I spent much of my childhood being enraged
Fairness mattered to me
I was a kindness advocate
Deploring bullies, liars and thieves
Good thing I did not know about sex trafficking or rapists
I cannot imagine how incensed I would have been
My head was already purple red with anger most of the time
Injustices caused me angst, depleting my joy
There was a perpetual pout on my face
My lips protruded like the front bumper of a 1959 Chevy
I wanted her tailfins; hoping to back into people to hurt them
I spent much of my childhood being enraged
Categories:
tailfins, anger,
Form: Free verse
1959 pink Cadillac with tailfins
It was gorgeous, and cost five hundred dollars
A fifteen-year-old boy drove thirty miles to buy it.
He had been saving money for four years.
1959 pink Cadillac with tailfins
The boy was not old enough to drive it legally
So, he had his friend Randy drive it.
It was a distinctive car. I wish he still had it.
It would be worth a lot more than five hundred today
And I have been married to him for fifty years.
Categories:
tailfins, car,
Form: Prose Poetry
I remember when soda pop was a nickel
Same for a double strawberry popsicle,
Back then the best cars had long tailfins
We did silly things for “sh*ts and grins,”
Turned-up collars and slicked-back hair
We’d do almost anything on a dare,
Wearing white bucks, bell-bottom slacks
Playing marbles and eating cracker jacks,
Drive-In theaters and doing the jitterbug
The corner hangout where we cut a rug,
I remember flagging the Greyhound bus
A major form of transportation for us,
Clamp-on roller skates at the roller rink
With the Cold War, always on the brink,
Wild birthday parties playing Post Office
Where most of us got our first real kiss,
This was how it was way back then
When I was growing up and so, so thin!
Written April 19, 2022
Categories:
tailfins, childhood, growing up, memory,
Form: Couplet
1959 pink Cadillac with tailfins
It was gorgeous, and cost five hundred dollars
A fifteen-year-old boy drove thirty miles to buy it.
He had been saving money for four years.
1959 pink Cadillac with tailfins
The boy was not old enough to drive it legally
So, he had his friend Randy drive it.
It was a distinctive car. I wish he still had it.
1959 pink Cadillac with tailfins
An impulsive fifteen-year-old girl jumped on the hood
Dancing scratches all over it.
He kept his mouth shut "thinking it was cute"
I wish he still had that 1959 pink Cadillac
Even though I no longer have my dancing shoes
We have been married for fifty years
And that car would be worth more than five hundred dollars today!
Categories:
tailfins, car,
Form: Prose Poetry
Once, a hundred cigarettes
glowed in just one cinema.
Arrows flew yet all were near misses,
random unaimed bullets easily knocked over
bunches of whooping Comanches.
Some horses were shot unseen off-screen.
In small Midwest towns fantasy roamed unchecked
nibbling at young hearts and brains.
Many adults pinned their hopes
on the aerodynamic tailfins of Chevy Stingrays
and more spaceship roundness in their homes.
Malls proliferated on the edge of cornfields
where prayers were answered on Sunday.
All this was normal, no one marked our
lack of awareness, we were painted innocent
by a world that had come to terms with
its time.
We knew much was wrong
some radicals fought for the oppressed.
Texas Rangers stood ready to lasso
hordes of cartoon villains.
A few federal agents imagined time travel.
The whole country was going somewhere
and working hard to ignore where we were,
as if in fact, we were all stuck in a movie
peering over the glow of a hundred cigarettes.
Categories:
tailfins, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Pink as a baby’s bottom.
Pink as 1960’s Bazooka Bubblegum
Pink as Barbie’s Dream House
Pink as a 1959 Cadillac with chrome tailfins.
Pink as a perky, pretty, popular, pizzazz-y petite preteen.
We nicknamed her “Pinkie” which made her laugh.
Categories:
tailfins, girl,
Form: Free verse
Strappy white sandals with heavy heels
Clicking on the hood of his
1959 Pink Cadillac with the pink tailfins
Tappy Tappy Tap Tap Tap
If you think I am cute, your eyes can clap
Clickety Clickety Clickety Click. I am darling. My smile so thick.
He is sixteen, totally enthralled,
Ignoring the fact that his pride and joy car
will never be the same
It is our first date
I still have this pair of strappy clickety clack sandals
The ones I used to dance in the moonlight showing my cuteness
The ones that made his sixteen-year-old heart go pitter pat
I still have him too, and this was 1967 so….
What do you think of that?
Written May 18, 2019
Poetry Contest: Night Shoes
Sponsor: Anthony Slausin
Categories:
tailfins, dance, nostalgia, relationship,
Form: Free verse