highrailjon wrote:Is it Noon somewhere yet?
Sure Red bridge on me!!!
warming up!
Andre.
Hobo Jungle
Will, just one last note on Hopper. He was very successful during the Depression into the fifties; it was only later that he was more or less forgotten. I've never read Levin's book. Actually he used a dumbwaiter for the coal. When I write some poems, I like to rile a tad. Not all the voices are mine or exactly my opinion. I don't kow why readers expect poets to always voice their specific feelings when novelists can invent anything they like.
Jon, Andre, I'm as thirsty as a window painter on a Sunday afternoon.
Here's a motel poem for Andre though it doesn't have a Magic Fingers in it.
MOTELS
I dream of the perfect motel,
Without the perverted oily clerks,
Without the stale air of a thousand
Failed nights, without those leprous
Carpets, without the chipped plastic
Veneer furniture, without the grey
brittle sheets, the lumpy pillows,
The wrapped cups, the limits on
Ice, the clown prints, the
Flickering neon signs,
Without the damn
Sadness.
I want to **** in the perfect motel.
I want to pull in drunk, driving a
Finned convertible, or she could be
Driving, just so the car bobs hard
As it enters the motor court.
And in the office I want to be
Greeted by a smiling Forties-style blonde
Who will hand me my key and tell me to
Pay later. "Take as much ice as you
Want, fill your cooler, ice your beer
Good, OK," she'll wink.
And the room will be fragrant
And the carpet like a massage
And the cups tall and glass
And the sheets white cotton
And the TV will play all
Bogart and Bacall, just
The great scenes, and
My baby will come into
My arms hard and
We'll ****.
Jon, Andre, I'm as thirsty as a window painter on a Sunday afternoon.
Here's a motel poem for Andre though it doesn't have a Magic Fingers in it.
MOTELS
I dream of the perfect motel,
Without the perverted oily clerks,
Without the stale air of a thousand
Failed nights, without those leprous
Carpets, without the chipped plastic
Veneer furniture, without the grey
brittle sheets, the lumpy pillows,
The wrapped cups, the limits on
Ice, the clown prints, the
Flickering neon signs,
Without the damn
Sadness.
I want to **** in the perfect motel.
I want to pull in drunk, driving a
Finned convertible, or she could be
Driving, just so the car bobs hard
As it enters the motor court.
And in the office I want to be
Greeted by a smiling Forties-style blonde
Who will hand me my key and tell me to
Pay later. "Take as much ice as you
Want, fill your cooler, ice your beer
Good, OK," she'll wink.
And the room will be fragrant
And the carpet like a massage
And the cups tall and glass
And the sheets white cotton
And the TV will play all
Bogart and Bacall, just
The great scenes, and
My baby will come into
My arms hard and
We'll ****.
That a life will be spent gaining inches,
When this distance is read in miles.
When this distance is read in miles.
-
Will
- Posts: 303
- Joined: Tue Mar 09, 2004 11:26 am
- Location: Formerly Delaware Water Gap, PA, now sweltering Miami
Ha, ha. That's called a 5 star HOTEL.
Funny how the farmers put up mobile homes, spoiling their own beautiful backyard. The countryside has adopted the aspirations of suburbia, without the money to hire landscapers. So we have endless interstates dotted with fast food franchises, cheap motels and gas stations. And towns with abandoned strip malls and shiny new "colonial" bank branches with fiberglass trim and aluminum siding, oversized mock soffits, well-behaved stone facades.
The English understood the balance between wild nature and the untamed and they created a style of landscaping that reflected that. The Americans just mow everything to grass and let the litter build up in the rest.
Some of the prettiest scenery in the east is right in Central Park.
Sorry, not sure why I went off on that rant. I guess the charms of hardscrabble Americana, with its randomness are wearing off. I admit they had a certain fascination back in the 70's, but not much of that is left.
Funny how the farmers put up mobile homes, spoiling their own beautiful backyard. The countryside has adopted the aspirations of suburbia, without the money to hire landscapers. So we have endless interstates dotted with fast food franchises, cheap motels and gas stations. And towns with abandoned strip malls and shiny new "colonial" bank branches with fiberglass trim and aluminum siding, oversized mock soffits, well-behaved stone facades.
