A SMALL BLAST FROM THE PAST

While looking for some old pictures of my husband's family this morning for a genealogy project he's undertaken, I chanced on an album from my high school years that brought back memories.  There were newspaper clippings from competing in declamation meets, honor rolls, play programs, dance cards, basketball scores, stories I wrote for the school paper, etc.  But what caught my attention were a few short poems I didn't write, but used to recite along with a beatnic bongo drum accompaniment. I wasn't part of the beatnic scene, but it was fun to play the part at parties. Let me share them once again:

The tusks that clashed in mighty brawls

Of mastodons are billiard balls. 

The sword of Charlemagne the Just

Is ferric oxide, known as rust. 

The grizzly bear whose potent hug

Was feared by all is now a rug.

Great Caesar's dead and on the shelf;

And I don't feel so well myself!

                            ---Arthur Guiterman

 

And the second one:

As I was sitting in my chair,

I knew the bottom wasn't there,

Nor legs nor back,

But I just sat,

Ignoring little things like that. 

A little Ogden Nash: 

If you hear the call of a panther;

don't anther. 

It's not the cough that carries you off;

It's the coffin they carry you off'n. 

And finally a belated Christmas poem: 

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the pad,

Not a hipster was stirring; not even Big Dad.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care;

They'd been worn six months,

They needed the air.

My taste in poetry hasn't improved much over the years.  Neither has my sense of humor. 

 

The picture is fifteen-year-old me the night I was crowned Homecoming queen.