Vaudeville Poems | Examples

fossils

In a lattice-lit dorm room sits a writer.
A discarded chemistry book lies beside her.
because ideas are hitting off her, like a collider.

Why does writing make her feel alive-er?
Cause it helps sort out the feelings inside her?

Repose is something grinding-study denies her.

Now, rhyming isn't her primary desire
the connections form, almost, despite her
poetry’s at it best when it comes unaware
“Oh,” she thinks, like we’re going there?

What she writes might eventually be shared
with that awareness she vowels with care
picking words when they seem the ripest
shaping phrases like some sort of stylist
she may be less of a poet than a typist

Her default is to narrative - like you read in novels
cause let’s face it - cold-poetry is as dead as vaudeville,
as buried as silent movies, letters and opera,
have I come to dig up Caesar, like a fossil?
.
.
cold = straight up

Oh Those Boswell Sisters

Some called the radio station demanding they throw them out of the studio.
Others called to brag about their talents, their arrangements, their sass.
Boswell sisters had been singing together since their Vaudeville days as teens.
Connee played sax and trombone,
Vet played banjo and guitar and Martha held down the piano.

They were popular in their hometown of New Orleans, playing with big bands.
Dorsey Brothers, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman all knew them.
These sisters blended “blackness” and “whiteness”, natural for them.
They loved to rework and rearrange popular songs; they were musicians.

They appeared in a film with Bing Crosby and Cab Calloway.
This led to thirteen appearances on the Bing Crosby Show.
Ella Fitzgerald patterned her style after Connee Boswell.
As did the Andrew Sisters a few years later.
The Boswells had a profound effect; incorporating scat, jazz and swing.

Let Me Entertain You

vaudeville stepped off the stage
and leapt into the living room
with hot topic-tuned antenna views

shy ventriloquists turned from radio
to television with a vision to be seen

juggling with eye-catching
candle-, duck-, and ten-, pins
off the bowler skids in aerial suspension

abracadabra handlers saw their guests -
half of them enjoyed their shows

hats and canes spinning, shoes tapping
all the old variety - hosts rolling eyes

acrobats rose above them all -
the fall guys, the masters of the skies

Marx, Burns, Allen, Fields, Benny
broke their audience records

showcase of holidays and war
in time with comedy and lyrics

The good old daze
replaced by supersonic, telephonic-cell
(the farmer in the dell throws down his pitchfork
to watch)
to hock back the latest, greatest craze
of series, not to purge, but to binge

staying carefully away from Burnett, Sonny and Cher,
Donny and Marie, and Ed.

drooping eyes spring glasses,
a glass of red or white…

elsewhere, the hypothalamus of the kids,
impacted by Squiddy, Stampy and CaptainSparklez

5/25/2023

The Flowers

The flowers like yellow topaz
Keep swaying in the breeze;
Such integrity Nature has
Alone with no pause and cease.

Let’s follow the Mother;
Let’s gather her integrity;
She alone knows forever
What’s called chastity.

Forget the people;
Forget the mob;
Garner your ripple;
Unleash your sob.

Let your sweetest sob
Create always something new;
Let the malicious mob
Know of its vaudeville view.

Let them envy,
Let them snarl;
Let them ill be;
Let them criticism hurl.

Many things shall take place,
But allow you trust self;
Mind, they’ll never show grace;
They’ll never offer help.

Whenever you are creative,
More criticisms will arise;
Still, you need to stay positive
To allow them return with sighs.

Learn from the flowers,
Leaning yet strong;
Open the doors of your bowers,
For creating song after song.

Role Playing With Strangers

We paddle through small talk,
I like her, she has style.
I imagine we have a history together
back in an old movie that I have yet to see.

I begin to construct a lost and anecdotal life.
In another place we’re a vaudeville act
wisecracking between meal tickets.
Our home, a trunk covered in Midwest decals.
We share the occasional Spam sandwich,
theater gossip and sleaze; we cuddle
as we trundle along
long defunct rail tracks.

We date in elevators,
make out in a battered Oldsmobile.
In Bangkok, we share a ride in a Tuk-Tuk
careening down narrow streets.
On any sidewalk, we meet regularly
as reflections in windowpanes.

Today you’ve gone to Guatemala
to fight for a right.
Marimba music plays
as you climb up my spine.

Time now to rent more space
outside these traveling dreams.

Ventriloquist

Wooden mouth eats word and threat. 
Frozen eye stares through vaudeville glaucoma.
The master is mimicked, masked, and mocked.

Doll tuxedo stretched from neck to crotch.
Head swivels to whiplash punchlines.
If it’s all in good fun, why do I want to die?

Neck telescopes and voice screeches.
Tears spurt from stage to footlight.
Two are one, yet double of what cannot exist.

It’s nearly there, nearly a man, a malformed thought.
Hanging on the edge of another world.
A fleeting spectre in a funhouse mirror.

Curtain lowers beneath dying lights.
Gathered terrors are delivered home.
Yet tiny footsteps follow behind.

Remember crimson rictus.
Lips move, but words never come.
On cue the final joke falls flat.

Avoiding the Flames

You are in your blue period -
turquoise swimsuit, buoyant in azure.

