Friday, July 14, 2006

Poetry

July 13

Speaking of poetry, Phyllis Moore paid me the high compliment of using some lines from this blog as found haiku!

Found Poems: 3 Haiku created from words on Meredith Sue Willis’s blog
July 12, 2006 2006 Phyllis Wilson Moore


Speckled white and brown
Beautiful bean seeds on dirt
Winter’s protein meals
Passover Seder
Gentiles outnumber the Jews
Make matzoh ball soup
Lost in cyberspace
Two large chunks of yesterday
Reward to finder
Then here is one of her own with a photograph by her husband Jim Moore:

On the Frost Line
Sentinel pine trees
Bereft of left branches
Speak to me of loss
And finally, one more Phyllis Moore poem about Sex and the Nineteen-fifties!
ON HER 68TH BIRTHDAY DAY SHE RECALLS HER 16TH
Phyllis Wilson Moore, 2003
Part I
She thinks of the 50s,
those pre-pantyhose, pre-Elvis days.
Marilyn Monroe made it big in the 50s.
Playboy pictured no pubic hair.
Masters had not left his wife for Johnson.
Dictionaries did not contain the F word.
In movies, married couples
slept in separate beds.
Deep in the jungle, Jane
wore a bathing suit.
So did Tarzan.
Virgins didn’t ride boys’ bikes
or use tampons.
Discrete druggist dispensed condoms
from under the counter.
The “Pill” was an experiment
on women in Mexico.
In high schools,
soon-to-be fathers
knocked home runs.
Knocked-up girls
aborted their educations.
Part II
In the 50s
when boy met girl, girl set the rules.
No drive-in movie on a first date.
No kiss until the third date.
No hands beneath the sweater.
Going steady meant parking,
necking, petting, and eventually French kissing.
When the sun went down,
doing it was not an option.
My best friend said girls walked differently
after they did it.
I remember watching the way friends walked,
waiting.

July 10

I'm reading Bill Zavatsky's new book of poetry from the wonderful Hanging Loose Press (celebrating its fortieth birthday this year!), and most of the poems are on the long side, although very readable, but I liked this short one:

Skeletons
What skeletons most want
is to have their lips back
so that they can stop smiling
that horrible bony smile
of eternal dead teeth
and can kiss someone
or something once in a while,
a cheek, a key, a flower,
while they hang around
waiting for the rest
of their bodies to grow back.
Bill Zavatsky in Where X Marks the Spot

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great poems! Thanks