Bill Roberts, Poet

The Death of Bambi

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

A man quietly slipped his hand

inside her panties

as we watched Bambi

on the too-close screen

from the second row.

My neck hurt after the movie

and my little sister

couldn’t stop crying.

It’s when I learned

there are predators in the world

who if chance offers

take advantage of little sisters.

Now that I’m old

they seem to be all over

making every loner

and balding senior suspect.

I might never see Bambi again

unless I rent the CD,

watch it from my couch.

(Published in the March 2006 issus of , Red Owl Magazine, now defunct)

Note:  Education comes in many forms, some of them unpleasant, but that’s life.  Maybe I was too skinny, too ugly to attract the weirdos when I was a kid.  Besides, I could outrun them anyway.  D.C.’s streets were full of the halt, lame, untidy and unsightly back in the Forties.  I recall asking my Dad once why a man we’d just passed was wearing a leather patch across the spot where his nose should have been.  He said simply, “Syphilis,” as if I knew what he meant.  Saw more than a few such patches in those days, some covering blinded eyes, others missing noses.

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Assignment: Find Ernest

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

The sun also rises in Havana,

and when it did, we went in search

of Hemingway at his local haunts.

We started early, after exploring

one another’s body one more time,

with a drop-in at Harry’s Bar.

The only waiter awake at that hour

said, after pouring Coke on top of our

rum eye-openers, that Hem had disappeared.

The early lunch at Zargonana, a full bottle

of fino sherry blended with snapper turtle

soup, left us groggy and still clueless.

We took a nap in the afternoon, as Cubanos

do, and decided our next inquiry would be

at the Partagas Cigar Factory nearby.

The sweating, shirtless guys rolling those

splendid, perfect cigars told us, yeah,

Ernesto was in last month – or was it last year?

The fragrant rum distillery was peopled with

several shady characters from his novels, none

willing to talk about the Old Man or the sea.

We finally caught a glimpse of him one evening

at the Tropicana, where Nat King Cole was

playing, but the suspicious host shrugged,

opened up only after I slipped him a fin, seated us

next to Nat’s piano, and whispered that the pug

we saw was just a Hemingway impersonator.

Re-reading Hem killed the rest of our honeymoon.

(Published online in the December 2007 issue of Long Story Short)

Note:  Our diversionary search for Ernest Hemingway took place in February 1958 on our honeymoon to Havana, seeking him out at all of his known bars and hideaways.  Havana in 1958 – exotic, erotic, scary, with soon-to-be-deposed Ferdinand Batista guarding most street corners with high-piled sandbags, behind which were khaki-uniformed men carrying sub-machine guns ready to fire.  In the nearby hills, Fidel Castro and his small but loyal and growing band fired off occasional shots to remind Batista he’d soon be coming.  And he did, taking over the city less than a year after we returned to our lives in D.C. – me finishing my senior year at A.U. (plus working part-time at the National Bureau of Standards), Irene in her new security-related job at the Library of Congress.  So much to write about Havana.  ‘Twould be nice to return someday, see it again.  Friends who’ve been there recently say the decay is palpable.  In ’58 it was evident the underclass of poor residents weren’t going to tolerate mighty Batista’s thieving shenanigans much longer.  They welcomed Fidel with open arms.  And so history is written.

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Let Me Know If You’re Dead

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

The last of five messages on the phone

is a real beaut, a classic.

I play it a second, then a third time.

Roberts, I heard you died.

I hope not but you never know at our age.

Call me if you’re really dead, okay?

I play it a fourth time,

then decide to call my old friend

whom I haven’t spoken to for months.

No answer, then his message

thingamajig kicks in:

Make it brief – I’m getting too impatient.

Norris, hi, I say.  You heard right.

I died when I heard your voice.

Please send flowers but don’t call back.

(Published online in 2008 by Chantarelle’s Notebook)

Note:  I have some whacky friends who do things like this, as I often do myself.  “Hey, good seeing you again.  The mortician did a nice job!”  Gallows humor, I guess it’s called.  But if you can’t make fun of death, at least on occasion, then you’re liable to live in constant fear of it.

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Desire Under the Arms

Monday, January 4th, 2010

– with sincere apologies to Eugene O’Neill

Quite impossible not to notice

when I go to water aerobics class

three times a week the untidy

condition of the underarms

of my fellow – I should say,

lady – aqua thrasherettes.

I’m usually the lone male

in the pool, ostracized to the deep

end I presume so I won’t notice

that the ladies haven’t shaved

their armpits this century,

but I’m not exactly blind yet.

