Bill Roberts, Poet

Friday Comes Early

Author: Bill Roberts

Alvaro’s studio is a series of

dark rooms in a low adobe home

tucked away in the hills of

northern New Mexico.  Charming.

Easy to stumble over the pottery

if you’re not careful, miss

a black-and-white sketch if

your eyes don’t attune to dimness.

We’re in no hurry, meander to

and fro, studying Alvaro’s many

creations, all of them attractive,

but we meet finally at one.

A lithograph of mesquite-dotted

hills, a lone leafless tree, the very

essence of New Mexico outside

Alvaro’s home in deep winter.

As so often happens, we’re not sure.

Look about again, meet again at

the lithograph, and still can’t

make up our minds.  So we decide.

We tell Alvaro we like his lithograph

and probably will be back Friday,

three days hence, and make our

final decision then.  Okay?

Alvaro shrugs, in no hurry himself.

We drive off into the rambling hills,

feel the magic of New Mexico.

After twenty-some miles, we stop.

I turn the car around, drive back.

A tiny bell tinkles as we re-enter

Alvaro’s studio, he turning, asking,

“Oh, is it Friday already?”

(Published in the October 2010 online and print issues of Flutter Poetry Journal)

Note:  This piece about New Mexico and its magical enchantment was told to me by dear ex-New York friends, Joan and Jack Salb, so I dedicate the poem to them.  The Salbs now live in San Diego where Jack has become a prized photographer.  Check out his amazing photos from all over the world at jacksalb.com.

December 24th, 2010  |  Posted in Country-western, Human Nature, Humor, That's Life, Travel, Uncategorized  |  No Comments »

Ambiguity Resulting From Growing Uncertainty

Author: Bill Roberts

Very possibly I misunderstood her meaning -

Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

Or did I hear her say something else?

It’ll cost you a golden egg to get laid.

Or, Don’t goose the moose

that drinks jungle juice?

Hearing not only goes as you get older

words and their meaning blur, too.

I’m a good listener, or so I’ve been told.

Or did she say, Listen, mister, I’m your sister?

It all gets damned confusing, if you ask me.

Did you?  I have trouble hearing.

Or did I tell you that already?

Hey, lady – stick what up my what?

(Published in the October 2010 online issue of Chantarelle’s Notebook.)

Note:  To admit that I don’t hear all that well is easy for me, after long practice.  I do listen, try to interpret words, but often get them jangled or jumbled, answer with a totally off-the-wall reply, making some wonder if I’m all there.  Well, no, actually, I’m not.  Next question, please.

October 21st, 2010  |  Posted in Aging, Health, Human Nature, Humor, That's Life  |  No Comments »

Talking to My Many Selves

Author: Bill Roberts

Likely you’ll consider it weird,

dangerous perhaps, that

I talk silently to myself,

get answers, also in silence.

Not always the answer anticipated,

once in a while from left field,

for at one time, it appears,

I played left field for the Yankees.

Seems I’ve slaved most of my life,

working hard to save money,

relax in leisure in old age – day-

dreaming as a slave to Thomas Jefferson.

Always fearful of an early death,

as happened when crippled as

King Tut in ancient Egypt,

today I shudder as a septuagenarian.

It all started there in lush Eden,

the voluptuous Eve whispering

she preferred being the stronger one,

thereafter siphoning my masculinity.

Some might ask, Do you

believe in reincarnation?

My answer, I’m not sure, but

all my former selves seem to.

Note:  This is an unpublished poem, another in a series of “reincarnation” poems.  I study the subject, but only obliquely, not sure if indeed I do believe in it.  Dr. Brian Weiss makes a convincing case for reincarnation in his two books, the first his flagship, “Many Lives, Many Masters.”  I think I’ve given away more than fifty copies to friends and relatives, most yet remaining friends and relatives.  None, I’m sure, buy into the notion that my fantasies got started way back in the lush Garden of Eden.  Why so hard-headed, I wonder.

September 21st, 2010  |  Posted in Humor, Nostalgia, Science, That's Life, Uncategorized  |  No Comments »

Psychoanalysis, Farewell

Author: Bill Roberts

– Where a Freud in need is a Freud indeed/

We’ll always be Jung together -

Dorothy Parker, “Collected Poems”

Times are stressful, money’s tight.

I’ve held on, truly, with all my might.

The car went first, gas so expensive.

Horse’s-ass-power walking I do, intensive.

