Best Magazine Poems
I like to buy different magazines
And bring them to my home
Cut out all the faces
And replace them with my own
I always look so happy
In other peoples lives
I can be the best of husbands
Along side the best of wives
It all depends on my mood
On any given day
I could be hang gliding in the South Pacific
Or hiking the hills of Mandalay
On a beach in Florida
With perfect kids flying a kite
At a Hollywood premier
My face on any star I like
I used to lead a boring life
As I sat around at home
Now pasting my face in different magazines
I go and do anything I want
I just purchased NASA monthly
Dare I go to the moon
If they picture two astronauts together
You know I'd go with you
There's this island magazine I've been saving
From a travel agency
Can't wait to paste my face out swimming
In the bluest of the bluest seas
I'll flip through all the pages
Till I come up with the perfect tan
On top of the perfect body
Then I will be the perfect man
It's not always fun and games
I do have a serious side
When I paste my face onto orphans or the homeless
Then wet the pages as I cry
There's so many different things I do
Depends on the mood and the magazine
What peaks my interest at the store that day
And who it is I'd like to be
Certainly worked my bum off today
Creating a 40 page magazine, still making hay
You'd think I've had enough
Of this graphic design stuff
But it keeps me alive and the grey clouds away
© Jack Ellison 2015
Jack, age 6, loves the iPad he uses in kindergarten. He already navigates the net to some degree. But when he accompanied his father to the Post Office, he sat quietly on a bench and read something in print while he waited, no electronics available to distract him.
Jack was caught in the act by his father, armed with a cell phone, who sent the photo immediately to his grandfather many miles away. The grandfather, as usual, was sitting at his computer, typing away, no print nearby to distract him.
The grandfather sent children’s magazines to Jack but in kindergarten the boy has become electronically mesmerized. Magazines don’t have the same appeal.
HIs iPad offers action, moving parts, and that understandably appeals to a child who would rather see a giraffe eat from the top of a tree than read about the giraffe doing it in print.
No poetry or fiction at the Post Office so who knows what caught Jack’s attention but there are words among the graphics he’s looking at on paper rather than on a screen.
The grandfather from infancy on was suckled on print but now in his dotage he takes nourishment at a computer.
So who is he to worry about Jack not reading newspapers and magazines. The boy's only 6.
Times change, the grandfather must remember, and generations must adjust.
He once read four newspapers a day in Chicago. Now he reads the one newspaper published in St. Louis.
Print publications may be terminal.
At the Post Office, however, as young Jack discovered, print is still breathing.
Donal Mahoney
Cosmopolitan Magazine!
The bible of my youth
How to be a ‘modern girl’
In this brave new modern world
Pages of ‘recipes’ for how to live my life
How to be a bright young thing
And for later,
How it would be when I became a wife
Because you see
According to ‘Cosmo’
It wasn’t going to be
Just how it had always been
For generations of women from the North
It promised a new dawn
Where men would be
Sensitive to emotions
Active in childcare
Attentive around the home
They wouldn’t just come in
Flop in front of the TV
Expecting everything to be done
‘Cosmo’ promised me a modern kind of man
Believing it (every word)
To be true
I proudly showed my Nan
And declared!
Nan! This is what husbands are going to be like
When I have one!
Nan just sighed
Shook her head and said
“Not round here they’re not!”
Certainly worked my bum off today
Creating a 40 page magazine, still making hay
You'd think I've had enough
Of this graphic design stuff
But it keeps me alive and the grey clouds away
Your Exclusive Magazine
By your exclusive magazine we are enchanted
And all the many flowers people have planted
So we can watch everyone of them bloom
Then place into vase and put in every room.
Read about prisoners in war they abhor
In state that southern soldiers still do adore
Maybe might be a story about a musician
Or what has become some Big Foot superstition.
In middle of Carolina are most of the smartest
And we're sure you'll love to find a local artist
Or us under an umbrella on a bright beach
Watching seagulls strut and hearing them screech.
James Thomas Horn
www.poetrysoup.com
How is this one? Clamming and looking for shells sounds a lot more relaxing to me too.
