Bill Roberts, Poet

B Movies

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

We used to sneak in

to see movies

that weren’t worth

sneaking in to see.

The usher wouldn’t bother

to turn his head

because his eyes were closed,

having seen the movie before.

Those dull strips of celluloid

were turned out overnight

by industrious people

in far-off Hollywood.

They depicted the lives

of those of us

with so little sense

we’d sneak in to see ourselves.

Note:  We’re talking 1940′s here.  We’d pay to see the cowboy double-feature Friday nights at The Savoy on 14th Street near Columbia Road, often packing our six-shooters.  When the cowboys started firing at the bad guys, we’d unholster, fire our cap guns along with them, creating such a din inside the moviehouse, we’d have to scramble along the sticky floors to another seat, with the huffing, puffing ushers in futile pursuit.  Those episodes usually eclipsed the predictable events in the movies starring old-time favorites, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, Roy and Dale, the Cisco Kid, the Durango Kid, Bob Steele, and especially all the good guys who didn’t sing those yippy-ki-yoo-ki-yea tunes.  But all those B movies – so dreadful.  Why pay to go see ourselves?  But the movies….a release from boredom, and so very important in my early life.

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How Poor Were We?

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

So poor the mice scampered next door

for three squares a day

and didn’t hurry back,

afraid they’d be eaten.

No, we couldnt even afford a stray cat.

We dressed in each other’s

hand-me-down clothes – threads

by the time they got to me.

My best friend was a skinny cockroach,

too weak to crawl to the neighbors.

We told each other bedtime tales -

his about crumbs, mine about delusions.

A teacher threatened to send me home

one day when I fell asleep in her class.

She relented when I told her my folks

had sent me off as their only hope.

I was so thin I fit in the pencil sharpener,

couldn’t slap chalk from the board erasers.

Then, the miracle meat Spam was discovered.

A cure?  If only we’d owned a can opener.

(Published in the Fall 2005 issue of the Parnassus Literary Journal)

Note:  Hyperbole?  Of course.  Or was it?  We were poor, but in those days, the late Thirties and early Forties, almost everyone was poor.  We just didn’t know we were, all of us pretty much lookalikes in the neighborhood.  One advantage I and my siblings had over most:  we ate well each day, our mother a wonderful cook, Dad the provider.  Our days often started with a huge mound of boiled rice, topped with butter, salt, pepper and crunchy bacon rolled into bits with our hands.  An Oklahoma luxury, we were told.  Got us going in the morning, sustained us throughout school hours.  Oh, yes, we did befriend the cockroaches and mice, all non-paying boarders in Mom’s boarding house.  Seemed to go with the territory there in D.C.  All of us survived tough times, mice and roaches included.

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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.

Posted in Aging, Children, Food, Human Nature, Love, That's Life | No Comments »

Wild West

Friday, December 11th, 2009

It takes practice

to ride a cactus.

City slickers

feel the stickers.

Real cowgirls and cowboys

don’t make the OW! noise.

They ride ‘em hard,

never get scarred.

You too can ride….

if you have a tough hide!

(Published originally in the wonderful children’s magazine, Cricket, quite a few years ago when I used Bartlett Boswell as my pseudonym)
Note:  I often use this poem to warm up an audience when I recite.  To get them in the mood, I suggest they imagine themselves as six-year-olds again, wearing a cowboy/cowgirl outfit, sixshooter tucked in a sagging holster, staring up at one of those gigantic saguaro types of cactus with its many prickly arms, and the cactus stares down at them, repeating this poem of warning.  Would I enjoy being a kid again, say, just for a few minutes?  Wouldn’t we all?

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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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Facing the Future

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

Look at them, so young,

so happy – my parents

before I knew them.

So much hope

in those faces

in a year of little promise, 1936.

Ah, youth.

How little they knew

of the future

in spite of

the Great Depression

that drew them together.

Had they known,

they might have skipped

posing for the photographer.

(Published in Pegasus Magazine in 2008)

Note:  Ah, my mother and father, so unalike yet so attracted to one another, physically of course, which causes the world to keep spinning.  In spite of their mini-battles and major skirmishes during World War Two, they made peace often enough to create me, brother Jim, and sisters GeeGee and Bee/Betty during steamy truces.  What draws two people together, what pushes them apart?  The age old questions, too deep for me to fathom.  But I loved them both, in spite of their shortcomings.  Oh, yes indeed, mine, too.

Posted in Children, Human Nature, Love, Nostalgia, War | No Comments »

Parents

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Parents were adults in my life

who seemed to delight in fighting,

physically, blood often drawn,

then make up behind a locked door

to their steamy upstairs bedroom.

After peace was made, usually

of short duration, we’d share a meal

of Dad’s favorites, usually Kosher

hotdogs, that he’d buy at the open

arcade, and New York sharp cheese.