But walk to where? – no longer to stores.

Holes in my pockets, wallet full of sores.

Oh, I still eat healthy, lots of beans -

cereal, too, nearly beyond my means.

And I seek daily for work that fits,

until I tire, cramp up, get the shits.

Oh, the wife, her mother and the dogs -

gone long ago, leaving me a pair of shoes, clogs.

But still I walk the few miles to see my shrink,

says I look healthy, not wealthy – in the pink.

He assures me worse has happened to man over time -

being poor is a social disorder, not a crime.

But to crime I must turn to pay his bill -

claims things will improve, and he needs me still.

(Published in the 7/23/10 online issue of Thick With Conviction, one of my favorites)

Note:  Just a humorous commentary on the state of financial affairs across the globe.  Rest easy: I don’t wear clogs.  And I still have dogs.  And a wife.  A shrink?  Don’t need one….yet!  This was written, as I do so often, just for fun.

August 18th, 2010  |  Posted in Food, Health, Human Nature, Humor, Politics, Science, That's Life, Uncategorized  |  No Comments »

Learning Italian Cooking in Tuscany

Author: Bill Roberts

Plans are being drawn even

as I write, between my

beloved wife and our dear

expatriate New York friends

now living the suntan life

in San Diego, e-mails flying

back and forth to choose

exactly the right cooking

course at exactly the right

place, Tuscany, of course

at precisely the right time, spring

so we can meet as a foursome

to learn how to cook spaghetti

and lasagna and pizza and

ravioli and cannelloni and cannoli

washed down with the right

wine, Italian, of course

studed and lovingly prepared

in Tuscany on tomato-spattered

stoves, sweat dropping into

the mix of whatever’ll be mixed

all ours for the price of $3995

a head, when I’d just as soon

go out and get, and I’d better

get to getting A-sap, an Italian

cookbook, one of the fancy ones

with a recipe for everything

Italian we’d ever want to eat

cook and eat, I should say

at the bargain-table price

of $50, marked down from $75

by the very same gal who’ll teach us

Italian cooking in Tuscany.

(Published in the Spring 2003 issue of Nanny Fanny Poetry Magazine)

Note:  I didn’t buy the cookbook, we took the more expensive means of learning instead.  Did we love Tuscany?  Yum-yum, how could you ask such a silly question.  Irene and friend Joanie literally looked at over 500 potential courses we might have participated in in Tuscany, finally chose the best one, offered by a young lady who lives just miles from us in Boulder – Peggy Markel, “Corso di Cucina al Focolare,” 17 miles NW of Florence.  Again, yum-yum.

August 7th, 2010  |  Posted in Food, Health, Human Nature, Humor, Love, Travel  |  No Comments »

Cloud Gazing

Author: Bill Roberts

Eventually, they all come back,

loved ones who’ve moved to the clouds.

Billowy Grandma most often,

her 12-egg lemon pound cake in hand.

Fast-moving Mama, always in such

a hurry to attend to the next family duty.

Dawdling Papa, reading from a fluffy

stack of books, including the inevitable potboiler.

Brother Max, drifting erratically after

pretending to take Ritalin, disordered bipolarity.

Shrewd sister Emma, the wispy family

matriarch, asking why we’re all so middle-class.

Mysterious older brother Howard, whom I met

only three times – he now floats by weekly.

So many aunts and uncles, usually forming

overhead as if at another family reunion.

Lost friends reappearing, even threatening

bully Pete, about to rain blows on me again.

Teachers, dear teachers, never forgotten for

their wisdom, now challenging me up there.

And the dogs, all my dogs – scampering along

as if once more I’ll give chase someday.

There’s something about clouds, so familiar,

so tempting to fly up, be there with them.

(Published online in 2009 in The Stray Branch)

Note:  I often write family-friend remembrances such as this, always slightly different, especially after the loss of someone close.  A month ago, I lost sister Carolyn Patricia, beloved Patsy, who was like a surrogate mother to me and my younger siblings, Jimmy, GeeGee and Betty.  There is much to write about her and it will come soon.  She is painfully missed, by me and all of those she touched.  Farewell, Beloved Carolyn Patricia.

July 4th, 2010  |  Posted in Aging, Love, Nostalgia, That's Life  |  No Comments »

A Thing So Boring

Author: Bill Roberts

I think that I shall never see

a thing so boring as a tree.

