Long Stoplight Poems

Google Maps told me today
that my Phoenix to Tucson drive
would last an hour and fifty-seven minutes.
At excactly two-nineteen I would arrive.

But surely it is folly to assume
How could Google get this right?
Even with up to...

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Pride negatory
Better to share His glory
God writes your story

Special kind of gain
We can only learn through pain
God may not explain

Treasure has a source
Wisdom is treasure, of course
God stores His resource

When God sends trouble
And we climb...

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Monday morning comes alive with the piston train speeding by, thousands of people gather at the gate and crowd the platform before it was too late.

Monday morning full of passion with hangover lingering in the...

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Love is an emotion that can’t be seen 
It’s not of a stoplight so you can’t wait till the light turns green
There is good and bad love and even some in between
Love has no limit...

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An out of body experience?
I hadn’t thought it might be that.
I only knew that something happened
that was strange and a bit scary,
and it has happened twice.

Both of these times I was driving my car
in a...

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Like Moses fleeing Egypt 
and finding refuge in Midian
I was a stranger in a strange land.
Having fled Chicago in ‘84
I journeyed east to the
unpromised land of Detroit.

8 Mile Road.
“I'm a man
I'm a make a new...

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I know a man who went to the zoo but they wouldn’t let him out,
So hairy was his body that his heritage was called into doubt.

He asked to have a lawyer but none of them...

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My conscious mind was
Shocked when 
I realized I was slamming on my brakes.
There are
Three lanes of solid orange lights, 
As far as I can see down the interstate.
A wreck most probably.
We began inching our way...

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The twittering of the birds singsonged by 
As the mum night kissed the new spousal dawn
The daybreak entity by the beadsmen allegiance
Pour forth by the holy water along the river adorn.
Thrown by the kid, the...

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he parlayed a condom full of nouns
in bold thrusts of the quill
for the para structuralist cadres
many of them freeway orphans
who won't even read a stoplight
on the other hand
there's a lot of other hand
upon hearing the...

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How can a stranger standing at the corner,
leave me breathless, in a trance...   I ask you?…
What are the chances, in such a moment,
one brief encounter could change a life?

You were the sunlight, after...

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ALWAYS. ********

Understand.  I MUST go
On these clearing acts of
Instinct and inspiration, these flashings
As they come.  For a blizzard has
Been moving in and the snow is
Piling up by the foot...So the doors
Must be kept...

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February is the month that we celebrate our black race,
People from the past who set our pace.
Those who should have been placed in our history book,
But for some reason they were over looked.
Born into slavery...

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I SAY LIBERATE ME!
free me from a
bondage known all
too well
free me from those
chain-links felt way
too much
free me from a world
that's so out of
touch,even though it
manages to stay in
touch
free me from those
dungeons and allow
me to roam
roam...

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The train pulled out of the
Clouds singing
Harmonies

I asked the conductor for
Some change

He said    "son    don't you know?
Nobody's payin'"

I said   "sure       ...

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Most days it's so peaceful when Kimmy leaves home,
And the dust settles briefly, felled leaves never roam
On the floor where they mold now (till she's home again)
If not crunched in my passing, for some there's...

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Two Scavengers in a Truck,
Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes

At the stoplight waiting for the light
nine a.m. downtown San Francisco
a bright yellow garbage truck
with two garbage men in red plastic blazers
standing on the back stop
one...

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X. insects that are impossible to see with the naked eye
crawl through what is left

IX. knocked by accident off the mantelpiece &
spread all over the shag

VIII. burnt in a crematory, stuffed in an urn &...

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~ Star Gazing ~

A star shone bright in my window one night
   I leaped from my bed and I sang it a tune
It grinned at me, then took off like a flash
 ...

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I am grateful for a dancer's flow, gravity unhinged 
                        for the...

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Here is my life. Hurry up and wait.
Rush. Rush. Rush.
Try not to wreck your car.

Yesterday I nearly had a heart attack.
I was the fifth car off the exit ramp.
My meeting was right around the corner.
I...

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What have you got to say for yourselves
as I sit here at the stoplight
and watch snow fall on your headstones?

I laugh to think that you could
be so kind, so solicitous,
so full of mirth and merry...

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litter of leaves by the side of the road,
yellowing paper, soggy with last night’s
beer, spilled from a bottle thrown
from a car and smashed in the gutter.
dead something-or-other, maybe a mouse,
lies just outside of my car...

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Daylight transforms us into physical beings
Family light reminds us from whence we came
Sunlight insinuates we are on earth for a reason
Stoplight reminds us there are important rules to follow
Friend’s light illuminates our need to be...

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There is a moon stuck inside the stoplight
A still unblinking gaze controlling blood tides
Circulatory system like New York City in the seventies
The thrashing of my tire fire heart led
To the tribute of an overzealous blood...

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