Best 1962 Poems

Like love ones come to view a parting ship
Before the anchor lifts
And its iron lips prow the salty waves
We journeyed from our busy day and penny pay
And the indifferent utterances to our cause
We came tattlering and joking and tired
Of the conditions simulating the bitter colonial
We wiped the bread crumbs from our mouth
Stood erect with eyes...

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Proud I am children, proud for sure, proud of day and proud of night
I can finally turn the key in my own door
No latent echoes filled with omnious warnings
Measuring out my freedom in abbreviated noons
And uncoiling mornings with elastic circuit of the sun
I can plant my own ten acres of banana more
Beach my own canoe...

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In 1962, I was a caseworker, not a social worker, in the Cabrini-Green Housing Project in Chicago. In that era, the difference between a caseworker and a social worker was simple. A social worker had a degree or two in social work and was qualified to work with the poor. A caseworker usually had a...

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After the storm, my brother
(all gangly knees and elbows)
bore the brunt of its ferocious aftermath.

Every day after school
I watched his wiry biceps bulge a little
as his handsaw scritched against the tree
which had fallen diagonally across our front yard.

I witnessed the violence of metal on wood,
the violence of The King of the Mountain’s smirk
as he too...

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Penny Candy Paradise, 1962


My little fingers
tightly clench
six saved pennies,
as I hurry to the drugstore
 aisle filled with
penny candy treasures,

….as far as my
eyes can see.



07/21/10
11:03pm...

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On June 25, 1962 prayer was taken out of school
It was like losing a ring's precious jewel 
If you look into America's history 
You will find that it is no mystery
From that date on we haven’t been as strong
I believe we have done something terribly wrong
What they teach in history books simply overlooks
Important information that...

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MIDNIGHT DATE AT HARRY'S -- June 1962
I know you're laughing.
Sittin there on that strait back chair
laughing laughing laughing.
Hey! Psssstttt....Maria....
you wanta see some dirty postcards?
Maria Mia when did you move to Italy?
What's it gonna be, he or me?
I seen you down to the market square
lookin like a five hundred lire lady shopping for
sweet potato(e)s.
Merci!
No, I mean...

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Old ways have a way to replay
Scenes from forgotten melodies;
Those stray feelings that recall stay
Upon the whim of plain fancy.


See how my years have flown away,
Clinging to my journey story;
I barely recall yesterday,
How strange these fading memories?


Dangling strands of cacophony,
Old Mattar Road that paved my stay;
Stray echoes now pestering me,
Those faded faces gone away.


By that...

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Pete and I were gob smacked by these saviors in October of sixty-two.
Women in our apartment swiftly efficiently measured our heads too.
We both wanted to know why, but back in the sixties, kids did not ask.
The women were gluing and shaping with vigor, an arduous task

Kids were sent to our kitchen to get their heads...

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Courage is a quality that describes well this star who fought an uphill battle since childhood when abandoned by a mother suffering from mental issues, and later having to overcome sexual abuse in several foster homes - then trying to build a career for herself while trapped in an era where sexy women weren't taken...

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 School was out for annual Christmas break
Ice and snow hung around many a week
A friend and I did what one should not do
Went onto a frozen canal to skate
Some lads we knew were giving us some cheek
Boohoo
One lad pinched my friends hat from off her head
Chased him I did, what came next haunts me...

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When my twin sister and I were ten, we built snow forts.
It took us most of the day, and we were excited about it.
We came in for a break and ate grilled cheese and tomato soup.
Our cheeks were all pink, and we were laughing.

Our mother suggested we should stay inside the rest of the day.
No...

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As we sit in the car
my sister, mother, father, and me
steam rises off our rain-sodden clothes
and the air fills with the smell 
of damp coats and wet sheep.
I 'spect;
I'll never smell sheep
wet or dry.
Or see one; other than as we pass by;
from the window of our shiny red car.
"They look just like clouds," I say
"Silly...

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Berlin, City of Espionage;
split by a wall, divided into four
only approached from the west
by road, rail, and air corridor.
Still carrying traces of the Berlin
of Isherwood’s thirties days
so very cosmopolitan still
with its big Capital City ways.

A certain grand style and 
a sort of debauched air
contrasts of the strip clubs with
the Eternal Flame burning there,
not to be...

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Quincy, Illinois: 1962
 
          long before Barack Obama
 
Those days my father toiled in Quincy,
two weeks, no more,
he said he saw no blacks, except for
two young ladies busing dishes.
Daisy badges on their uniforms
announced their names,
their years of service.
He still remembers how
through all his meals
he wanted to...

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