Because most of them are larger

than me, I’m a bit reluctant

to inquire about this hirsuteness

they’ve adapted, perhaps on purpose -

a cult possibly or, like bralessness,

a current cause they’ve taken up.

Maybe it’s ecological, growing hair

instead of grass, or they figure

it’s sexy, as cave women undoubtedly

thought long ago.  Come to think of it,

it is kind of, well, sexy in a way,

if hairy septuagenarians turn you on.

(Published online in the June 2009 issue of The Orange Room Review)

Note:  Shortly after this poem was published and my social analysis was exposed, I was voted out of the pool by the offended Thrasherettes.  I now work out regularly in the weight room at the gym with all the hairy, sweaty men, some of whom apparently prefer to bathe only once a month.  I’m of a mind to suggest they try water aerobics, check out the Thrasherettes.

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Swept Clean

Monday, December 21st, 2009

Bring back old men with their gnarly

whisk brooms, just twigs tied together,

old black men bent in the gutters

sweeping the detritus of their fellow men

whose tasks were nobler perhaps

though they cast off their refuse

that gave thse humble men jobs once,

performed nobly, quietly, decently

and far more efficiently than the monster

machines that replaced them at enormous

cost to taxpaying refuse distributors

like you and me, who wouldn’t stoop

to such a job as those men performed

in days gone by when we took them

for granted with their arthritic hands and

deformed brooms that swept so clean.

(Published online in the November 27, 2008 issue of Mannequin Envy)

Note:  A pure nostalgia poem, remembering the early mornings when pal Rodney Miller and I sold newspapers – The Times Herald and The Washington Post – on opposite street corners at 18th and Columbia Road in N.W. District of Columbia.  After selling out, pocketing about two bucks in jingly change each, we’d run off to junior high school, arrive sweaty but happy.  One of my fondest memories – so very many, so fortunate I was – were the distinguished, quite handsome black men who unerringly swept the gutters all about us clean as a whistle.  They never spoke, that I recall, just went about business like the busy business folk who bought our papers.  What a cast of characters each weekday morning, from sleepy prostitutes to a dignified Supreme Court member.  None were finer though than the street cleaners.  Progress isn’t always measured with the right tools – those old guys really got the gutters clean.  God bless ‘em.

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A Sort of Christmas Story

Friday, December 18th, 2009

We were planning to head East, to

hometown D.C., to see friends, then

onward to Ocean City to stay with

Brother Jim and Laurie in their high-

rise, the fourteenth floor at the beach.

The latter sort of reminds me of all

those old folks forsaking their even

higher-rises in frigid New York City,

moving down to Miami Beach to

sequester themselves on the forty-ninth

floor, excellent view of sand and water.

But I got a call from kid sister in Mesa,

Arizona, saying she was ill – stage-four

ovarian cancer, she sounding like

maybe this was the closing act of her

slow-but-steady drama through life.

Once a kid sister, always the kid.

So, plans shifted and we were there

with her gigantic Mormon family night

before hysterectomy-plus, the plus

the great unknown, to be determined.

After a big Mexican take-out meal

hosted by eldest daughter, my sis just

observing, no intake of jalapeno flavors,

two sons, a son-in-law and husband

performed a “blessing,” perhaps a

secret Mormon ritual that wife and I

were allowed to witness, the four men

stationed north, east, south and west

of kid sis, all hands on her head as

they alternately prayed for deliverance.

Moving doesn’t do the blessing justice,

its simplicity and honesty so electric.

Next afternoon, the operation was

performed with a DaVinci robot,

through belly button and two sets of

holes either side, with a wash of belly

cavity to secure biopsy fluids and tissue.

Sis was home again within 24 hours,

feeling better than she did after any of

five rambunctious children – even hungry.

Her CA-125 blood indicator for cancer

started off the chart at 1,675, plummeted to

14 after the third chemotherapy, within

normal range and quite unprecedented.

Biopsy results a few days later showed no

further evidence of Big C or its spread.

A miracle in early December, just weeks

before Christmas, the news a blessing.

I don’t know if Mormons have special

powers, other than the magnificence of

family magnetism and beauty, but I,

semi-heathen that I am, have to admit

this Christmas is special, a gift, something

one might read in the Bible or whatever

it was you were made to study religiously

in your youth, probably foreseeing the day

you’d be free to follow your own path.

I will look for a star in the West – not East -

this Christmas, won’t be surprised when

I don’t find it because it showed up early.

