Long 1940s Poems

Dad hit me only once, an upper cut to the solar plexus. It nearly lifted me off my feet. I was 17 then and already fairly tall, 6’1.” He was 48 and of medium height,...

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Hold the phone, hold the freakin’ phone. Lisa’s got a boyfriend!
I’ve never seen Lisa with a boyfriend. Lisa draws men like fireworks on a dark night, but I’ve never seen her keep one. I mean,...

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I grew up and out on a four family-owned,
and cooperatively-organized,
extended matriarchal farm.

Four interdependent 1940s through 1970s patriarchally managed businesses,
without substantial questions about who should wear pants,
yet with a surprising matriarchal cooperative understory.

The boxers outnumbered the...

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A problem for more successful Nazi leaders
during the early exterminating 1940s
was what would they be
should they no longer have any reason to war against
the soon to be extinct Jews.

Yes, they were a nation of Aryan...

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When playtime was over my tiny hands tediously picked up Tyco toys, a fistful of three at a time. "Atta girl," my dad would encourage. This daunting task was heroically spared when his master hands...

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The Barefoot Days of Summer

By Elton Camp

	When I was a child in rural Alabama during the 1940s, going barefoot during the summer months was still a general practice, especially for boys.  It was feasible...

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I
The historical record shows many intimate connections between Arabs, Muslims, Hebrews and Jews, and Babylon. The nation we equate with Israel began as tribes in the deserts of Arabia. Some of them were allies, some...

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Remembering Old-Time Telephone Service 

By Elton Camp

Only a few decades ago, the wireless telephones that have become so much a part of our lives were inconceivable and remained so until the advent of Star Trek...

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Boots, Love, and Alien Diplomacy

My love is five five, a sturdy delight,
With eyes like warm coffee just kissed by the night.
His hair oh, it's brown, but wait, there's a glint,
Silver like stardust, a celestial hint.

A...

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Once, inside o' an Irish family's Derrygoolin farmhouse in the 1940s,
A boy named Anthony heard the woman whose word is death, himself, foreseen.

When the reaper's cloak appears to those who choke,
And his cowl upon ye'...

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Tom sat fer-nent the table within a smoker's chair
A table pot of pra-tes and bacon quivers there 
The cook an apron dirty wipes the grease and clears her throat 
She cooks her husband dinner the...

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When we watch movies from the 1930s, 1940s, and1950s and into the 1960's and see black americans mostly playing domestic servants I am offended by it, by the lack of opportunity they had, the lack...

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If you don’t grok (1) this does it mean
That I’m too smart and you’re not keen
Enough to even cut a cabbage,
Contemplate a simple adage?
 
If you don’t grok this who’s to blame
The pen, the paper, ‘Pudding...

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Kindheartedness

Ellen had a lot of experience in washing nappies, six bairns in less than eight years. William 
Chapman had a lot to answer for. Everyone knew, or thought they knew, what poor Ellen had 
to...

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It was sometime during the 1940s George Orwell 
wrote the acclaimed novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four,
a book exposing a societal condition of pure hell.
The policy of draconian control has never meant more
than it does now as political...

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55 plus years of marriage down the drain
She watches it spin and spin 
It is too much to process the pain 
Her mind usually a flurry 
No longer a need to hurry

Her Husband departed on...

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He is the sinking of the final red orange sun of the glowing summer 
Warmth no longer oozing and seeping into the pores as I lie bare under the skies 
Jeweled dewdrops on the morning...

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Pa Honks the Horn  With a Tree for Christmas Morn   
             

        ...

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The draper shop in Drumshanbo town was busy on the day
The girls were moving bales of cloth and packing shelves away
Are you allowed to dance tonight Jackie's hall we all can sway
It's a ceili Band...

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peter marks, rhymes with sharks, warns the people
To be sharp.? Your life he wishes I note to save.?
He advocates 'a new stab' in three months its to be
Made.? I thought in the (dark winter) exerscise...

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The music 
is her breath, 
or…wind…

into the open
bottle. The songs
of folk-lore.

***

Around her bon-fire, 
embers sear the sleeve,
of her Hoodie;

The sparks 
are as red
as the blood

of a burst 
aneurism.

Thus...
she could have

a "broken heart".

The sparklers
in their hands,

the...

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Remembered the 1940s, the season of the holocaust.
Six million irons, disjointed from their ores
Were forged in bottomless pits of anvils.
The swarming bees in a ceremonious buzzing
Were uncoupled from their hives through Reichsbahn.
However, a tensed, stale...

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Late 1940s England

the square
   was packed
& the high street full
meat&veg seemed plentiful

market barkers
  drew the queues
with jokes
         impromptu

shoppers filed
     neat&...

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At first sight of first snow colour 
Scrapbook memories stir with folk within
Where spirits of love, caring, and sharing were
Whispers of our life we shared, brings wet tears that blur
Of the old farmhouse toasty and...

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We accept the GREAT Grace of Jesus, works of pure love
So we get eternity and so much else

Does it mean we defend those who steal and hurt others
again and again and again and again (only...

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