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Best 1962 Poems


Lowering the Union Jack, 1962
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...

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Categories: 1962, history,
Form: Free verse
Raising of the Flag, 1962
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...

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Categories: 1962, history, green,
Form: Free verse
Caseworker, 1962
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...

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Categories: 1962, poverty,
Form: Prose

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry



After the Storm, Columbus Day, 1962
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...

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© Deb Rhodes  Create an image from this poem.
Categories: 1962, angst, brother, childhood, family,
Form: Free verse
Premium Member Penny Candy Paradise, 1962
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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Categories: 1962, happinesscandy, drug,
Form: Free verse
America After 1962
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...

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Categories: 1962, education, faith, fear, forgiveness,
Form: Couplet



Premium Member Midnight Date At Harry's -- June 1962
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...

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© Vee Bdosa  Create an image from this poem.
Categories: 1962, angst, black african american,
Form: Free verse
Premium Member Mattar Road 1962
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...

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Categories: 1962, change,
Form: Quatrain
Premium Member Protected Back In 1962
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...

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Categories: 1962, childhood, memory, nostalgia,
Form: Rhyme
Premium Member Norma Jeane 1926-1962
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...

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Categories: 1962, beauty, career, celebrity, nostalgia,
Form: Free verse
Premium Member Big Freeze Winter 1962-63 England
 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...

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Categories: 1962, christmas, fear, hero, winter,
Form: Curtal Sonnet
Premium Member Best Memory of 1962
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...

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Categories: 1962, 4th grade, 5th grade,
Form: Narrative
Premium Member A Day At the Beach-1962
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...

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Categories: 1962, boy, car, family, holiday,
Form: Free verse
Quincy Illinois: 1962
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...

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Categories: 1962, history
Form: Free verse
Berlin, September 1962
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...

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Categories: 1962, adventure, history, international, memory,
Form: Rhyme

Book: Reflection on the Important Things