Long Stoplights Poems
Long Stoplights Poems. Below are the most popular long Stoplights by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Stoplights poems by poem length and keyword.
One could not avoid the putrescence clinging to every atom in every direction
Stoplights blinked caution in cruel irony
Racoons only emerging from city sewers at night had no instinct to return underneath such bounty
Tho power was erratic & petrol a memory radios still broadcast updates on weather patterns to avoid toxic ash-fall
People waited in long lines
Water
Food
Blankets
Protesting was useless
No one is listening
Life reverted to tribalism
Faces emerged from clouds speaking a language similar to Egyptian their message unclear
The clouds began to break-up spewing hordes of elf-like creatures with horrid pinched features if there was a message I guess that train left the station
I’m waiting for my mom to move.
She puts the car into drive.
My car had airbags.
The ones she grew up with didn’t.
Huh.
My mom is driving,
I wonder why she’s taking this weird route.
I never ask.
I’m waiting for the car to stop.
My mom could stop it at anytime.
At stoplights, she has to.
At fast food places, she doesn’t have to.
I don’t know why my mom won’t just let me…
I don’t know why my mom won’t…
The car is in drive.
The speed limit is 45,
But it’s always too slow, or sometimes it’s too fast.
I never ask why.
My mom is driving.
I’m an adult, but she drives anyway.
It was nice of her to drive.
So I can get some sleep in the car.
But first, I’ll write a poem.
The chancy countdown clock of my mortality
is ticking toward some unknown preset alarm.
I’m aware of every taciturn tick tock
in unrecoverable moments spent waiting
for something to happen…
and I do not wait well.
I wait for stiff slices of tanned toast to pop up.
I wait for the microwave’s proclamatory ping.
I wait for endless dreary drizzle to stop.
I wait for supplemental shoes to drop.
I wait for stern scarlet stoplights to glow green.
I wait for stalled responses to emailed queries.
I wait for weighty debts to be repaid.
I wait for market losses to regain.
I wait for unsure recovery from illness.
I wait for a time and place of serene stillness.
I wait to watch news that makes me feel happy…
instead of sadly numb from unrelenting horror.
I wait for a time when love and peace…
are not hammered by hate and violence.
I wait for our warming forests to stop catching fire.
I wait for AI to prove its promise rather than peril.
I wait for a clogged Congress to civilly meet in the middle.
I wait for common sense and facts to regain a following.
I wait for a time when cynicism concedes to optimism.
I wait for the long dark night of our collective souls to end.
I wait for the culmination of all things, large and small.
I wait for a time when all our waiting concludes.
I wait for anticipatory hope of Advent and Eschaton
to authentically, faithfully, finally, feel real to me.
But I’m mired in my own limited perception.
I need another perspective for waiting well.
I recall my life spans just an eye-blink slice
within deep, astronomical, cosmic time.
From the Big Bang to the Bethlehem star
over thirteen billion years passed by,
a very long Advent time indeed.
God must be very good at waiting.
(First published in Valiant Scribe Literary Journal (Issue V, Winter 2024) 46-47. See also my poems “Star of Wondering” and “Bringing Heaven to Earth.”)
Teapots that whistle on chilled Winter morns
Calling the day to begin as it scorns
Wake up you sleepy head, make room for love
Walking to work as the sun shines above
Thinking of happy and thinking of you
I think I’ll paint it and skies will be blue
Tipping my hat to the songbird that sings
Feeling so blessed for so many sweet things
Hot dogs with mustard and friends who stand by
Watching new parents with babies that cry
Stoplights that muster the traffic that flows
Bakeries that summon to follow my nose
Dinners with Mama, then home to my pet
Help me remember and never forget
Life is a blessing though sometimes a pain
Just like a flower, we sometimes need rain
Cuddles and kisses and good books to read
Pillows for dreaming, ideas that are freed
Grateful for love and the goodness it brings
Feeling so blessed for so many sweet things
The woman steps out on the balcony of her high rise apartment and among the buildings and streets and stoplights witnesses a fulcrum, an edge.
An edge, the edge, the intersection of beginnings and endings,
The moment when crops are ripe for harvest.
The edge calls to us and invites us to forsake what is known,
The edge calls us to test the limits of our understanding,
And step into an abyss of possibility,
Sinking down into relaxed awareness of beauty,
The edge awaits us.
The edge, where race no longer matters and neither does popularity,
The edge, where souls delight in the magic of music,
The edge, where souls delight in the power of seasons to change and death to beget life,
The edge is where we are neither disappointed at what we have not done or anxious that we will not continue in doing,
The edge is where we can see a life, a leaf, a soul for what it is without a biased back story of prejudiced contrivance,
The edge is where babies go when they are awakened in the womb,
The edge is the horizon where sunrises and twilight take our breath to the height of admiration,
For only God can make this atmosphere to shine just right as the sun and moon dance their dance of gratitude,
The edge is what I wish for now and always,
The woman steps out of her house in the mountains and among the stars hidden in sunshine and premature butterflies hidden in billowy leaves on trees she witnesses an edge, a fulcrum.
Where divinity and gratitude explode in the praise of creativity and the worship of life anew.
Edges, edges where comfortable platitudes have no voice and ignorant assumptions are ostracized,
Come quickly edges, come quickly edges and embrace me.