Rock music happens on stages, in cars, down in the finished basement. Our experiences of music are often intricately tied to the places where we heard it. Hearing a song can “take us back, ” for better or worse.
Poetry Prompt: Pick a place where you listened to rock music. Recreate that place for us in your poem. Bring it forward in time by going back and finding the pieces—sights, smells, textures, and of course that rock music which ties it all together.
Want to see a sample rock-in-place poem? This one has an invisibility cloak.
Thanks to our participants in the Blue Suede Shoes poetry prompt. Here’s one we enjoyed:
Traffic in July
steam of summer
sizzled on concrete
sun kissed skin
sweat slicked hair
music throbbing
through open windows
bare feet tapping
rock jazz fusion
low spark of high
heeled boys
never too hot
to be cool
Photo by +usya+. Creative Commons, via Flickr.
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Sometimes we feature your poems in Every Day Poems, with your permission of course. Thanks for writing with us!
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Maureen Doallas says
I like “high / heeled boys / never too hot / to be cool”. Nice alliterative “s” use, too.
HisFireFly says
how delightful to find myself highlighted here – still have Stveie Winwood’s voice echoing in my ears
Jody Collins says
oh, Karin, you nailed it. I’ll echo Maureen about the boys ‘never too hot to be cool.’ What a picture that paints.
davis says
sizzled on concrete
i get this
like bubbling tar
davis says
cruise
pedal to the metal
feet stomp
the beat
voices rise
words sail
with the wind in our hair
flying over dead man’s hill
L. L. Barkat says
can just feel that wind and I love the juxtaposition of the wind’s movement/flying with the static “dead man’s hill”
Nancy Franson says
No matter how much gray hair I have on my head, hot summer days and rock and roll (for me, it will ever be The Cars) make me feel seventeen again. Thanks for taking me back there.
Cause I’m never too hot, or too old, to be cool 🙂
Richard Maxson says
I still have it on my smart phone playlist. This poem sizzles like the last sax riff in the song.
Jesswithpoems says
the dark boathouse
vibrates in heat
of chanting voices
moving, pounding to the rhythm
of rock gods
boots shuffle sand
and slag on the concrete
the chain fence pushes
us to the stage
hypnotizing us to the sounds
smokey haze, speakers blare
the call of a singer
embraces the mass
and we all join in
to the boathouse chant
L. L. Barkat says
i love the subtle sound repetition that comes out in “heat” and “concrete.” I perceived it before I could see where it was actually located.
And “slag” is such a fun word. 🙂
Jefferson Guedes says
Ghosts, they come and go
I got a girl in my arms,
I was so happy
in that tiny bedroom
but the ghost came once more
I received “strange transmissions”,
Norah Jones
Ghosts, they come and go
But this time
I took the ghost to the bottom
Norah Norah
was singing and I like,
“No, no, go go
Go go ghost, go away”
L. L. Barkat says
Jefferson, nice song-like quality to this one.
Ah, Norah. 🙂
Donna says
Vinyl Virgin
it was my first time – i
bought it
with my
50 cents an hour
collected
in the jar in my room
I shamelessly paraded
barefooted and bold
belting out
spill the wine
at the top
of my 12 year old lungs
turning heads
and blushing their faces
as I broadcast words that meant nothing to me
because i only heard smooth tones
and a breezy beat and
felt the melty notes
sliding up my throat
on their way back into the atmosphere
Donna says
For your listening pleasure – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W77Kwh6f0TE
L.L. Barkat says
oh, love! 🙂
your poem totally made me smile. As kids, yes, we do these things. We don’t know. (And maybe we know a little.) And it’s a poignant thing to think of it.
Donna says
🙂 Ha ha… thanks. Well, I knew a little I suppose… I knew what wine was, and that you weren’t supposed to spill THAT!! LOL! As for the rest, it was just a lot of words that were there for the sole purpose of carrying all those wonderful notes out of my body and nothing more (which makes me laugh now to think of how it sounded then coming from a child).