Long Hammocks Poems

The noise aboard the motor boat reminds me that I was not alone
The high perspiration smell from the young couple sitting beside me
caused me to remember the green wood’s in Virginia and the squirrels
chasing each...

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...and then just as suddenly, constellations appeared in a daytime sky, framed by white pines crawling with multicolored caterpillars.  So from this day forward, they would search the sky for more star pictures. They...

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Suddenly, I would give anything to be near you.
I would buy back our old house, broken down, dilapidated.
Loquat trees and rainbows removed.
Hammocks and honeysuckle given to the wind.
But where would you be?
Would you visit me...

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~ 

3:15 am…blurred red numbers tell as
I stir, reaching for what I have seen,
grasping for the moments spent in the presence of beauty
as once again you have visited me in a dream…

Pure white flowing whispered...

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(10/13/12)

At the beginning of “64” - I packed up my uniform
And walked out the door- it was the beginning of
The Vietnam war.
By August of that same year
President  Johnson started the draft
Under protests and jeers.

Then...

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MR. PLAYER COMES CALLING

Playful monkeys on trunks of gold.
Banana like branches, like hammocks.
“My friends and family dynamics…
Oh, the fun of the life I pleasantly hold!”

Jealous of a competing tree…so calm.
So busy at her task, sun...

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If I were to decorate the winter trees,
arms gangly gray in a crooked freeze,
with leaves of mint sugar and paper mache flowers,
how long do you think it would take?

I would need ladders and pulleys and...

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I can take it
Even If I must fake it
I can take it
Even if I am socially naked
I can take it
Even if I don't get to be famous
I can take it
Even if I hear I love...

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Don't tell me I'm beautiful when I've done something different with my make-up
Don't call me beautiful because I've bought a new bra and you can see it through my shirt
And never tell me I'm beautiful
Because...

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Lisa, a fellow freshman who lives in our neighbor suite, is a breathtaking beauty from New York - the kind of beauty that toppled ancient Greek empires - a sun-like beacon to the male sex....

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This is a perfect world
A world that although not perfectly round,
although it seemingly wobbles like a top in its uneasiness and discontent with its occasional imbalances,
is perfect in its imperfections.

Even as flames engulf the garden,
licking...

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When winter months become morose
And everything around is blue and froze
Gets disheartening even for the eskimos
Their morale starts to dwindle and decompose

They tread most lightly on cautious tippytoes
For fear their neighbors will become bellicose
They bite...

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we poets are waiting for the moonset 
sitting on my balcony, evolutions shamans
now wandering the beach
we are solving every social ill
while walking Blake's path of excess
to some palace of wisdom
this sojourn has but one worry
the...

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A patriotic bunting, hanging from a porch,
black lines of a Model-T, back when we liked Ford,
porcelain sign from the 30s, somehow ad and art,
the fun and fear we got from tossing a lawn dart.
Rich, decadent...

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FLEEING IRMA

spotlight moon, full, like an Old Testament cloud, leading
Floridians forth, not into the desert, but away from the wrath
of Irma.  bumper to bumper, neighbors from pilot to caboose,
illuminated in each other’s flood beams....

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Dear Folks:  I pen this note as we ply the dark and stormy sea.
Thanks to Uncle Sam I'm cruising on the Queen Mary, all for free.
You'd think we'd travel in style on such a...

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Hammock Days

By Elton Camp

I don’t much like people for the old times pining 
“It was so much better back then,” they’re whining
I’ll take air conditioning, electronics & medical care
Such things that were rarely seen way...

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when I'm an old woman & live on an island somewhere
I'll have dreadlocks & nobody will care

chix will flock at my feet
both feathered and none
sleeping without all of his snoring
and coughing and wheezing
as the tropic...

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An episode of birds hovers beneath 
a marmalade moon , just for a while,
as  cotton-clouds sweep
the brushed limbs of a sky ready
to cradle the cloaks draping avian settlers;
those who like us ascend on hammocks
of...

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Vibram lugs 2 inches thick
	for edge work back when
	I was so young
	with mountains to climb

the leather uppers
	with mink oil spread
	in the oven baked
	again and again

Mountains I climbed
	and dusty trails walked
	like friends of old
	they still remain

in...

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When the sunshine burns off the morning dew
And the flowers unfold and smile
Then we gnomes will be ready to do what we must do
We'll prepare for the party with style

We'll get out our scythes and...

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Here is a time of anticipation,
hammocks poised for the days afternoon rain.
Glaring diamond sun, horizon ink black,
breezes stir hot thick air, thunder clouds call.

Sandhill Cranes graze in a lazy black stream,
glittering gold minnows lost as...

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Hold onto your spirit my old soul
my young nights floating in sky,
with black clouds moving to light stars
do war drums still pound against your sanity?

Signs of victory in labyrinths you'd found
but blazing sparks still burn...

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In the arms of my hammock, swaying with the breeze in leisure and  dream
Smiles of yesterday swim swirled  wave of  memories down stream 
I can picture what was, I can see what...

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There are simple pleasures in country things,
Hayrides and harvesting in the epoch of fall.
In the season when leaves fly with golden wings.

Porches where folks strum on guitar strings,
sharing iced tea and fond memories enthrall.
There are...

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