Long Shacks Poems
Long Shacks Poems. Below are the most popular long Shacks by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Shacks poems by poem length and keyword.
Follow the red dirt road.
Take it slow, walk it,
this is not an exploration
nor a pilgrimage,
it is a short tour around
the beginning of an idea
and its end.
Move along
past the few rural homesteads,
pass beyond the shacks
and the weather-beaten
tumbledown cabins,
the double and single wide
not so mobile homes
with their rusting trucks.
Hurry past the gypsy encampments.
with their gangs of wild dogs
until that dirt road ends
in a dry long uncultivated field.
This is where the dust
covers the old road maker
and beside his sunbaked bones
see how his maps and plans
are rolled up tight
never to be unrolled again.
A tangle of moss in the new gray dawn—
Palm fronds whisper hush, hush—
Waves shiver on the sand.
The sea sighs like a tired dreamer.
Fiddler crabs scuttle sideways in the hush—
Sideways like folks around here,
Slipping sideways in the hush.
Behind ragged shacks, I stand.
Smoke curls like a question mark.
A rooster crows a single note of gold.
Somebody’s frying fish, crab cakes,
And hush puppies.
Breakfast for the sun, maybe.
Somebody’s humming the blues—
A low, slow song of yesterday’s chain gang.
But the sea keeps calling—
Even the sand listens—
Dreaming of a better tomorrow,
In nineteen sixty six.
Monday morning sneaks through shack and grime,
Bullets whirr where drug barons plot their trade,
Gatas tread gingerly.wasting hours and time.
The spaza hums,mugs chime,Rooibos Tea in the lane,
Bambinos sidestep shadows,mae geri into dustty tins,
Old timers murmur incantations under the day's first pain.
Smog sprinkles from braai stands where mamtanies fry,
Pirated Kalashnikovs twinkle in the sun's first glare,
Yet souls beat steady,declining lies.
Klevahs shuffle,wallets empty,agrrements whispered fast,
Tiny tots peep through windows,hearts throbbing loud,
Even in agony,a tenacious hope holds steady steadfast.
Through shacks,mirth trembles,sharp but bright,
The day starts with grit,with pain,with dreams,
In this dream struggle, the spirit fights for light.
Across the Swiss and Austrian Alps
brutal gusts steadly blow,
calling for heavy snowflakes
dancing as lost butterflies...
falling as summer's lonely stars.
Ginger bread smells good,
honey in tea is superb;
I inhale the steamy swirls that
jackrabbits love to smell.
Kaffe Klatsch is strong
lurching through their nostrils,
making them too hyper.
Northern Italy's wooden shacks
over the wide, frigid vallies...
point to a warmer South
quiet only at evening or night.
Roam as deer on snowy slopes,
stunning is the alpine scenery:
trees as tall as redwoods
ululate louder than hungry wolves...
vulnerable to snowdrifts' attacks.
Watch the skiers having fun,
xelophones making music,
yummy polenta being eaten...
zealous alpinists singing.
Slamming the night like 90-proof drinks,
Stilettos click along broken star streets.
Spinning like wolverines in a badass heat.
Swallow the strobe lights-puke up the beat.
Time cracks when black knights blitz.
When suave turns into busted dream liars.
When cherries are on fire, and nobody gives two s.
Midnight blindsiding every angel-
everyone is riding a Mexican golden kite.
Dresses are smoking, every second running a little bit higher.
Concrete shacks turned into pulsing crystal ritz.
Everywhere pink potholes and slippery pricks.
Night winding down, henchmen move in.
Last call of their lives is etched on the wind.
Glitter backsliding into graffiti and grit.
All the good vibes slammed into bed.
Red bleeding into blue bleeding into half past dead.
The fun is at an end
Ninety proof black knights, chest to chest.
Spraying threats like 38 calibers led.
Youth floating down bottlecap alley ...quite dead.
1/1/2017
Originally many thought the globe was flat
Had to take note of that
Too late for going back
But getting one step closer at
Objectives near the upper and lower branch
Wind blowing fast
The sky was overcast
Above many roads and paths
As well as any homes or shacks
Near or far away from stones and grass
Flying animals like crows and bats
And other animals on the ground like toads and cats
Objects broke in half
And others were prone to crack
Across the seas a lot of boats have crashed
Some of the objects and treasures sunk or continued to float like ash (rafts)
Hard to know the locations now and be so exact
All three leafed except for one with four in the clover patch
Above and below areas with hives having honeycombs of wax
Some wanted not only the throne but cash
And the whole entire motherlode to grasp
Funny how it all was on the day when there was growth at last
By: Dalton Ogletree
I REMEMBER THE LITTLE GIRL
BMWs shine on the lot, row after row,
reflecting the blinding summer sun of Pinedale, California.