The English understood the balance between wild nature and the untamed and they created a style of landscaping that reflected that. The Americans just mow everything to grass and let the litter build up in the rest.
Some of the prettiest scenery in the east is right in Central Park.
Sorry, not sure why I went off on that rant. I guess the charms of hardscrabble Americana, with its randomness are wearing off. I admit they had a certain fascination back in the 70's, but not much of that is left.
Will
Pennsy, still the Standard, or whatever.
Pennsy, still the Standard, or whatever.
They stopped for food at an Interstate Oasis. He felt even sicker after breakfast and asked her to drive, insisting they exit the interstate. He couldn’t take another family-stuffed Winnebago hung with bicycles, the wheels spinning in the wind, or any more late-model sedans charging past, the drivers either smirking or frowning. It was calmer on the two-lane highway, and though the landscape was still gritty and vague, the small towns they bisected with the dull bow of the Rambler were vivid. Not because of their individual characteristics, but by their compounded impression, because like most small towns across the West, what one is left with is their similarity.
Brick downtowns like dry husks with vacant lots of dead weeds reminding him of missing front teeth. Whole blocks covered over by flat attempts at modernization: the updates during the sixties and seventies had not been kind. By contrast, the glorious curved neon of the twenties and thirties: Hotel, Cafe, Drugs, Hardware, Liquors, and Lounge, still ornamented many facades with arrows, waves, swirls and stars. Sometimes the old movie house hadn’t been boarded up, but mostly, the strategically placed mall with its Cineplex had already sucked but a trickle of life from the wan main streets. Brick walls reclaimed faded billboards; metal water towers rose elegantly like silver rockets, the town’s name in simple black letters sometimes illegible with graffiti; grocery stores and gas stations were mostly modern blots with careless graphics, yet occasionally, homely with forgotten hope, mascoted by dinosaurs, Pegasuses, seashells, stars, and flames. He imagined all the people living in each of the towns; each person overwhelmed by need, want, and fear.
“Stop,” he told her. “Just stop.”
She glanced over at him. “Are you sick?” She eased the car to the curb.
He hopped out and bought a postcard, continued to buy postcards in almost every town, searching the 5 and 10s and drugstores until he found one embracing view of each main drag. Between stops, he shuffled the growing deck, staring at the Main streets, each one like a face—with features similar to the others yet also unique.
Brick downtowns like dry husks with vacant lots of dead weeds reminding him of missing front teeth. Whole blocks covered over by flat attempts at modernization: the updates during the sixties and seventies had not been kind. By contrast, the glorious curved neon of the twenties and thirties: Hotel, Cafe, Drugs, Hardware, Liquors, and Lounge, still ornamented many facades with arrows, waves, swirls and stars. Sometimes the old movie house hadn’t been boarded up, but mostly, the strategically placed mall with its Cineplex had already sucked but a trickle of life from the wan main streets. Brick walls reclaimed faded billboards; metal water towers rose elegantly like silver rockets, the town’s name in simple black letters sometimes illegible with graffiti; grocery stores and gas stations were mostly modern blots with careless graphics, yet occasionally, homely with forgotten hope, mascoted by dinosaurs, Pegasuses, seashells, stars, and flames. He imagined all the people living in each of the towns; each person overwhelmed by need, want, and fear.
“Stop,” he told her. “Just stop.”
She glanced over at him. “Are you sick?” She eased the car to the curb.
He hopped out and bought a postcard, continued to buy postcards in almost every town, searching the 5 and 10s and drugstores until he found one embracing view of each main drag. Between stops, he shuffled the growing deck, staring at the Main streets, each one like a face—with features similar to the others yet also unique.
Last edited by Tramp on Mon Jul 30, 2007 8:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
That a life will be spent gaining inches,
When this distance is read in miles.
When this distance is read in miles.
