Road Poems

Road Poems – Nov. 10. 2018

Poetry is not my talent, but sometimes, I use poetry to write pointedly.

“Gray Day” is based on two events. It is intended to be snarky.

– driving home in the dark after a day of clouds and watching people in cars in front of me throw cigarettes from their windows

-running on county roads, noticing the litter.

Gray Day

Nothing is cooler than

Watching a cigarette

Bounce sparking on asphalt

Before running over

The sparks with rubber.

Nothing is cooler than

Running shoes on beer can

Faded Fireball shot

Gravelly-ravly-rot

Saturday, cold sixth mile.

This is a fun poem, written in a particularly bad college mood. ‘Mello’ is a hyphenated version of ‘mellophone’, the instrument I played in marching band, and of course, a homophone for ‘mellow’. Engine(er) is a way of referencing both myself, an engineer, and the actual car engine, using the same word. Both are cooled by water, indicated in the previous line. The poem doesn’t have a title.

Two thousand twelve Indiana summers culminate

When cicada sounds turn mello and mello

Turns stormy,

Then hail falls like

Calculator buttons which results in

Eraser scratches which wipe away

Two thousand thirteen Tears

Which cool the Engine(er) in a Nissan

That clicks across the Concrete joints of I-70

Shuttling two thousand fourteen miles between

Hell and the handbasket.