community, family’s grounded roots make this a great place to raise a family.
...Oliver had saved up the cash
to buy into his employer’s franchise,
bought his own store, aggressively courted
every rancher in the countryside.
Soon enough the cash flow was well in the black,
so Oliver and the bartender wed,
bought their own house and were soon expecting,
he cared nothing for what the people said.
Jack, still drinking, played the Hollywood scene,
was a fixture of the wild nightlife,
soon he was in the tabloids again
when he knocked up a girl he knew one night.
He managed to keep working in film,
supporting roles were the best he could get,
with alimony and child support
he found himself slipping into the red.
When he crashed his car into his front door
he was quickly shuffled off to rehab,
in what would be the first trip of many,
the addiction had a grip on him bad.
But still he managed to get some work,
and when folks saw his face on the air,
they’d look at Oliver, mumbling how,
“That brother never went anywhere.”
Now Hollywood is a hot-bed of rumors,
and a disturbing percentage are true,
soon tales spread of Jack’s early acting days,
and all the things a new actor has to do.
Rumors of giving favors to producers,
insinuations of oral sex,
some said that was why her drank so damn much,
and why relationships left him vexed.
Whatever the case, on the internet,
the rumors became an ongoing meme,
his reputation thrown in the toilet
by GIFs and infographics obscene.
Oliver, back in fair Nebraska,
really had no reason to complain,
he had three kids and sold big equipment
to half the ranchers on the Sand Hills range.
Nobody was making memes out of him,
no reporters were snooping through his trash,
tabloids were not undermining his marriage,
and he was making more than enough cash.
He had six stores and a seventh coming,
and a hundred acres tied to his home,
a life or both family and friends sincere,
the general public did leave him alone.
The only thing that could worry Oliver
was what would happen to his brother Jack?
How many stars had walked down that same road,
and how many of them had never come back?
Though Jack’s state would weight hard on his mind,
and hear feared to see him drowning in despair,
Oliver couldn’t help but laugh at the folk
who thought it was he who was going nowhere.
I am whom I am who I am this is I. XXXX ***
Retired only in age working still a hobbyist poet father of 3
Son of Joseph and Annie Bell professed Child of God this is who I am
Love so humanity, living life, my saving Christ my wife
Felt feelings of joy grandeur of peace and patience this is who I am
Who fears righteously the Lord our God and not any man
Would like to see my wife parents and best friend alive again this is who I am
Residence terrain earth USA city state of Omaha Nebraska
This is where I am, this is who I AM
XXXX ***
7/4/21
© 2021
For This is Who I Am Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: L Milton Hankins
I met someone exciting the other day. We’re in an English class together, twenty of us, the class is really about chaos. Attraction can spring from nothing (talk about chaos). We had split into discussion groups and we were next to each other.
The abruptness of it surprised me - I felt the realization, a tingle that ran through me like a wave. I actually twitched, shivered really.
I’m still getting used to people, after the great pandemic separation. I know there were people who carried on as if it weren’t real. My parents, both doctors, took it very seriously. I was “sheltered in place,” like Rapunzel, with shorter hair. For over a year - it seemed longer.
So I haven’t felt this way in a while - this crushy feeling. Near him, my whole body is a receptor, very aware of everything about him - the smell of him alone saturates my senses. Everything about him seems vibrant, revelatory.
He opens doors sometimes, he brought me coffee - twice. He’s started covering the seat next to him and clears it when I arrive so I can sit next to him. He asks questions about my life. He’s polite but persistent, like a newspaper reporter. He’s from Nebraska, a farm boy (19, a man?), he has a dreamy accent and he’s funny.
I wish I could be around him more. Even thinking about it makes my heart race as though I were confessing a secret. But the fact is, it’s impossible. It’s too soon, we just got here. The wish itself is a burden.
Why do I have to be ruthlessly practical all the time. It sucks.
.
.
.
ps, I write short stories too
( … if you catch me doing one of these.)
Naming any baby Finton,
voting for Hillary Clinton,
complimenting Nascar,
moving to Nebraska,
using "literally" to mean "very",
calling Derry Londonderry,
uttering the word "redact",
claiming Johnny Depp can act,
saying society's to blame,
mentioning fifteen minutes of fame,
feeling sorry for Amanda Knox,
watching anything on Fox,
or even one second of Jerry Springer,
making speech marks with my fingers,
drinking alcohol alone,
admiring Sharon Stone,
labelling anyone a pagan,
sighing "bring back Ronald Reagan",
playing Rod Stewart's "We Are Sailing",
paying money to see Van Halen ...
(and if ever, instead of clever,
I say smart,
I promise to wear -
right there -
a target across my heart.)
Submission
to 2014 INTERGENERATIONAL POETRY SLAM ELDERS AND TEEN TRACK
University of Nebraska, Omaha Nebraska
In some states I can vote, but yet afraid
I can drink alcohol, but can't rent an apartment
Some states I can marry well at 12,14, 16
But I am still a child without means
I have all the parts of an adult
Yet they of whom I do not trust
I drive a car fast, but I won't last
I bus, I just cuss then crash
I can't remember what I had for lunch last
I won't even do my own wash or dirty dishes
Cut the grass or turn off light switches
Pimples, low self esteem, nightmares video streams
Cell phone, Facebook, don't need to read books or magazines
No it all incontinent lost in elements
Give me equality, freedom without grown up stress
Let me alone dispute my age
I am free I am grown
Give me truth I am youth to have fun
Youth with no truth
Teenager forever
Can't die because I am
a teenager
a teenager forever
Until I turn twenty, twenty to one
No time for mom or dad
Again give me freedom
Without the rules and lectures
A teenager
A teen youth ager with the demands of gold and silver
I am just a Teen Youth Ager
07/20/14
written words by James Edward Lee Sr.
Out beyond the highway fences,
where the grass leans slow beneath a storm,
a man in cracked boots spat tobacco into the dust
and asked me that question once.
“Where are all the cows
that McDonald’s uses
to make their hamburgers?”
Well—
they ain’t standing in one holy pasture
under golden light
waiting for Ronald McDonald to come collect them.
No.
They are scattered like rain across the republic.
Texas.
Kansas.
Nebraska.
Montana.
Black cattle chewing silence beside rusted ponds.
Brown cattle pressed shoulder to shoulder in winter wind.
Millions of wet noses steaming at dawn
while the country sleeps with grease on its breath.
A calf is born under a moon no customer will ever see.
It stands shaky in manure and straw,
and some rancher rubs life into its ribs
with hands rough as cedar bark.
That calf grows.
Grass first.
Then feedlots.
Then trucks rolling at midnight
like iron coffins headed east.
And somewhere in a city
a teenager tears open a paper wrapper
without ever thinking
about the animal
or the man who raised it
or the smell of blood that never leaves a slaughterhouse floor.
That’s the strange arithmetic of America.
The cow disappears
so the burger can exist.
And the farther people get from the pasture,
the more they believe hamburgers are born
already flat and wrapped in yellow paper.
But every burger had eyes once.
Every rancher buried dogs he loved.
Every field remembers hoofprints after rain.
You ask where all the cows are.
Friend,
they are everywhere.
Hidden inside the machinery of hunger,
inside highways and freezer trucks,
inside the hands of tired men
who wake before daylight
so strangers can eat for three dollars and change.