Bill Roberts, Poet

Saving Whales

Author: Bill Roberts

Now I’ve topped upright head

with my beaver-skin cap,

I admire myself in the mirror,

resplendent in real-chamois shirt,

tanned leather pants, snakeskin belt,

and slick lizard boots.

Ah, of course, my necklace of

gleaming yellow bear teeth.

Yes, I’m ready to slip into my

precious coat of non-faux fox fur

and stride off proudly to meet

with friends of similar mind:

we’ve set ourselves a course,

perhaps impossible:  Save the Whales.

(Published in the Winter 2005 issue of P.D.Q., Poetry Depth Quarterly)

Note:  Written entirely with tongue in cheek.  However, how many times have I seen doers of good setting off to save the world or whatever, outfitted with all the tell-tale trophies of animals or whatever, similar to the objects they’re bent on saving.  ‘Tis a sobering sight to watch their plight.  Poetry Depth Quarterly, alas, has become extinct, so indeed….save the whales!  Save the magazines and newspapers!  Save the printed word!

December 26th, 2009  |  Posted in Animals, Fashion, Human Nature, Humor, Politics, That's Life  |  2 Comments »

B Movies

Author: Bill Roberts

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.

December 24th, 2009  |  Posted in Children, Country-western, Human Nature, Movies, Nostalgia, That's Life  |  No Comments »

How Poor Were We?

Author: Bill Roberts

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.

December 22nd, 2009  |  Posted in Children, Food, Health, Human Nature, Nostalgia, That's Life, Uncategorized  |  No Comments »

Swept Clean

Author: Bill Roberts

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.

December 21st, 2009  |  Posted in Aging, Human Nature, Nostalgia, That's Life  |  No Comments »

A Sort of Christmas Story

Author: Bill Roberts

We were planning to head East, to

hometown D.C., to see friends, then

onward to Ocean City to stay with

Brother Jim and Laurie in their high-

rise, the fourteenth floor at the beach.

The latter sort of reminds me of all

those old folks forsaking their even

higher-rises in frigid New York City,

moving down to Miami Beach to

sequester themselves on the forty-ninth

floor, excellent view of sand and water.

But I got a call from kid sister in Mesa,

Arizona, saying she was ill – stage-four

ovarian cancer, she sounding like

maybe this was the closing act of her

slow-but-steady drama through life.

Once a kid sister, always the kid.

So, plans shifted and we were there

with her gigantic Mormon family night

before hysterectomy-plus, the plus

the great unknown, to be determined.

After a big Mexican take-out meal

hosted by eldest daughter, my sis just

observing, no intake of jalapeno flavors,

two sons, a son-in-law and husband

performed a “blessing,” perhaps a

secret Mormon ritual that wife and I

were allowed to witness, the four men

stationed north, east, south and west

of kid sis, all hands on her head as

they alternately prayed for deliverance.

Moving doesn’t do the blessing justice,

its simplicity and honesty so electric.

Next afternoon, the operation was

performed with a DaVinci robot,

through belly button and two sets of

holes either side, with a wash of belly

cavity to secure biopsy fluids and tissue.

Sis was home again within 24 hours,

feeling better than she did after any of

five rambunctious children – even hungry.

Her CA-125 blood indicator for cancer

started off the chart at 1,675, plummeted to

14 after the third chemotherapy, within

normal range and quite unprecedented.

Biopsy results a few days later showed no

further evidence of Big C or its spread.

A miracle in early December, just weeks

before Christmas, the news a blessing.

I don’t know if Mormons have special

powers, other than the magnificence of

family magnetism and beauty, but I,

semi-heathen that I am, have to admit

this Christmas is special, a gift, something

one might read in the Bible or whatever

it was you were made to study religiously

in your youth, probably foreseeing the day

you’d be free to follow your own path.

I will look for a star in the West – not East -

this Christmas, won’t be surprised when

I don’t find it because it showed up early.

Note:  The poem says it all, can’t add very much.  If miracles happen, sister Bee’s experience surely is one of them.  With great joy, Irene and I wish all of our family and friends peace, joy and good health to close out the year and throughout the new year, 2010.

December 18th, 2009  |  Posted in Aging, Health, Human Nature, Love, That's Life  |  No Comments »

The Secret to a Successful Marriage

Author: Bill Roberts

Now that I’ve captured your attention,

you’ll probably expect me to reveal

how it happens that I’ve been married

happily for the most part to the same

woman these past forty-eight years.

Sorry that I’ve misled you and probably

will disappoint you – I simply don’t know

how it happened….but it did, and my

wife and I are living testimony that it

can happen – stay happily married, I mean.

Maybe it was because we got to know

one aonther in those two years before

we got married and settled down, so to

speak, though we never really have done

that, settled down, taken anything for granted.

We contest nearly everything, even after

reaching the point where we trust one

another’s judgment (though mine isn’t

always to be trusted – to wit:  clothing I buy

without aforethought from mail order ‘zines).

It’s simply that we like pretty much the same

things – music, travel, food, drink, people,

books, movies, plays – and avoid pretty much

the same things – religion, politics, TV shows,

cell phones, joining groups, and most effluvia.

We’re not the same, and vive la difference.

So, don’t try to sell either one of us on crap

that’s unimportant and won’t figure into our

lives. We just don’t buy it.  We’ve heard it

all, seen most of it, and are set in our ways.

That said, let’s get down to the real secret.

We still enjoy sex.  And with one another!

Is that truly the secret?  Of course not.

We really just enjoy being with each other,

hugs and kisses – just not all the damned time.

(Published in the Fall 2006 online issue of Long Story Short)

Note:  The poem says it all, no further explanation needed.  Oh, and by the way – we’ve been married now going on 52 years in February 2010 – to repeat, happily for the most part.

December 17th, 2009  |  Posted in Aging, Human Nature, Humor, Love, That's Life  |  No Comments »

Chocolate Lips

Author: Bill Roberts

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.

December 16th, 2009  |  Posted in Aging, Children, Food, Human Nature, Love, That's Life  |  No Comments »

The Never Again Lady

Author: Bill Roberts

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.

December 15th, 2009  |  Posted in Human Nature, Love, Movies, Nostalgia, Prejudice, War  |  No Comments »

A Christmas Card

Author: Bill Roberts

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.

December 12th, 2009  |  Posted in Human Nature, Politics, That's Life, Travel, War  |  No Comments »