Behind your shoulder,
Brighton West Pier,
A snap taken at an amateurish angle,
you’re diving sideways into the waves,
the gaily painted structure
tumbling after you.

A day later, the pier burnt down.  
Charred wooden bones,
black skeletal pilings stumped naked.

Vaudeville, lyceum, taproom, and arcade
once rocked beneath bunting and banners
now only wrecked rafters,
broken fingers grasping still at yesterday. 

A hint of flames behind your image,
an esplanade crumbling
scorched waves.

It's the blue that saves you –
Your wide open blue eyes
your goofy blue bathing cap.

The photo is blistering,
    it was a close thing,
nobody yelled fire when I took it.


~~~~~

The pier closed to the public in 1975 and fell into disrepair for decades,
However, on the 5th of February 2003 the historic U.K. Pier
was engulfed in flames.

Comedianmen Actors

Comedy Cruggily 
Robin McLaurin Williams
Actor, comedian 
drug addiction 

Troubled with Dementia 
with Lewy bodies DLB
vicissitudinous
Mork and Mindy

Debonair Demeanor
Archibald Alec Leach
Vaudeville comic, Actor
Grant Best Actor

A troublesome childhood 
Connubiality
Zeppo Marx role model
Freelance actor


1/12/2021

Double Dactyl Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: William Kekaula

Raging Moms

While Mom is busy raging
  In what are kids engaging
Are they with her on the battle-line
  Do they cling in fear to her hemline

Women screaming slogans shrill
  Some consider this a thrill --
Once we scorned child-vaudeville
  What will raging moms instill

Do You Remember

DO YOU REMEMBER

Do you remember the old drivein show
Where with your girfriend or boyfriend you did go
Hugging and kissing in the front seat there
What the movie was you really didn't care.

And shopping at Woolworths five and dime
A good place to just pass the time
Or off to an A&W where you drove in
Do you remember that was where you had been.

Do you remember the Vaudeville show,
When to the theatre you did go
Oh of so many places I could write about
That would bring back memories I have no doubt.

But that is all for now I'll write 
So I'll wish you all good night 
Another night I will write if my pen does not go dry
About other Things with memories that will make you laugh or cry.

R. Taub - Poet
April 14, 2015

Real Magic

Unlike a magician
          real magic I weave
It's not a trick	
     nothing up my sleeve

No abracadabra
           no sleight of hand
No vaudeville act
       or stunt preplanned

No mumbo jumbo
                  no hocus pocus
No smoke and mirrors
            to make eyes lose focus	

No prestidigitation
            no attempt to deceive
No optical illusion
           or make believe

Real magic exists
            it's not hard to find
Just close your eyes
          and open your mind

A Sonata of Galuppi

(Baldassare Galuppi was a music composer
in 18th century Venice.  Johann Pachelbel
came a little earlier.  Maurice Chevalier and
Mistinguette were vaudeville artists and
on-off lovers in Paris in the 1920s.)

Your filigree correctly fret, 
those perforations, so correct! 
And how I love that dying strain, 
suggesting sadness, feigning pain! 

A twisted, coloured paper chain, 
a love both sacred and profane, 
your melody's a silhouette: 
imperfect pleasure, sweet regret. 

Your sharp and sugared vinaigrette 
is like a Pachelbel duet, 
a sorbet made with fine champagne, 
or raindrops on a window pane, 

the fragrant soil of southern Spain, 
a grief I still can't ascertain - 
Chevalier and Mistinguette? 
That wistful chime! I hear it yet!

April Vaudeville

APRIL VAUDEVILLE

A chorus of daffodils-
                               dancing in the breeze

Rat Trap Rap, Part 2 of 2

There, parked in rows
like overused commas
or German prose
or mothballed bombers

lay ranks of rats
as if on drill,
but quite as dead
as vaudeville.

Someone had slit
each ventral hide
and pulled it back
to peek inside.

And there they lay,
flat on their backs,
guts on display,
paws pinned by tacks.

Ashamed, they were,
like party-crashers,
with gaping fur,
like little flashers.

Those organs, packed
so coral-fine,
would soon be hacked
by Class B-9.

Unseeing eyes 
stared at the ceiling,
but woke in me
a fellow-feeling.

We’re all the same.
We want to live.
Why dish out blame?
Why bring a sieve,

sort sheep from goats,
grandly decide 
who lives and dies?
To my distress,
those little guys
with upturned throats
and parted coats
were nothing less
than crucified.

Releasing Tension

Anyone At All

There are many things I must mention
The biggest one is releasing tension
Expressing letting it all hang out
Regardless of what it is about.

A brain _____ barely had a trace;
____sure has such an ugly face
Had hair hard to stay down;
Vivid scene of a vaudeville clown.

For nonsense ____ had a big thirst
Face appeared to be pig who was cursed
Like water at low tide always shallow
Not only was head hard but also hollow.

Who now in has ____ been confiding
And what else could ___ be hiding
See previous records we do yearn;
On cross, ____ we should badly burn.

What ever courses ____ took in classes
____ brain was slow as smooth molasses
Instead of being humble with humility
____ hair reacted to all of the humidity.

Now you fill in the blanks. This is how
I will write the rest of my poems so you
can use your creative imagination.

James Thesarious Hilarious Horn
Retired Veteran and Poet

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