Random Poetry

Random Acts of Poetry

Primordial Soup
1 brain, drained
1 hand of God, fingernails trimmed
3 cups seawater, filtered, desalinated, no-salt substitute substituted
1 onion, sliced, diced, riced
1 potato, 2 potato, 3 potato, more
Spice, rice, lice, mice

Simmer for three million years under an open sun.

61
Are we there already
And how do we manage it without murder
Me snoring in front of Captain Picard
She calling me to come when she could come to me
What bonds, by now invisible, define our path
And make our trek so pleasant
Make each of us a little lost apart
But not a part of one another?

God Will Get You for That
The day will soon come, my magnificent one
When all of your beauties will fade
Not all at one time, but in a long line
From fresh to quite ripe to decayed.

Your eyes will go last, you enchanting repast,
So they will get to survey
All of your bounces as they pick up life's ounces
And hang down in some disarray.

But long before that, you sweet tawny cat,
Your skin will spout splotches and lumps
And, incredibly, worse, than that awful curse
Your nose will erupt in red bumps.

Oh, you'll be a sight, my daily delight,
When all you have left is your mind,
Which now sits alone, no more than a clone,
Of your silken, sculptured behind.

Unnatural Selections
You can't name your fathers
You can't choose your sons
And I bet if you could
You'd pick the wrong ones.

Sam's Song
I was talking to Mark Twain last night.
He sat right there in the rocker
He drank most of my Jack Daniels
And he talked, talked and puffed on a cigar that
must've been nearly as old as he was.
Lord, that cigar was foul!
Jan went to bed. You know how she is about smoking.
"Since it's Mark Twain, I won't say
anything," she said in the kitchen,
her brows all knotted up in ropes.
"I know how much he means to you.
I'll just go to bed."
It was all quiet, for her, circumspect,
for her, but old Mark saw, I could tell.
"Man gets to be a hundred and sixty,
he ought to be indulged," he said,
sulphuring the room.
But I didn't mind, I was so glad he was there.
And all night, he drank and talked, drank and talked
and some of his stories I knew because he wrote them down:
about a boy and a whitewashed fence
and another boy and a strong black man
floating down the muddy Mississip on a raft
but most were new,
like the one about the circus that burned down
with clowns on fire in bright red suits
like the one about the man who was traveling around the world
when his daughter died.
I guess I fell asleep. I don't see how.
But he was gone,
the whiskey gone,
the ashes all around.

Fifty Years Later (presented at my high school class's 50th reunion in 2002)
Fifty years ago, I wrote a poem for Senior Day at Altoona High School which began,

"All hail to you, oh, noble seniors
You've proved your worth, you've passed your green years"

I've mercifully forgotten the rest. Nevertheless, the piece was received so well that Pop Lindemann asked me if I had an encore. All I could think of was the limerick about the young man from Devizes and "The Walrus and the Carpenter," neither of which would have worked.

However, I've been thinking about that moment on and off (mostly off) over the last half-century and have put together the world's slowest encore:

Yet another member of the Silent Generation speaks up

Among the significant events of 1952:

Mad Magazine was born, Ronald Reagan married Nancy Davis, Clarence Birdseye first sold us frozen peas, Mr. Potato Head arrived, the first Holiday Inn opened, the first birth control pill was introduced but was not available until 1960 (which explains why some of us are grandparents), telephone area codes were started, Gary Cooper won the Oscar for High Noon, American Bandstand began, and we graduated from high school.

All hail to you, oh noble Stayers
You've proved your worth, you've reached your grey years

We are the Silent Generation,
Squeezed between the Greatest and the Boomers
We were Depression babies whose sandwiches
Were lined with white oleo turned orange with mashable red dots.

We were too young for war,
We listened to Rosemary, Bing, Teresa Brewer, Patti Page,
We watched Dennis James and Gorgeous George on snowy store window tv sets.

Has it really been 50 years?
Before we liked Ike, before Viet Nam,
Before what seemed a generation of our children turned against us
And against our past.

Before "under God" was added to the Pledge in '54,
Before our martyred president, before men walked on the moon,
Before VCRs, before the Edsel,
Before Gwyneth, Madonna, Brittany were born
Before the Beatles, Pet Rocks, computers, Jerry Springer, Enron
Before polyunsaturated oil,
When Tiny Tim was by Dickens and had never tiptoed through a tulip,
When Time Magazine was Republican,
When a guy who wore a shirt that said AHarvard@ probably went to Harvard.

Before our parents' truths
("A woman's place is in the home"
"We've never lost a war")
turned less true.

Hair --- or not, dyed --- or not,
Acrylic fillings, enhanced vision, boosted hearing,
And not a day older, despite the years,
Despite disappointment in Nixon, Clinton, errant sons or daughters,
Still young in our minds.

Here we are,
Most with our original teeth;
We've made this trip together no matter where we lived
because of who we were: Our parents' Depression virtues about the value of work, avoiding credit, the love of country, have served us well
And we have blended them with this generation's truths:
Politicians have feet, and loins, of clay,
If you can't win a war, don't start one,
Ignore telemarketers,
Diversify.

I sent this piece to some old friends. Faye Brown, like me, another Californian from somewhere else, in this case South Carolina, wrote:

I know what I see in the mirror, but in my mind I tell myself I could be slim again, but tonight I'm ordering lobster, and I could leap like a gazelle, but today I'm going to sit down and read a good book. What's more, none of the dowdiness and less-than-perkiness offends me as it used to; I'm not motivated to make changes in my comfortable habits to achieve a head-turning figure any more. Truth be told, the best I could attain is "she's in good shape for an old lady." That's hardly inspiration for making the necessary sacrifices.

And that brought me to another poem (written just for those of you who like a poem to rhyme)

Weaned on macaroni, raised on meatloaf,
Never ate the high-priced spread,
And now that steak is within my reach,
My doctor says it'll make me dead.

And just behind me are the Botox types,
Who liposuck and bleach their teeth,
And plan to live forever. As for me,
I'll have that steak and risk the grief.

Well, sort of. In truth, I dine on salmon,
Three bean salad, turkey burgers,
Tofu Tots, avoiding ham on
Anything, suppressing roast beef urges.

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