greenmountaineer's thread

[Angeline]

Between The Graduate, A&P (I still buy 8 O'Clock coffee), and the Donna Reed Show, Mother Dreamed of Flying to Paris is quite the evocative poem for me. I like how you show us a more authentic Donna and how you've permeated the poem with references that convey time and place.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Between The Graduate, A&P (I still buy 8 O'Clock coffee), and the Donna Reed Show, Mother Dreamed of Flying to Paris is quite the evocative poem for me. I like how you show us a more authentic Donna and how you've permeated the poem with references that convey time and place.

Thanks, my guess is, if this resonates with anyone, it is with babyboomers as you and I are. The early days of TV portrayed the ideal family when in fact it wasn't always that way.

Of course, God created bikinis back then. So things weren't all that bad.

Liked your poem BTW.

 

[Angeline]

Thanks, my guess is, if this resonates with anyone, it is with babyboomers as you and I are. The early days of TV portrayed the ideal family when in fact it wasn't always that way.

Of course, God created bikinis back then. So things weren't all that bad.

Liked your poem BTW.

I think it's more than generational--though that's a big part of it. Often, your poems sound like the Eastern U.S. to me. They sound like home. I'm sure I'd recognize how good they are anyway, but I usually feel connected to what you write because I know we share that sense of place as well as time.

As to the bikini, I still can't believe I talked my mom into buying it lol. It did come with a third piece called "surf shorts," which kinda looked like Bermuda shorts. I guess she was hoping I'd wear them instead of the itsy bitsy teeny weeny...

 

[Piscator]

"One word, Ben, just one word: Plastics"
Mr. McGuire

Mother dreamed of flying to Paris
she once told her classmates at Hunter College,
but for her kids, mortgage, and mailman
husband whose weekly take home pay
meant buying A&P Ann Page products
and borrowing books about Monet
from the Hackensack Public Library.

It's 1960 when Donna Stone
somewhere in the suburbs of Hillsdale
takes out dinner from the latest oven
for Jeff and Mary who have to show
aluminum in the peas compartment
before digging in to the cobbler

as Donna downs a dry martini
who always dreamed of flying to Paris
she says to her husband Alex,
half of him still at the office,
the other half on his magic carpet
second two fingers of Dewars,
having already flown.

Interesting, the title immediately drew me to the movie Montenegro, and Marianne Faithfull singing The Ballad of Lucy Jordan but this was about a different era although a similar theme.

 

[greenmountaineer]

"One word, Ben, just one word: Plastics"
Mr. McGuire

Mother dreamed of flying to Paris
she once told her classmates at Hunter College,
but for her kids, mortgage, and mailman
husband whose weekly take home pay
meant buying A&P Ann Page products
and borrowing books about Monet
from the Hackensack Public Library.

It's 1960 when Donna Stone
somewhere in the suburbs of Hillsdale
takes out dinner from the latest oven
for Jeff and Mary who have to show
aluminum in the peas compartment
before digging in to the cobbler

as Donna downs a dry martini
who always dreamed of flying to Paris
she says to her husband Alex,
half of him still at the office,
the other half on his magic carpet
second two fingers of Dewars,
having already flown.

Interesting, the title immediately drew me to the movie Montenegro, and Marianne Faithfull singing The Ballad of Lucy Jordan but this was about a different era although a similar theme.

I was unfamiliar with this, Piscator, so after listening to the music, I Googled the lyrics. Pretty impressive, although a bit more macabre. I'm not surprised that the lyricist was Shel Silverstein, a man of many talents who among other things drew cartoons for Playboy Magazine and wrote children's books.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Parable

The money changers all agreed
pushcarts made the city look bad.

Who knew how old the cabbage was,
if there was sawdust in the flour,
and why the hassle of winter transactions?

With first refusal for vacant buildings
they turned the pushcarts into boutiques,
put in heat, Glen Miller swing

on Sundays when the church bells ring,
and took ten cents on the dollar,

another ten went to Hizzoner,
and a dime was now a quarter.

Some long haired freak went berserk
and lashed all the vendors back to the street.
.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Matter of Lazarus Raised

He was the Son of God they said.
Why then nullify, My God!
the tomb when once disease was dead?