Their windows blink back stories of 4,792 Japanese Americans
interned on this same lot seventy-eight years ago.
I remember a black and white was taken
of a little girl with two suitcases
standing amid crowds in this former lumber town.
I can hear her chatter, excited to go to camp.
Would there be log cabins or tents? Swims in a big pool?
Campfires with songs and marshmallow roasting?
Lots of other children to play with?
I can picture her crestfallen eyes, her fading smile
as she stares at tar paper shacks on dry, barren ground,
nothing left of any sugar pines.
Where was she from? Oregon? Washington?
What did she leave behind?
Family farm? Friends? Pets? Dolls?
What did she manage to stuff into her tiny suitcases?
How did she survive the sweltering July heat of 110 degrees
with only black tar paper to protect her?
Where was she taken after Pinedale with other dispossessed,
bled of their livelihoods, packed like dried fish onto busses?
Tule Lake? Poston? Gila River?
Shacks gone, customers stroll through the BMWs.
Can they remember this was an assembly center for Japanese Americans?
Do they even know?
I remember the little girl. I remember for them.
-Jennifer Fenn
This poem was inspired a California State University, Fresno lecture on the history of Pinedale by David Rodriguez, followed by research on encyclopedia.densho.org.
Published in Song of the San Joaquin, Summer 2020.
Winds
raged as
fires glowed in
small frowzy shacks
that strange Georgia eve an angel was born.
The sky proclaimed that lives would re-arrange;
with Joy’s first cry,
the tempest
changed to
calm.
Warm
Zephyr -
spring magic -
arrived with Joy.
Her laughter was kindling for hearth and home.
No galas in her future ; she was poor.
Never frowning,
Joy would flash
diamond
smiles.
Her
Mama
sewed flounces
on hand-me-downs,
which Joy wore with glee, celebrating life.
As Papa played his guitar for them all,
Joy danced and twirled.
Humdrum fled
in her
stead.
Fair,
yellow-
haired; slender
like sassafras,
this sunny lass gladdened all of the town.
Humankind exists that we might have joy.
Those touched by that
sweet angel
all learned
this.
Joy
expelled
gloom, giving
her cheer to all.
Nevertheless, joy is often short-lived.
One strange spring day, a cold wind blew in. As
thunder quaked, warmth
waned, and Joy
was no
more.
For Chris D. Aechtner's
"Double the Fun ~ (Tetractys)"
A brotherly jaunt through sinister mirth
behold the brothers Death:
gowned and guided, an ill century
the fourteenth, an alliance of crop, of plague
in ground-down death of torrential pains
in sores and blood under the rains
that drowned the land, starved the bellies
there echoed howls of ill exclaim
a wanting of a light to shine
is where the brothers thought that they
worked well together, effectively
one would scoop from ruined crop
one from sickness, war, attack
the beak, a sign, of the plague mask
in shacks, where hags mopped weeping rot
crosses on doors, on floors of straw
with nothing in the cooking pot
the brothers danced and sang their wealth
of many clientele they sought
and on they went, and on they struck
perfecting songs on appetites
of pestilence and of disease
hand in hand like trees whose leaves
do smother, smite, in murderous breeze
the brothers, down the ages tease
and beckon, wreaking havoc on,
like rolling waves of seas on high
always taunting their sister - life
Nation’s Damnable Blight
Black slender man, bent twig on the branch of a slave’s family tree,
Planted in white culture during infamous time of our history,
From seed transported in the belly of those infernal slave ships.
Bitter tears flowing from his eyes; angry words pouring from his lips.
Spent by long days in fields under hot skies of one hundred degrees,
Living in substandard shacks: wife and babes bearing winter’s freeze.
Broken panes breach for frigid wind; shabby roofs sieve for cold raindrops,
Family worked from sun up to dark to reap the precious crop.
Truth is, most were prisoners of the system evil men devised.
Many struggling to be free from what politicians camouflaged.
Wisdom overrules such folly and the proverb is most profound;
Holding one down makes holder as much a captive as one held down.
This nation, “land of the brave and free”, held out freedom’s lamp to all,
Went out one ominous night and over “liberty’s lamp” threw a pall.
Had wiser men with hearts of love been ruled by God’s Divine Light,
Black and white would have been spared this great nation’s damnable blight.