Odd this combination – the food,

I mean – though my mother and

father were a strange pairing, too,

my Mom a farm girl from Oklahoma,

Dad, a Depression city boy of D.C.

What drew them to one another is one

of those mysteries of nature that

may never te explained, their chemistries

and physics so different, but their

physical magnetism worked wonders.

Me. It produced me, my being created

forced them into hasty marriage by a rabbi,

though neither of them was Jewish,

my father’s generous hooked nose

the product of evolution in Great Britain.

My mother’s IQ no doubt was closer to

half that of my father’s, but by some gift

of innate womanly wisdom she was able

to outsmart him on most occasions,

beginning with the expectation of me.

(Published in the 2008 issue of MOBIUS:  The Poetry Magazine)
Note:  How much could I write about my wonderful yet combative mother and father?  Several volumes, I’m sure.  They do figure prominently in my book-in-the-making, “Sneaking Out On the Rent,” along with other unforgettable characters.  At least they’re unforgettable to me.  I’m amazed at my memory for details of people, places, incidents, most of them minor, probably major at the time of happening.  But “truth,” as told in my poems from memory, is a curious bird – it doesn’t always fly too high with others who share the same memories.  My sisters in particular are fond of telling me, “It didn’t happen like that, Billy.”  Silly Billy, I’ll probably never outgrow the name.  Oh, my Mom could stop Dad in his tracks whenever there was a face-to-face confrontation, he the voluble wordsmith.  He’d be mouthing off, telling Mom all of her shortcomings, when suddenly she’d put up a hand, silence him, then say, “Kiss ass, Willy.”  He never, never once, was able to come up with a rejoinder.  Nice goin’, Mom.

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Last to Leave

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Unless it’s a riotous comedy,

I’m usually the last to leave

a movie theater, hesitantly

walking down the steps

from the uppermost row.

My mother passed along this gift

of crying at the slightest

provocation, the reaction

to abuse, misuse or tragedy -

even sudden upbeat endings.

Is it weakness for a man to cry?

I used to think so, so I formed

the habit of reading final credits

to their end, wiping my eyes,

donning my pilot’s sunglasses.

What makes it worse is that

my wife has the same affliction,

considerably more noticeable

than mine, causing us often to stay

seated till the floorsweepers come.

“Juno” was the last tearjerker we saw

together, along with dozens of kids

in their teens enjoying Sex Ed 101,

none of them crying, just laughing

as they left.  Lucky dumbbells.

(Published online in a Fall 2008 issue of Long Story Short)

Note:  To say that Irene and I get caught up in the moment of a drama, so to speak, is understatement.  I try my hardest to believe what I’m seeing (or hearing or reading), to gain greater impact from movie, play, opera, book or whatever.  Of course, a price has to be paid for such emotion – a two-hour movie usually lasts 2-1/2 hours for us.  The great American poet, Shoshauna Shy, e-mailed me after reading this poem and said the last two words, “Lucky dumbbells,” knocked her out.  It is a heartfelt statement:  those kids were lucky, but dumbbells certainly.

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Floored

Monday, November 16th, 2009

It was just my bad fortune

that Bert Sugar found me

punching the light bag

that lazy summer afternoon

after he’d returned from camp

with Sugar Ray or Joe Louis

himself, the other kids having

already left Police Boys’ Club

Number Ten where I was a

three-sport star at 105 pounds,

none of the sports involving

the clumsy boxing gloves Bert

begged me to put on to go a few

rounds with him, as he put it.

Poor Bert:  overweight, not a gifted

athlete, and too often picked on

by bullies like Pete Chaconas who

tried to drown him in the pool

at Central Junior High one day.

We danced around a bit, me tired

from a day’s worth of play,

when suddenly Bert landed two

light left jabs, stinging me,

then whoom, he crossed with

a vicious right that landed on

my cheek, lifted me in the air,

and sent a curl of snot flying

as I fell leadenly on my back.

I didn’t mind the vengeance so

evident in Bert’s smirk, but his

incessant counting – “…thirty-one,

thirty-two, thirty-three…” -

irritated the hell out of me.

(Published in the May 2008 online issue of Chantarelle’s Notebook)

Note:  This is one of my favorite memories, showing you can take things for granted (e.g., me, the gifted athlete) and then get punched silly.  I think Bert counted to a hundred before bending to help me back to my wobbly feet.  Bert Sugar, who is he?  Well, he went on to become an All-American rugby player at Michigan for starters, earned a J.D. degree, bought and elevated the stature of Ring Magazine for many years, all the while improving the image of boxing.  Regarded these days as the guru of boxing worldwide, he’s often seen and heard giving expert commentary on ESPN, sometimes also appearing in movies with pal Robert De Niro.  And oh, nearly forgot – he’s written nearly 100 (count ‘em out) highly successful books on various sporting activities.  We still talk by phone occasionally and he only confesses to counting up to 10 over my prone body there at the boys’ club in D.C.  I get woozy thinking about it.

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