Would a brother have his sisters
help two hucksters with a scheme
live off alms in Palestine?

“Illusion” some would later say
that through the ages multiplied
like the storied loaves and fish.

Be that as it may.
What scribes ignored or never thought
was Lazarus brought a puppy up

to a carpenter's shop one day,
and that's the greater story
of love, not faith or glory.

 

[greenmountaineer]

On the Boardwalk, Seaside Heights

Step right up to win, my Friend,
a Toot n' calmin' horn.
Fifty-cents, throw the ball.
Hit three down Osama Bin Ladens.

Keeps you happy all day long.
You toot toot toot your Toot 'n calmin'
horn driving home or to the office
when traffic stalls on the Garden State.

Even comes with a suction cup.
Bought them in the Holy Land,
visiting the pyramids
forty-cents on the dollar.

But if you'd rather have instead
a blue eyed blonde hair bobble head
I got some dashboard Jesuses
I bought from a bishop in Rome.

A tweaked version of an earlier poem, inspired by Angie's Awakening and Seaside Heights on the Jersey shore where as a young man, I never saw enough bikinis.

BTW, today is the 70th anniversary of the birth of the bikini, first worn by an exotic dancer in St. Tropez because no professional model would agree to wear one.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Accident

Although not superstitious I,

why then oh why oh why

did I keep staring at

55554

until 55554 begat

55555?

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Power of Three

In China, lucky number nine,
Vegas, Baby, it's seven come eleven,
but one is the luckiest numbered
candle after a year of bliss
on a frosted cupcake under an elm
when the high noon city park sun
announces it's time to spread
our red and white checkered tablecloth,
a little salami with mustard on bread,
two warm bottles of Lipton Ice Tea,
and a dab of frosting on your tongue
since you said you're eating for two,
and as it happens, feeding me.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Nothing to Report

I petted cats and palmed the shoulders
of secretaries in shared apartments.
I woke at eight, walked to the office.

Dinner was also at eight. Fingernails
were always polished,
wrapped around Dom Pérignon.

My reports were mostly shared by
Protestants in tall buildings,
singing it was a very good year,

but soon my voice turned hoarse.
My words by the looks on their faces
were grunts. Confused, I scratched my chin

whose stubble now was gray,
and women who once wore pleather
didn't smile, looking away.

Why, just the other day, Louise
was buying coloring books
at Barnes & Noble on Bleaker Street

who promised to get together for coffee
some day, I suppose some Sunday morning
when I hear church bells ring,

disturbing sleep. I get up to pee,
unwrap my shirt from Mr. Ling's,
snake two arms in, sit down for the feet.

Perhaps I've gained a little weight.
My wallet's too big to fit in my pants,
even without the photos in it.

There is no one to take to brunch
and nothing to report I say.
Go back to bed; go back to sleep.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

I like the elasticity of time in that poem.

 

[greenmountaineer]

I like the elasticity of time in that poem.

Things do change over time, however much sometimes we don't want them to.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Devil in Miss Jones

Miss Jones is a home economics teacher
who hangs up her coat after school
as slowly as Mother gets out of bed
whose sheets are as yellow as the canary.

Margaret recalls her once hot body
that could have been pierced one night in Miami
with a Black Russian under her belt
while waiting for Liz, her roommate in college,
whose HUNGRY HEART burned on the skin,

but BORN TO BE WILD stayed in the needle
blue because Margaret's soul was white
as the mattress pad she Cloroxes
and changes each night after school
before Mother takes the stairlift up.

Ring! Ring! It's him. Tweety sings
like a love bird in the living room
where lights are dim, a beer's on ice,
and a frosted glass, narrow in the middle,
awaits Willy's thirsty fingertips.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Patrimony

When a dime was more than a dime
you got to fly on the ferris wheel
to feel as if you could reach the stars
for seven cents on a Sunday
in Palisades Park on the Hudson,
a penny for each up and down,
and 3 in change meant an apple
before fried mackerel for supper
after you hitched home to pick worms
from Mother's cabbage in her garden.

