POETRY STOP

"Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance." - Carl Sandburg



RAINBOW MOTEL


They did it for a dollar earned,

Hidden hands painting it.


No two colors the same,

Like a miss mashed family.


They kept it alive

Though it never thrived.


The curious looked 

From a freeway near.


It stood mostly empty

But to us, it was love.




PLANT FACE

The plant with all its blankness 

Faced my life each work day.


Like some alien ship

Dropped to harvest earth.


A dull churning sound

Numbing to the senses, always there.


I stayed behind in this small plant town

When others left.


Content for a time

To earn mine and know the place.


But now, all I did was carry my lunch

Into this windowless place each day.


To work my shift

And know the other bots there.


Why we all said silently

Had we not left...




MAIN STREET


Hum of the City

Always there.


Still I found pause

A sight or corner


The grandeur of tall buildings

And shinny steel.


Taking my thoughts away.

I loved the city.


Maybe grandfather Frank.

A man of sales.


Depression years.

A city walk each day.


Trying to find work.

Often empty in return.


Maybe thats why.

I walk in the city each day.


Taking its wealth for granted

But sometimes remembering him...




SIDETRACK

A string of box cars

Messages from a City far.


Scrawed on the side

Flashes, colors, passion.


In language not heard here.

Low country calm and all.


We imagined the bright lights.

How Coltrane took them north.


They sat there.

Reminding us who we were and wern’t.


On a sidetrack of boxcars

From a City far.





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