Headlights Poems

They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
...

I

I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel
...

1
Dear ghosts, dear presences, O my dear parents,
Why were you so sad on porches, whispering?
What great melancholies were loosed among our swings!
...

Still,
I would leap too
Into the light,
If I had the chance.
...

In the naked bed, in Plato's cave,
Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall,
Carpenters hammered under the shaded window,
Wind troubled the window curtains all night long,
...

Creatures of the Night
.
iron grates over the street drains
roofs for the poor
...

The telephone poles
Have been holding their
Arms out
...

I sit beside two women, kitty-corner
to the stage, as Elvin's sticks blur
the club into a blue fantasia.
I thought my body had forgotten the Deep
...

.
Did a dry run to see
if I could drive at night.
Joe didn't think it was such a good idea
...

They stood, almost blocking the pavement,
As though at a window display;
The stretcher was pushed in position,
...

I am no longer myself as I watch
the evening blur the traffic
to a pair of obese headlights.
...

Pumberly Pott's unpredictable niece
declared with her usual zeal
that she would devour, by piece after piece,
her uncle's new automobile.
...

This poem bleeds dysfunctional desire,
Blood stains through the dirty streets
Mark the paths we trod,
Urban avenues of despair,
...

I
A night the half-moon was like a dancing-girl,
No, like a drunkard's last half-dollar
Shoved on the polished bar of the eastern hill-range,
...

It is the season of new beginnings...
Spring removes her winter robe
And fades into rainbows of hope;
The sun shines its headlights into April-
...

Loaded on beer and whiskey, we ride
to the dump in carloads
to turn our headlights across the wasted field,
freeze the startled eyes of rats against mounds of rubbish.
...

I. Kempton, Pennsylvania


Perhaps the last of the light
...

would make his bed,
If he could sleep on it.
He would make his bed with white sheets
...

Let’s not...
Everything’s ghostly-
the blank windows watching,
the snow reddening behind the stoplights of the cars.
...

Mist lingers on the surface
of stagnant tea-brown water.
The flat bridge spans a mile,
a sea of spatterdocks.
...

stars do glitter hard and sharp
in black of night before daylight
headlights spear straight before
piercing not the shadows of houses passed
...

Shot a suspicious look
About flash photography
A second presentation
What does that mean
...

headlights
enveloped in winter fog
a one-armed man
wobbles back and forth
...

Monday morning, November 26,2018 at 6: 22 a.m., then at9: 48 a.m.;
Thursday morning, November 29 at 10: 21 a.m., then at 8: 20 p.m.;
Wednesday morning, December 5 at 10: 57 a.m.
...

I'm out of my shell, exposed far-too-ajar;
Have we dined out on oysters and caviar?
Your beauty is the full-beam of the moon.
Oh, how I have ventured out too soon.
...

"America's Bullshitter"
....Putin's acquitter
Deer...in the headlights...bigots aglitter
....Thus nothing more fitter
...

So you will be a specialist
From the chair came support
You know it must be hard
That's a reasonable request
...