A tree to me, just standing there, is all you see,

arms raised to heaven, praying for rain or dog pee.

Admittedly a tree can be

quite beautiful when leaf-ed ful-ly.

But, like this poem of cursed rhyme,

a tree just stands there all the time.

Does nothing, does a tree – gives shade,

of course, with summer’s lemonade.

But shade doth fade as chill invades the glade,

dead leaves on pavement splayed.

So tell me not about its beauty, cutie.

I prefer a tree that works, is rather fruity.

Ah, here under the banana tree or apple,

with thoughts of gravity I grapple.

Ouch, what hit me on the head like lead?

‘Twas Joyce Kilmer, whom I thought dead.

Thus I promise as you snore:

Write again in rhyme? Nevermore!

(Published online in the April 2010 issue of Thick With Conviction)

Note:  Just another whimsical poem, written in rhyme to make fun of rhyme – really forcing words to rhyme, which is why the genre has nearly died out.  Never thought it would be published, but it got scooped up right away.  Go figure.

June 26th, 2010  |  Posted in Humor, Poetry, Prejudice, That's Life  |  No Comments »

Update of Relativity Theories

Author: Bill Roberts

Einstein got it partially right when

his lightbulb flashed E equals m

times c squared, accounting for

the extra energy created when neutrons

begin to multiply like radioactive rabbits

during an angry nuclear excursion.

But, sacre bleu, m stands not for mass

but for money, c for collusion, not

collision, to Albert’s embarrassment.

George Gamow also badly missed

the target when he envisioned his lewd

Big Bang Theory, aka the Beginning

of the Universe and related destinations.

What he didn’t understand was that

it was Mom and Dad who mothered and

fathered Big Bang, creating G.G. himself.

Leonardo da Vinci was so befuddled by

scientific nightmares that he painted

his most lasting enigma, the curious

smile on the placid face of Mona Lisa,

a peripatetic prostitute and soothsayer.

Mona of smiling face soothsaw that she

and Leo would get serious, freezing for-

ever that smile so beloved by multitudes

of adoring Japanese tourists to the Louvre.

My own theory, in all humbleness, is that

Albert and George and Leonardo would

have made strange bedfellows in today’s

world, their gifts to science ignored by

modern Super-Thinkers – Leonardo di

Caprio, George W. Bush and Albert

Capone, all fiduciaries of the Big Bang.

(Published on 6/21/10 online by Marquis Cafeteria Round Table)

Note:  Just a piece of fluff, the “science” of the piece garbled on purpose.  Long ago, I did attend a lecture by Mr. Big Bang himself, George Gamow, at George Washington University.  It was curious to see how a genius operates:  though brilliant, Mr. G. smoked while onstage (a no-no), didn’t know how to tie his shoes and had to have assistance to blow up a balloon.  I ran into many folks like him – and thank goodness for them! – while a consultant at the infamous Los Alamos Laboratories in New Mexico.

June 22nd, 2010  |  Posted in Human Nature, Humor, Nostalgia, Science, That's Life, Uncategorized  |  No Comments »

Hymn to Her

Author: Bill Roberts

Rosie Girl, thy beauty is to us

Like those halcyon barks of yore.

You blessed this diminished planet

With your loveliness sixteen years,

Plus a few months – a long time

In doggie years, not near enough for us.

Tears were shed, but not the overflow

Of previous losses, since you gave us

Many years of uninterrupted joy,

Coming to share your zest for living.

Wait for us, pray for us, send your

Vibrations our way so we won’t stray.

Another life awaits us – the lucky,

Chosen few, called to Doggie Heaven.

Note:  We returned from a tour of northern Spain and dear Rosie had waited for us just long enough for last goodbyes.  The most beautiful dog ever, drivers would pull up next to Irene as she walked Rosie, express their admiration of her beauty.  Beautiful in all ways, we missed her terribly but knew it was time.  A week later, we drove down to Colorado Springs to visit another rescue Australian terrier – lovely Princess – and brought her home with us.  Six years old and full of love, she looks amazingly like Rosie, with just enough difference to make a difference.  Moral to the story:  there is none.  We just figured, we needed another dog to fulfill our lives.  And remember:  you have a dog (or dogs, in our case, with nine-year-old Marco, too), then there’s reason for living….and you’ll live longer.

May 29th, 2010  |  Posted in Aging, Animals, Human Nature, Love, That's Life  |  No Comments »