-
Will
- Posts: 303
- Joined: Tue Mar 09, 2004 11:26 am
- Location: Formerly Delaware Water Gap, PA, now sweltering Miami
Okay, back to art briefly. My favorites have changed many times over the years, and I could list a hundred artists who I have studied or whose retrospectives I have eagerly awaited, but here are a few of my perennial and current favorites:
Bruegel
Chardin
Vermeer
Degas
Bonnard
Matisse
Cornell
deKooning
Bruegel
Chardin
Vermeer
Degas
Bonnard
Matisse
Cornell
deKooning
Will
Pennsy, still the Standard, or whatever.
Pennsy, still the Standard, or whatever.
I'm thinking about gittin' a Bikini Cut for my lawn............................................hevy man........................... 
You need this Dirt to mow them 40 some acres................................
http://www.tigertimelawncare.com/specials.html
hev
You need this Dirt to mow them 40 some acres................................
http://www.tigertimelawncare.com/specials.html
hev
If you want to find history, follow the train man..................
-
Renovo PRR
- Posts: 1309
- Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2007 5:39 pm
- Location: Pennsylvania
Wow it must be awhile since I drove that way. So the old Beaver is open that is cool. Since my brother in law lives across form the junk yard I don't get much farther than that. So now I know I can never get to Stoystown before 2 AM.
I see we changed to art now. My favorite artist was well I forget their names but they did all the barn artwork. Nothing is better than a full size Mail Pouch sign. Now that is what you call real art. But then again we have some very nice modern barn art on two barns on Rt 30.
I see we changed to art now. My favorite artist was well I forget their names but they did all the barn artwork. Nothing is better than a full size Mail Pouch sign. Now that is what you call real art. But then again we have some very nice modern barn art on two barns on Rt 30.
-
Will
- Posts: 303
- Joined: Tue Mar 09, 2004 11:26 am
- Location: Formerly Delaware Water Gap, PA, now sweltering Miami
Nice piece of prose, Tramp. Yes I have always had a fascination with the vanished roadside America that existed before the interstates and now is mostly abandoned. I stopped to take in and photograph South of the Border on my way down here last fall. That's one of the last great kitsch monuments left in the east. I'll have to post a photo when I get the time.
But in my old age I will want the unspoiled beauty that the Hudson River painters enjoyed. But how much of that is left?
I hope to find a few acres somewhere.
But in my old age I will want the unspoiled beauty that the Hudson River painters enjoyed. But how much of that is left?
I hope to find a few acres somewhere.
Will
Pennsy, still the Standard, or whatever.
Pennsy, still the Standard, or whatever.
I grew up in the 1940's and early 50's.People lived in neighborhoods and everyone knew the people around them.Neighborhood schools,grocery stores,bars etc.Worked with their neighbors,talked with them,celebrated and mourned with them.
Today we own,usually for a short period of time,a house that we sleep and sometimes eat in,that is in a cul-de-sac and seldom see or speak to our neighbors.
If your children got in trouble or did something "wrong' you heard about it right away.Today it's not "my business".
We could walk any where in town,even in the alleys,and not worry about our personal health.
There are many things we have today,such as this forum,that did not exist then.We could go to the railroad tracks and not be questioned about our motives.
Of course most of you know all of this and more.Some of the preceeding posts and Tramps essay made me nostalgic.I can visit places from my youth and not see today but remember yesterday.
Sorry about this ramble.
Today we own,usually for a short period of time,a house that we sleep and sometimes eat in,that is in a cul-de-sac and seldom see or speak to our neighbors.
If your children got in trouble or did something "wrong' you heard about it right away.Today it's not "my business".
We could walk any where in town,even in the alleys,and not worry about our personal health.
There are many things we have today,such as this forum,that did not exist then.We could go to the railroad tracks and not be questioned about our motives.
Of course most of you know all of this and more.Some of the preceeding posts and Tramps essay made me nostalgic.I can visit places from my youth and not see today but remember yesterday.
Sorry about this ramble.
roger
I support thread drift.
If God didn't want women to be looked at, He would have made 'em ugly. RAH
I support thread drift.
If God didn't want women to be looked at, He would have made 'em ugly. RAH
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