Bill Roberts, Poet

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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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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The Never Again Lady

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

I’m in love with a raven-haired woman

I saw in a movie not long ago.

She visits me frequently in sleep, seeking

my protection.  It was an amateur movie,

made by professional killers during a war,

depicting life, or the moments before

the end of life, at one of their camps

of concentration outside Germany.

This lovely woman was completely

naked, visibly terrified, attempting pitiably

to cover her breasts and black pubis.

I was mesmerized by the jumpy scenes,

stunned by the basic cruelty one people

could inflict on another, represented by

this lovely lady, beautiful even in her silent

horror, though scream she must have -

no sound accompanied the jittery footage.

The theater where this and similar films

play wasn’t a modern plex of theaters but

the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

I confronted many horrors that sweltering day:

a ghastly-blue cattle car in which Jews

were transported, piles of old shoes,

rumpled clothing, broken eyeglasses,

and a haystack of multicolored hair,

handwritten letters questioning why

such horrors were happening, so much else

incriminating the perpetrators of so many

vile and indescribably savage acts.

I’m not sure if you’d care to visit this sacred

place that commemorates mankind’s atrocities.

Certainly the movie of that lone lady would

haunt you as it does me so many nights.

Yes, I love her, though we never met.

I miss her terribly, weep at her loss.

(Published in the Spring 2005 issue of Main Street Rag)

Note:  Our visit to the Holocaust Museum in the summer of 2003 was a deja vu event much like our first sight of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem in summer 1993 – staggering in its emotional impact.  Permitted the time now in retirement to sit and think back, it’s still hard to imagine how people – mainly the Germans but also their collaborators and supporters (many hidden behind masks of innocence) – could muster so much hatred to wantonly kill people so horribly as they did.  You have to pause and reflect:  those villains were human, highly cultured, advanced thinkers, yet they practiced a mass murder tirade the likes of which defy any reason whatsoever.  And today, we find those who, likemindedly, say it, the Holocaus, never happened.  Oh, my.  To those I say, visit the Museum in D.C., see for yourselves….if you dare.  The woman I describe in the poem was very real, still visits me on occasion.  Try as I might, alas, I can offer no protection.  It’s too late.  Best I can do is remember, as all good people must.

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

When Dinahshore Roamed

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

Her delicate bones

Are barely settled,

But once she roamed

This diminished planet,

Eating its veggies

And fruits and nuts

And the occasional cheeseburger,

Singing its praises

To the sky,

From peak to peak,

Shore to shore,

This talented

And now extinct Dinahshore,

So perfect God made only one.

It’s been tough going

Since you left, Dinalshore,

But, if it pleases you,

I’m still seeing the U.S.A.

In my Chevrolet….

Though it leaks oil badly.

(Published in the Summer 2001 issue, Issue No. 15, Vol. 7, No. 1, of Rattle:  Poetry for the 21st Century)

Note:  Dinah.  Was there anyone finah?  I’ve just come back from Palm Desert where I studied an old photo on the wall of a 5-star hotel, a picture of Dinah Shore in her golf finery, swinging a driver much like she could swing onstage.  What a beauty.  And what a great representative of this great country of ours – scolding us to see the U.S.A. in a Chevrolet.  Had one once.  It didn’t get me very far before it started leaking oil, chugged a death rattle, and stopped in the middle of M Street in D.C., zillions of motorists all about me screaming to get the hell out of their way – they still had plenty to see in the U.S. of A.

Posted in Humor, Music, Nostalgia, That's Life, Travel | 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?

Posted in Children, Country-western, Humor, Nostalgia, Uncategorized | No Comments »

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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The Dirty Boogie

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

Being an older guy in Florida

has its advantages.  Sometimes.

I sauntered into The Vixens Bar

and all I saw were ladies – all

different shades, shapes and ages.

Not a single guy, just me, single

for the evening, as it happened.

Most were dancing, boogieing

at the moment to loud music,

swinging and swirling, having

a good old time, happy looking,

not the downer types of widows

I often encountered at other bars.

I sat at the bar, ordered a Bud,

studied the field, and tapped

a younger lady nearby on her

deeply tanned shoulder, asked

if she’d care to do some dancing.

She looked me up and down,

apparently didn’t like what she

saw but said, “Sure, but not

with you, Bub – this is an all-

ladies club, get my drift?”

I paid up quickly, and boogied

to the safety of the parking lot.

(Published in 2007 in the Quercus Review)

Note:  This is a piece of flimsy whimsy – at least, I’m rarely seen in Florida.  This piece of trivial pursuit was inspired by the memory of living in Greenwich Village in the early Sixties, a brownstone house at 65 Perry Street, where I could walk to work about ten blocks down Hudson Street in NYC.  We spent all our money, Irene and I, with so much to do in The City.  One cold night on the way home, we ducked into a boisterous, jam-packed bar, sat at the bar and tried to get served.  The barkeep kept passing us by, waiting on newcomers he knew, seemed happy to see.  Irene caught on, tugged my sleeve, said, “Let’s get out of here – it’s a gay bar.”  Damn, I felt foolish, looking around, not finding a single female, not even one in drag.  Education comes in many forms, often when we’re not prepared for it.

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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.

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Hardly anyone would believe

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

Hardly anyone would believe

that you could have a French meal

for seventy-five cents, dollar-and -a-

quarter tops if you chose lamb ragout.

The seventy-five center was lentils and

spicy sausage, always my favorite at

Chez Odette on Wisconsin Avenue,

a tiny darkened room with seating for

twenty or so diners at five tables and

three booths with lumpy, cracked seats.

I had breakfast there every morning

before my Physical Chem class at A.U.

Always three fried eggs, white toast and

French roast coffee, as much as I wanted.

Also seventy-five cents and who knows

how much cholesterol over a year’s span.

How delicious, how atmospheric, how

unbelievable to think that a buck – I

always left a quarter tip! – could buy

so much savory pleasure and inner peace.

Jack and Jackie Kennedy must have

though so too:  we, my bride-to-be and I,

joined them every Wednesday evening

for dinner at Odette’s where Jackie also

preferred the lentil dish, Jack usually

springing for the pricier ragout of lamb.

We didn’t exactly eat with them, just

near enough by to nod when they came in

or left, their schedule a bit more erratic

than ours in those halcyon days of yore.

But who would believe such a tale, that

you could get a French meal for seventy-

five cents?  And in such good company!

(Published in a 2006 online issue of Slow Trains Magazine)

Note:  Growing up in and hanging around Washington D.C. from the Thirties to the Fifties, I’d see all sorts of people – celebrities,  the great, the gross and all the in-betweeners.  It was the great part of my education in human nature, to watch people, study them, analyze why they did what they did.  Jack and Jackie were obviously very much in love when they sat across from one another in cramped Chez Odette, holding hands across the table, looking deep into one another’s eyes, talking softly.  Pretty much like Irene and me, I guess.  Wonderful carefree days when we were both getting educated at American University, thinking our world was nearly perfect, nothing to change.  Ah, the changes indeed came.  After JFK was elected, then assassinated, with assassinations of MLK, RFK and John Lennon to follow, the world changed drastically and forever.  No longer were famous people so easy to spot on the street, in a corner of a restaurant.  And the world is still changing.  Alas, too often not for the better, but that’s the opinion of a nostalgia freak.

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