Writers and poets are a different breed
They live and breathe phrases and concepts
Awash with all manner of clever speech
At engaging the reader, they're adept
They invite viewers on travels to distant lands
To discover strange customs and beliefs
To experience a whole new world apart
The Rain Forests, The Great Barrier Reef
Through the eyes of these intrepid travellers
We witness different morals and rituals
Experiences people wouldn't normally view
Many are very sacred and spiritual
Imagine if we didn't have these literary giants
To warn us of mistakes of the past
The Great Depression, the two World Wars
How great nations through history never last
Writers and poets are a different breed
They focus on the ethereal side of being
Flying high above the distant horizons
In a world of unknown and unseeing
Together, my parents faced two world wars, the great depression, floods, fires, and some things that would bring most people to their knees. Imagine just where I would be if they had just decided that things were too rough and chucked in the towel. At the time, I didn’t think they had a lot to give. But looking back, I’m amazed at how much I got.
steak’s what I wanted
bologna is what I got—
never went hungry
the 1934 model 40 B Fordor deluxe sedan idled outside the gas station
Inside was Clyde Barrow, who was robbing the place
His moll, Bonnie Parker, sat inside the car, holding a shotgun
these notorious robbers were deemed “Robin hood figures”
This was the Great Depression; their crime spree teased imaginations
Stories and rumors followed them from Texas to Missouri
They took their gangster car to Oklahoma and New Mexico
Robbing gas stations, and small town banks
People liked watching them shoot things up and act wild
They were famous for their daring and their pizzazz
Bonnie was only twenty four when she died
Clyde was twenty-five, but they are remembered
and weirdly revered, even though they were gangsters
who terrorized people and small town bankers
they outsmarted the police for twenty-one months
their crime spree was a subject of books and a movie
which has continued their legacy; making them forever famous.
Happy Number 110, Dad
Thanks to you I can recall
Life before the Internet
and the shopping mall
I remember your office
a cabinet, desk and chair
Open the window
if you wanted fresh air
You maneuvered tough times
the Great Depression, WW2
Today more than ever, Dad
I'm humbled by you
___________________________________
Had he lived, my dad would be 110 years
old today, Feb. 17, 2024. He shares his
birthday, by the way, with Michael Jeffrey
Jordan.
They say we struggle til we die,
If that's the case I don't want to fight to stay alive,
Feels like a crime,
Stealing money from our pockets the government doesn't leave us a dime,
Homelessness is at an all time high,
Yet Trudeau fills the media with all his lies,
Bring in the democracy,
Where's the inaccuracy,
We are worst off now than the great depression,
The people are getting worse with regression,
It's easier to by alcohol and drugs then food or a roof over our heads,
A fire in our hearts is dying,
As well as our want to live
No one wants to work when it doesn't do a dent,
They think it's easy paying off rent,
Landlords squeeze you for everything you don't have and expect you to repent,
They say we struggle til we die,
That's life,
I don't think I can take another strife,
I don't want to die,
But I'm not surviving,
I'm six feet in debt,
How are we supposed to pay,
I don't want to stay,
But there's no hope for the poor,
And to care for others is a chore when you have nothing to give,
They say we struggle til we die,
So here I lie in the debt of a ditch,
wishing to be buried and just get it over with.
Free market economist, Ludwig Von Mises
Ably pinpointed economic diseases.
Yet, when we’re told the feds fixed the great depression,
Ludwig knew it was caused by fed intervention.
I am the roaring twenties
And the cotton club.
I am Al Capone and his
Thugs.
I am the rise of Joseph
Stalin.
I am the age of science
And penicillin.
I am Walt Disney and
Mickey Mouse.
I am electricity in
My house.
I am the stock market
Crash.
I am the first Academy
Award bash.
I am Miss America pageant
The first time.
I am Valentino dies reads
The headlines.
I am the great depression
Sweeps the land.
I am Lindbergh on north
Atlantic flight plan.
I am Betty Crocker and
Wonder bread.
I am the great migration
Watch me spread.
I am speakeasies and Gerber
Baby food.
I am the age of Jazz puts
You in the mood.
I am the woman's right to
Vote ,19th amendment.
I am seven-up, Coca cola's
First resentment.