All the green in the vacant lot came
from cow shit you shoveled in Mr. Stone's barn
the city wants through eminent domain
with high end designs finer than cabbage,
seen from the second floor bedroom window
you shared with your brother Mike
who says he wants to go to college
because Father Murphy said he writes
a lot like William Butler Yeats.

And you, go ahead and say it, thought "butler?"
while up on the flat top roof the streets
stank as much as your father's
six days a week meat cutter's sweat
whose take home was barely enough
for Mother's mackerel again after mass
where pennies for heaven went in a basket
because there wasn't a chicken
in every pot like they promised.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Three Nesting Dolls

Babushka puts on a happy face
and says she's a swan on a lake
after she turns on the victrola
she likes to dance to in the parlor

and says her mamushka named her Odette
and I say "Silly Babushka!
Your name isn't Odette
and we live with Mamushka in Brighton Beach!
where there is no lake, Babushka,
but Mrs. Fenimore, my teacher said
the ocean is down the street."

Babushka dances anyway
while I play with my nesting dolls
whose eyes are as black as Mamushka's
and sad as Babushka's at night
who always sings me a lullaby
when it's time to go to sleep.

And one time I asked my babushka
why Mamushka paints her eyes
and goes to the porch to turn on the light
when strange men come in from the sea.

 

[greenmountaineer]

AIDS 1980

In the querulous
mood of the room
bystanders loom
feeling sterile.

You, horizontal,
peer in the dark.
Latex hands
needle the mark.

No phlegm nor rheum
can twist to cheat
strapped to a loom
your viral heat.

I open the sash
to exit there
the vapid air
of dust and ash.

In the querulous
mood of the room
bystanders loom
feeling sterile.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Empathy

When he said "Ouch!"
I said "Oh?"
I didn't know
the grouch
whose toe
I stepped on.

His name is Joe.
He told me so.
Joe's no grouch.
He just said "ouch!"
Nor was my toe
Joe's quid pro quo.

 

[legerdemer]

Playing with rhyme more, gm? Your Empathy also has a Seussian lilt to it. I liked it.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Playing with rhyme more, gm? Your Empathy also has a Seussian lilt to it. I liked it.

Certainly with light verse. The AIDS poem, of course, isn't. I found a poem by Paul Verlaine, on the of French Symbolist poets, with the same structure once which for some reason I found haunting. I didn't understand why then and still don't. Verlaine probably would have said, "Ça, c'est bon."

 

[greenmountaineer]

Ogden's Like Everyone Else But Richer

Ogden, you have too much cash
and your Cadillac's an omnibus;
but if you drove a ’55 Nash,
you’d drive like the rest of us

who are as poor as you were before
“Candy is dandy, but liquor quicker”
they paid you to write in Baltimore.

Quite the affluent city slicker,
that’s what you are, Mr. Nash,
having your pheasant under glass
and a second helping of Hagaan Daz.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Four Things You Think of

Running down your shoulder
back up to your brain

discloses number two:
There must be a God.
First came the pain.

Of course not, you fool.
So you brainstorm number 3.
It must be something I ate

until you think of God again.
What for?

 

[greenmountaineer]

Phillip Errington

"How about if I sleep a little longer and forget all this nonsense?
Franz Kafka

Phillip Errington, having just finished
reading The Origin of Species,
decided that God never existed,
and life back then, such as it was,
began with nuclear fission.

Phillip Errington spit out the tip
of his two pound sterling cigar
inside his wainscoted library den,
enjoying another snifter of
Louis the Fourteenth Rémy Martin
wherein forthwith and to wit,
having drunk too much Louie,

he fell asleep and turned into
a bug beneath a wandering Jew
with a basket of loaves and fishes.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Truth is not Beauty

Imperfection is. That cleft lip remnant,
having been sutured long ago
that knows how to kiss,

that pink petal birthmark
turning your cheek, Love, into a rose
beneath bedroom eyes by candlelight,

the incision positioned just right
in the middle of your abdomen,
pointing the way towards heaven,

and, my Dearest, your once slender hips
that ache for another accouchement.

That is what beauty is.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Very nice.