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Tag: highway sky

Navajo Country, 1996

Cars were rare along the highway
On that day of dusty miles.
You came up a ridge behind us to
Observe our passing.
Through the rearview, we watched you
Emerge, then fade back into the desert.

This is a response to Read Write Poems’ NaPoWriMo #27: Let Someone Else Take the Lead wherein Carolee invites writers to do an acrostic poem. I’ve never done one before, but figured I would need a short word for today and so I went with coyote, a favorite animal that I’ve heard far more often than seen. This poem is about the first time I saw one.

Though I’ve missed a few days of posting due to internet issues, I’ve been writing and back-posting what I wrote those days here and at a gnarled oak.

Apocalypse

The day the desert was destroyed, water
sucked from distant rivers sprayed through the sky,
and cars bore pilgrims, dreamers to Mecca,
sedated by slot-machine lullabies.

The stars all tumbled to earth, outshone by
neon casinos and fountains of light
while roulette chances to change everything
spun against the darkest of desert nights.

Now, unheeded prayers to dollars drift down
from the mouths of those ghostlike survivors,
mumbling dreams into urns full of quarters
as taillights depart in night’s brightest hours.

Boys with flyers for prostitutes jostle
the stars, shouted down from celestial heights.
Barely burning, they stagger slow down the Strip
cursing this blaze, this apocalypse of light.

I tried to come up with something for Read Write Poem’s latest image prompt (#98) which involved writing a poem based on an image of swirling lights at a fair. I fixated on the lights and kept thinking about this poem I wrote back in April (I think). So this one is sort-of off prompt, but I offer it anyway.

I wrote it for a (not-quite-there-yet) chapbook of road poems called Highway Sky. I’m still tinkering with some of the poems, but two have been published at Bolts of Silk and Ouroboros Review #3.

Some of the lines are lifted from the manuscript of my novel A Short Time to Be There. In the novel, the characters are driving into Las Vegas after a week on the road and find themselves alternately overwhelmed, excited and disgusted by the city.

Read what others did with the prompt at this week’s Get Your Poem On at Read Write Poem.

We Talk of Trains & Train in Round Rock

My poem “We Talk of Trains” and my photograph “Train in Round Rock” were published in the latest issue of ouroboros review. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a really classy poetry and art journal. You can read the magazine online or purchase a copy through the site’s bookstore. Whichever way you go, you’re in for a treat. I’m honored to have my work, which can be found on page 24, included with so many fine writers and artists.

Check it out. Go. Now.

Toward Cheyenne

Roiling clouds, grey as the mountains,
spill across sky, over the plains.

Farmhouses wrecked by the violence of wind,
mute warning for those still stuck to earth.

A blizzard’s first kiss bends roadside grasses,
travels through tires and axle to my palms

clutching the wheel. I don’t remember cars
or birds. Every minute the colors bleed

toward an iron uniformity.
I forget to believe in gravity.

I’ve been working on a series of road poems lately. Some new stuff and some old ones I’ve been revising. Read Write Poem’s prompt for the day was Road Trip so here’s a road poem.

It comes from a trip I took up to Colorado on ’94. One day, I decided to drive up toward Cheyenne because I’d never been to Wyoming. There was a blizzard coming in and, well, that led to this poem.

Miles (Never Once Imagined) – Postal Remix

miles-never-once-imagined-r

I’d been working on this to submit to Postal Poetry but by the time I finished, I found that they were no longer taking submissions so I offer it here. It’s based on, and is really a remix of, a draft of the poem that I posted with the image about three years ago. I’m still working on the longer version.

It’s disappointing to see Postal Poetry go static, but I found it quite inspiring as I had never thought to combine images and words like this, which is werid considering the time I spend writing and doing photography.

I’ll probably post more of these here as I come up with them. Thanks, Dave and Dana, for the inspiration.

And, in a odd circular kind of way, and with no connection to poetry, the very day that Postal Poetry stops, my old friend Andy starts up his own site, which is about traveling in Texas. Check out Texas Rhodes Trips.