Note:  The poem says it all, can’t add very much.  If miracles happen, sister Bee’s experience surely is one of them.  With great joy, Irene and I wish all of our family and friends peace, joy and good health to close out the year and throughout the new year, 2010.

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The Secret to a Successful Marriage

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

Now that I’ve captured your attention,

you’ll probably expect me to reveal

how it happens that I’ve been married

happily for the most part to the same

woman these past forty-eight years.

Sorry that I’ve misled you and probably

will disappoint you – I simply don’t know

how it happened….but it did, and my

wife and I are living testimony that it

can happen – stay happily married, I mean.

Maybe it was because we got to know

one aonther in those two years before

we got married and settled down, so to

speak, though we never really have done

that, settled down, taken anything for granted.

We contest nearly everything, even after

reaching the point where we trust one

another’s judgment (though mine isn’t

always to be trusted – to wit:  clothing I buy

without aforethought from mail order ‘zines).

It’s simply that we like pretty much the same

things – music, travel, food, drink, people,

books, movies, plays – and avoid pretty much

the same things – religion, politics, TV shows,

cell phones, joining groups, and most effluvia.

We’re not the same, and vive la difference.

So, don’t try to sell either one of us on crap

that’s unimportant and won’t figure into our

lives. We just don’t buy it.  We’ve heard it

all, seen most of it, and are set in our ways.

That said, let’s get down to the real secret.

We still enjoy sex.  And with one another!

Is that truly the secret?  Of course not.

We really just enjoy being with each other,

hugs and kisses – just not all the damned time.

(Published in the Fall 2006 online issue of Long Story Short)

Note:  The poem says it all, no further explanation needed.  Oh, and by the way – we’ve been married now going on 52 years in February 2010 – to repeat, happily for the most part.

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Chocolate Lips

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

You don’t fool me with your pouty lips,

painted so carelessly with sticky chocolate

from a candy bar or ice cream on a stick.

You want me and everyone passing by

to notice you.  I do and chuckle at

the sensation you’ve made of your sweet face.

Soon enough, little girl, you’ll grow up and

put on real lipstick – shocking pink or mouth-

watering red, maybe bittersweet brown -

applied with precision, provoking passersby

to notice you and your moist, puckered lips,

ready for a whispered secret, even a kiss.

Then soon enough you’ll advance to an age

where those precious lips will tell quite

another tale, mouth crinkled and again

smeared with chocolate, quivering,

perhaps repeating a long-ago endearment.

May God bless your sweet chocolate lips.

(This poem was published somewhere, sometime, somehow, but who knows where and when?)

The inspiration for this poem is the image of so many kids, girls and boys, who eat chocolate, or any sweet for that matter, with gusto, carefree of the aftermath of their indulgence.  Life should be carefree for the young.  Well, to an extent.  Can’t believe the incredible freedom I enjoyed growing up in Georgetown, D.C., during the Second World War.  Wouldn’t doubt that my face was always smudged with some sort of candy remnant, though our choices were far fewer.  How far we’ve come, how little we’ve changed.  So be it.

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Eleven

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

I definitely peaked at eleven:

Harry Truman threw out the first ball

to open the Senators’ season,

I attended my first production of “The Mikado,”

a boarder introduced me to spaghetti

with tomato sauce, cauliflower and one meatball,

the Redskins came back miraculously

from the brink and beat the Cardinals in a doozy,

W. H. Hudson spoke to me in “Green Mansions,”

J. Edgar Hoover let me heft his submachine gun

in his surprisingly cluttered F.B.I. office,

a nice girl named Jane Trilling gave me my first real

kiss that made all my toes wiggle,

I was MVP on our 90-pound football team

that went undefeated with me at quarterback,

Dad gave me my own library card and put the first

ten dollars in my postal savings account,

my older sister taught me to be a confident jitterbugger,

Mom had her ninth and last child,

I tanned that summer without peeling,

and my favorite pitcher, Bob Feller,

came to town and won all three times with his fastball.

It’s been downhill ever since.

(Published first in the July 1999 issue, Vol. 5, Issue 6, of George & Mertie’s Place – defunct)

Note:  I probably borrowed a few months from ages ten and twelve, but who’s counting?  Eleven was a great age, circa 1947, to be a kid growing up in amazing Washington, D.C.  So much going on in my vast little world – pleasures, treasures of people, threats, illnesses always looming, acne, growing pains, slights, delights, fights, but oh the sights.  These days I value the stories of friends who grew up in small towns or on farms – so completely different from my experience! – and I wonder how they would have managed growing up in the big city.  God bless ‘em all, we’re all unique….unless we choose to follow those paid to lead us astray, their way.

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