Turbo1904
7/5/21
"Seventh Heaven (007)"
According to local legend
Regarding the Great Depression
And Armageddon
Nearing seventh heaven
Still on that 007
Sent him and her toward hell or heaven
Close to or far from a 711
At approximately 11:07
En route and hot pursuit
Of the root of the absolute
Yet it always leads to a dispute
Staying ready to shoot
If need be leave thee scene and scoot
Many quick to snoop
And toot their own horn or flute
Quick to call another uncouth
Acceptance or rebuke
It's the truth
Not a spoof or fluke
And what they dilute
Able or couldn't compute
Therefore it was a bloop
Since a youth
In and out the booth
Occasionally having a drink with Vermouth
In space with a spacesuit
On earth eating grapes and grapefruit
Had a baseball card of Babe Ruth
As an addict
Still at it
Or gave it the boot
A world full of kooks
Threatening to nuke
The cycle continues to loop
They don't but they should be addressing me as the Duke
But they continue to stoop
Staying solo or in a group
Never really getting the inside scoop
Because they're being duped
This poem is dedicated to Souper Joyce Johnson! “The Greatest Generation” was penned by newscaster Tom Brokaw in 1998 and became a best seller. This generation is defined as people born between 1901 and 1927 who survived the Great Depression and World War II.
The Great Depression
World War II
Multiple epidemics
Assassination of a president
At 80 Joyce picked up her poetic pen
Joining Poetry Soup, way back then
Lifetime of memories and wisdom she shares
Musings from a woman who loves and cares
Surviving life-changing losses
Burying her parents
Losing her beloved husband
And all her siblings
As her century mark approached, a publisher phoned
Seeking to spread the perspectives Joyce owned
“Lifetime Memories in Verse,” a special archive
Joyce’s poems displayed to keep memories alive
History repeats
From past mistakes we learn
Our “Greatest Generation” is disappearing
Tap their wisdom now
*March 9, 2021
For Line Gauthier’s “Poetry as Legacy” Contest
Nation huddled in darkness
As a leader emerged
Promising a “New Deal”
Recovery from the Great Depression
Our thirty-second president
Wise, compassionate
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Beacon of hope for families
Warm Spring’s historic train, now rusty
Once carried people with polio
Visitors to FDR’s Little White House
Hoping tepid water would ease their plight
Touring the White House museum,
You can see the bed where he died
Beloved president of 12 years
During the harshest of times
Hungry and homeless Americans
Overcame the Great Depression
Only to enter a second World War
Upon the bombing of Pearl Harbor
His comprehensive programs
propelled a struggling nation to rebound
Created infrastructure jobs
Taught people new skills
Elected four times
Roosevelt was a born leader
With the problems we have today
We pray a new leader will show us the way
*January 16, 2021
For L. Milton Hankins’ “Your Favorite President” contest
the road to revolution (no, REALLY)
Do you guys remember your history classes by any chance?
I was browsing through my AP World history class book,
in my not-entirely-wanted, new-found, infinite leisure time when it struck me……
The world is pandemic-ally on fire
our orderly systems haywire.
Trump thinks the problem is ventilators and masks
his senile mind can’t comprehend the needed tasks.
Twelve hundred dollars is that a joke?
The whole healthcare system is broke.
More unemployed than the great depression
when your bank account's empty, it's more than recession.
Problems multiply in non-linear scope:
no jobs, no money, no food, no hope?
If government can’t find real, effective, quick solutions
for its purpose it’s failed - onto revolution!
Maybe this is why my Mom says I shouldn’t watch the news…
I was a west Texas oil boom baby
Born just in time for the Great Depression
We lived in the Dust Bowl when you could see
Then came World War Two in quick succession
Russia launched Sputnik and it changed my life
I was a scientist in the cold war
We spied from space on everything that moved
And went to the moon - which is pretty far
Then I retired and I hung up my woes
And wrote a poem just to see how it goes
9-28-19
Contest: Story of my life in ten lines
Sponsor: Silent One
I was already old
When I first saw the photograph
My mother - twenty something - before my birth
Deep in the great depression and dust bowl
How long, Oh Lord
Sand a half foot deep on the porch
The beauty in her face was there
But her eyes were dead - and cold
No hint of a smile from lovely lips
That later kissed my cheek
How long, Oh Lord
Fence in the yard three feet under sand
The dynamic beauty she became
Is not there - not in this picture
Even the house - devoid of paint - is hopeless
No animals in sight on this small farm
How long, Oh Lord
It took an oil boom to change this photograph
9-12-19
Writing Challenge 2, September 2019 - The Photograph
Sponsor, Dear Heart - Wiishkobi Ode
Born in the latter part of The Great Depression
Don't know how my parents managed with eight dependants
I was the last in '35
But we all survived
Growing veggies in the yard avoiding senseless obsolescence
The Great Depression and then the Dust Bowl -
I was but a child as these took their toll
And as the light went from my mother's eyes
Who could understand the wheres and the whys
Then followed the war that swallowed the world
And re-lit the spark as our flag unfurled
Mother worked hard in the teeth of that gale
Never thought of loss though the light grew pale
Then one day it was over finally
My mother squeezed my hand and winked at me
She had known it all along, hadn't she
Not ever before had she winked at me
Then the years fell away till all were done
Should have said I was proud to be her son
How many words have tumbled from my head
But, oh, that sentence that I left unsaid
4-17-19
Contest:What Was Left Unsaid
Sponsor:Line Gauthier
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