Bill Roberts, Poet

The Downside to Overachievement

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

At another time in another life

I was handsome, virile,

strong as an ox

and worked like a slave

because I was a slave -

handsome, virile and strong.

Because I outworked my fellow

slaves, and possibly because

I had all my teeth

and preferred the ladies

to the laddies,

I was chosen as The Chosen One -

the fellow bestowed with the honor

of capping the Pyramid at Cheops

with its uppermost stone.

This really killed me, it really did.

Two lessons:  (1) avoid pyramid schemes

and (2) never be a slave to anything.

(Published in the Fall/Winter 2007 issue of The Homestead Review)

Note:  Is this a message poem?  Read the last two lines again for the answer.  Just a fun poem, again linking me to that mysterious subject, reincarnation.  Do I believe in reincarnation?  I don’t, but all my previous selves do.

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Respect for All Living Things

Monday, January 18th, 2010

–  from an Arapaho Indian proverb

Most men and women have it, live it -

respect for all living things.

Some of course don’t, which reveals itself

in wanton killings of people,

innocent animals, plants, the environment.

The American Indian in general believed

in respect for all living things – the belief

nurtured him – until the white man

appeared and practiced his

destructive, menacing, killing ways.

The Indian, try as he might, lost respect

for the living, at least the living,

breathing, thieving, conniving and

murderously unscrupulous white man.

But we see who won that contest

of wills, the Indian now consigned

to tiny parcels of property fit only for

the proliferation of mind-numbing casinos.

Still he dies by age forty-nine, on average,

eased into a final stupor by white man’s

sneaky-pete fire water – straight, uncut joy.

There is much to be learned from the Indian.

Simple study of who he was, who he has

become, where he’ll be in the future

could reveal a lot about mankind’s survival.

(Published online in the 1/17/10 issue of The Saturday Diner)

Note:  Does this poem result from the drops of Indian (Cherokee) blood that courses my veins?  Perhaps, but after so many years of watching the denigration of the former owners of the land we now inhabit – oh, those awful/wonderful cowboy and Indian movies of youth! – one does tire of the excrement from the bull.  We watch as the American Indian fades slowly away, someday extinct so those once mighty tribes can be spoken of as myths and white man’s actions as unparalleled acts of kindness.  Excuse me while I retch.

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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 »

Memorial

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Maybe, after all, this is the perfect tribute

to the sudden death storm that happened here:

the shrill sound of children laughing,

though it seems out of place.

I am moved to cover my eyes,

suppress tears, reach for my wife’s hand,

finally seek out the laughing faces.

There may be a hundred,

enjoying this perfect morning,

the sun having risen quickly

over this solemn place and now blessing

youthful visitors to a shrine

of man’s hatred for fellow man.

The children’s laughter and innocent play

on the barge ride over to the sunken warship

make me reflect:  we’ve come

such a long way since I learned the words

to “Remember Pearl Harbor,”

the very same site being invaded this day by gleeful

boys and girls waving miniature rising-sun flags.

(Published online in the March 2001 issue of Little Brown Poetry)

Note:  No doubt my most frequently published poem, a reminiscence of our first visit to Hawaii in 1983 and that fateful barge ride over to see the sunken warship, the U.S.S. Arizona.  This is exactly what happened that day.  More important, it was the beginning of releasing my long-held hatred – prejudice! – of the Japanese.  We were taught in public schools in Washington, D.C. during the war years of WWII to despise the vicious, sneaky Japanese who desecrated our naval base at Pearly Harbor on that day that lives in infamy, December 7, 1941.  We grew victory gardens at school, sang songs like “Remember Pearl Harbor,” were taught not to trust yellow skin.  How foolish, how crazy – sort of reminds me of our more recent reactions in Afghanistan and Iraq.  But war against the Japanese and Germans certainly was necessary.  And it did turn out well, with victory, though prejudices took a long time afterward to conquer.

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