These Books

These books have been around the block.

These books have done the hard yards.

They’ve had the stuffing knocked out of them

like a much loved teddy bear,

the sort of sorry, scruffy specimens grandparents bring

to ‘The Repair Shop’ ( UK ).

Is there an equivalent place for bruised, battered books?

What happens to them?

Is there a retirement home for old books?

A Hospice where sick books go to die?

Are we allowed to visit?

Is it over for paper books,

like it is for paper bills?

Is the future for books solely digital?

I for one like to hold books

like children teddy bears.

The Green Gazebo

The Green Gazebo: Remembered

A long time ago

I sat beneath the green gazebo.

Huddled in my ego’s coat

& this is what I wrote:

The Green Gazebo

We sat beneath the green gazebo,

Just me, myself and my ego.

We spoke of very many things,

How grief and joy both have wings.

We had so very much to say

And that is how we spent the day.

• pic courtesy of pinterest

Credenza

My parents partied to Mario Lanza.

His records littered the credenza

before ending up on the turntable.

[ it was the era of Clark Gable].

and everyone would their glasses clink

when Mario sang ‘Drink Drink Drink’

He had a big voice and big loves,

and the habits of a tiger cub,

‘impossible’, it was said, to housebreak.

He died too young at thirty eight.

Way way back in ’59.

Then along came Elvis. He was mine !

• pic courtesy of Wikipedia

Rear View

There’s a cobweb on the rear view mirror

of my car,

the outside one so it’s a little mussed up

as you’d expect

in all that turbulence.

A new one goes up every second or third day.

I don’t know what he catches in it

except the past..

Like a passenger facing the wrong way

on a long distance train

he only sees where he’s been.

Maybe there’s a value in that:.

looking back.

A little nostalgia does no harm.

In fact we revel in it:

costume dramas, westerns like ‘Yellowstone’,

origin stories of super heroes,

biopics,

the little cobwebs studios weave

to hold our interest.

Drive-Ins

I passed the old Drive-In, the one we used to go to when I was a kid, that time we saw ‘Giant’, for instance, on the giant tilted screen, and I wanted to be cool and edgy as James Dean, and how after the movie when we were driving home around midnight, we heard on he radio that a plane had just fallen from the sky during a snowstorm over a corn field in Iowa and a chill filled our car the day the music died.

 

which movie star did you want to be like when you were a kid?

did you watch movies at drive-ins with your folks? do you remember any particular film?

what were you doing when you heard about the deaths of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Richie Valens?

The Red Telephone Booth

No one writes poems about telephone booths anymore

So I thought I would write one,

about the time I drove down

A series of side roads to avoid a booze bus,

when I almost ran into one.

It was so nostalgic.

It was the sort of booth that Clark Kent would dash into

to change into superman.

I opened the door and went inside.

It stank of stale urine and cigarette smoke.

The paintwork was peeling. There were no phone books

Only numbers,

‘if you’re after a good time call …’, that sort of thing

and anti-gay graffiti.

It looked like

the last telephone booth on the planet before mobile phones

took over.

I closed the door, climbed into my car and drove off,

Heavy as a telephone booth,

into the arms of the booze bus.