Deeper into Texas

(formerly titled “It’s Like a Whole Other Country”)

On a high plains concrete ribbon
(there is nothing) north of Amarillo,
telephone poles stand like crucifixes
after the condemned have blown away.

It’s like a whole other country

On the plains of San Jacinto, a story is told
in blood, in oil, where Houston routed Santa Ana;
hundred years go by, blood is dry, and
oil gushes forth from Spindletop.

Recoiling back to sacred ground

A monumental obelisk marks the battle field,
but the great refineries offering smoke, fire,
filth to heaven hide it from I-10. These are
the real monuments here: the refineries,

The highways

Rolling on to San Antone and overpriced margaritas,
overdone river walk and Hard Rock Café, once
Mexico’s northern town, now we visit the birthplace
of our finest ghosts. Remember that old Alamo?

Legends larger than life

Shrine to Texas heroes, and the arrest
of Ozzy Osbourne.  The church still stands,
tomb of Crockett, Travis, Bowie, beseiged
now by hotels, offices, power lines.

Sparking into lucid dreams

They say there’s another Alamo near Del Rio,
built for a John Wayne movie set.  More real than
the real one, the screams of ghosts and musket fire
still echo, reverberating loudest at the fake Alamo.

Drowned out by open windows

Stopping in at Luckenbach, we drink a round of beers
No one really lives here, but they all come out on Sundays
singing songs by Willie, Waylon and the boys.
Throw back a couple beers with passing strangers.

Let the journey be a story

Under these stars, above old dinosaur bones and
Indian camps, traveling interstate lifelines like
blood through arteries, we find freedom on the
highways, concrete and legend, forever

Binding this place to myth

This is for Read Write Poem. This week’s prompt was to find poetry in relaxation or slogans. I spent some time thinking about slogans and finally decided to learn the tourism department’s slogan for Texas, which became the title of the poem.

Driving All Night

I find that doing taxes and editing a video take up most of my blogging time. That’s why I’ve been posting old stuff lately.

Old to me anyway.

I’m also trying to plan a bit of a vacation which has me thinking about trips taken in the past. Oftentimes, I had no film (it was expensive!) so I just tried to capture my experiences in short snippets of free poetry, and so with thoughts of Kris Kristofferson singing, “nuthin’ ain’t worth nuthin’ but it’s free,” I give you this, hopefully worth more than nuthin’, but still free…

Some Highway Somewhere

driving all night

three twenty eight a.m.,
they were all asleep;
i stopped the jeep on the roadside,
stepped into the desert dream of night alone;
i sought peace from the thundering snores
of bodies stuffed under blankets
and the moldy smell of a taco bell dinner
bought in wichita falls.

all new mexico’s stars spilled out,
diamonds across the milky way;
i shivered in the crystal air;
i spotted shooting stars and satellites;
i longed for a coyote’s howl to complete my cliché,
but coltrane’s notes were just as good,
drifting like ghosts from the cracked window;
i smiled when elvin jones’ drum solo kicked in
on summertime.

by morning, to sleepy to care,
we argued about who would drive next,
and we rested in the garden of the gods.

©1995, James Brush

Miles (Never Once Imagined)

Leftovers from a road trip in the early ’90s…

Cars near Meteor Crater

Miles (Never Once Imagined)

And we drove for miles—
And we saw those miles—
Drifting out toward space
Layers of desert air so far beyond the mountains
I saw the miles quicken,
Rising up like a beast from the steam of the engine
Outside Albuquerque
Again near Palm Springs
Jeep racing without roof, without doors
Away from Vegas with just eighteen dollars
from one-armed bandits
Leftover pizza hut and half a cup of jingling quarters
There were miles more to go
And others to go them with
So we only stayed in LA for three hours
In the desert that night we both finally saw
The miles to the stars
Humbled to behold and freezing
In the imagined terror of a Mojave midnight
I never could have imagined all the miles still to come
Nor the people with whom I would travel them
Just then
Just there
Everything was right
We had mountains to climb and never once imagined
We would change our minds