Bill Roberts, Poet

The Leap From Imagination

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

I was mad.

The enemy had humiliated me

and I needed to retaliate.

My thought process wasn’t working too well

but I settled on a hand grenade.

I pulled the pin -

actually a broken shoelace -

and tossed the grenade -

one of my worn-out tennis shoes -

into the nest of unsuspecting Japs -

the enemy in 1945 -

masquerading as my new, third-grade

classmates who’d laughed at something

I said when introduced to them

the previous day.

No harm was done.

The teacher deposited the smelly sneaker

in her trash can

and marked me down as tardy.

Kids still see other kids as the enemy -

as I had done -

but sometimes react differently.

It’s not make-believe any longer.

They go after their schoolmates

with real guns,

live ammunition,

intending to inflict real damage.

Years back we relied on our imagination.

We’ve come a long way since 1945.

(Published in George & Mertie’s Place, Vol. 4, Issue 9, October 1998 – magazine now defunct)

Note:  This poem was written after several shootings occurred in the South, schoolkids killing other schoolkids, making we wonder what it was about the South that caused such carnage.  I’d done some contract work in South Carolina and knew how fond the populace in general was of guns – a gun culture, I thought.  Shortsightedly I also thought, surely something so awful couldn’t happen in Colorado.  The poem was published before the massacre at Columbine High School, not fifteen miles from where I live.

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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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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.

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A Christmas Card

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

I have seen the place

Where Jesus was born,

At least where they say

He was born,

Those three wise fellows

There outside the ancient church

Standing against the low wall,

Their machine guns

Slouching lazily

Against their thighs,

A hallowed picture of innocence

Which, had I been brave enough

To take it,

Would have been perfect,

Without words,

As this year’s

Greeting to family and friends

At Christmas.

(Published with the title, “Bethlehem,” in the Piedmont Literary Review, Vol. XXII, No. 3, 1999)

Note:  What a photo that would have made, but I chickened out, certain those guns were loaded.  One of the most moving experiences of my life, visiting the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, then the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Bethlehem.  You don’t need to belong to a religion to feel the magnetism of the spirit in the presence of such sacred shrines and hallowed ground.  How far we’ve come since the birth of Christ.  Alas, how little it often seems we’ve learned along the way.  May Peace always be the goal, whether or not we reach 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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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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