Hope "Our State NORTH CAROLINA" magazine will like it. After all!!! It is about them.
Running, but sitting
Down.
The sun is fading
Fast now.
Torn skin on the
stained church window
is fleshy and fresh.
I look at you
and wonder where we'll
end up.
So different, but yet
the Same.
And parking lots,
Dismantled school,
and bathroom exposure
Makes me curious
Computer code
and early was
our comradery.
And you perhaps
Normal.
What a sentiment
and nothing more.
Magazine Madame measures mammoth mackerels
Manipulating measurements, marking misguided memos
Momentous mistakes moves and muffles meager mackerels
Manufactured mutilated memo mystifies many, milking money
Magazine magistrate Marine Morey measures mackerels
Making meticulous memories, mimicking Magazine Madame
Magazines
I used to read Readers Digest
it was like the Fox channel
before internet
and we believed yet thought
something was wrong,
Israel was great in a sea of hatred
and the magazine never said
a thing about Palestine whose land
was stolen.
Arabs want to kill Israeli
Bastards we thought forgetting about
holocaust which happened in our
back- yard. But then we grew and
read books
giving us a different view, yet we
sensed that being successful we should
keep our innocence of mind
we had when reading
“Readers Digests” and its odd sense
of humour which we were asked
to be serious about
If only I could get you out of the magazine
I would do it as quickly as it could be
But I am not in the fairyland to do the magic
And much more, I have no power to do it.
The only thing I can do as of the moment
Is to bring you into my world of imagination;
Taking nothing but the precious time
That only you and me would share.
Love begets love, many people believe in this old line.
But how can it be realized?
You and me living separate lives;
I am here, and you are in the magazine.
But I don't lose my hope
That someday you would come into my world,
And that fantasy would become a reality,
A lady in the magazine - the real you.
Al Jaffee
He is missed MADly.
A rascal at heart,
smiles to impart.
Everyone wears tuxes and evening gowns
on the beach
and high heeled shoes
or highly polished winged tips
in magazines, anyway, the beautiful people.
Can you imagine walking or even trying
to walk in sand in high-heeled shoes?
Or how extra pretty your long dress
will look after it gets into wet sand?
Here they are. The ultra rich
on the cover of a prominent magazine
flaunting their evening gowns and high heels
in a beach on the sand.
This reminds me of something my cousin
told me once. You know those turkeys
on magazine covers that you look at
around Thanksgivings time?
They look perfect!
We can never get ours to look the same.
Okay. Here is the rub. Those turkeys are
PAINTED. They are RAW. Did not know that did you?
Sometimes what we see is not what is real at all.
Magazines with gorgeous people come to our house consistently.
We have six grandchildren who attend a private school.
They have a magazine-selling quota and we used to try to help them meet it.
Magazines line our hallways, are stacked on top of the refrigerator, and surround our TVS.
And we have nineteen TVs.
There are magazines under our pillows, under our mattress, and between the box springs.
They have replaced the platform that we used to use to hold the bed up.
We do not read them.
We used to try, but discovered they are rather boring
As we do not know any of these gorgeous people on the covers.
Except Oprah.
I do know Oprah.
We are avidly watching Nick at Night
And old Carol Burnett TV shows and John Wayne movies.
We know them too.
Watching them is in vain tonight, as our eyes keep wandering to the little black cocker spaniel puppy
Who keeps slipping and sliding on magazines as she tries to get to her recliner.
Designer shoe ads
Magazine ridiculous
Overpriced items
Movie stars can afford them
Regular people cannot
Exorbitant price
Two thousand dollar blouses
Dresses? Do not ask
Money I will never have
Magazine ridiculous
I used to love People Magazine
Which may be why I am still getting it
Delivered to my house thirty years later
I stare at the strangers on the cover
Flip through pages about people I do not know
I want a specialized magazine
We will call it Old People Magazine
It will feature people I know
Cher, Tina Turner, Eddie Murphy
But if we named it Old People Magazine
Would I be the only subscriber?
Probably.
Better name it
Sassy Seasoned Stars
or Crones and Codgers