Latest Poetry From MNP @ Sushi Blues

Here are a couple great poems by members who were unable to attend last evening,but whose work is well appreciated! Dean Dickinson has published a book of memoirs entitled "Corn and Me". The following is a rhyming poem he decided to write after being put off by vague and incomprehensible poetry that sometimes appears in the New Yorker magazine.

High School Reunion

Dean C. Dickinson

A high school classmate, Edna Mae Munday,
Found my address and wrote me last Sunday.
The reunion committee wants to see
Mount Vernon's graduates of '53.
They want to provide an invitation
to all their alums across the nation.
I'd left no trail but she Googled my son.
He gave the name of the street I live on.
Since our escape from dear old "MV"
we've had no contacts my school mates and me.
I don't want to see my old teenage friends.
We've all lived our lives; we're close to our ends.
Back in my memory they all appear
as youthful images, vital and clear.

Friend Howard, at sixteen, drove our school bus;
joined the jazz band and played tuba with us.
Ditton, the drum major, dressed up in braid,
helped me with many a band escapade.
Dick Kinsler, jokester, my best friend of all
brought lots of laughter to classroom and hall.
Willie the halfback, our varsity star,
drove the girls mad when the saw him afar.
Blond curly hair--handsome--heroic face!
Head ina helmet. Inside? empty space!
Pert Sally Condre hated chemistry.
To help pass her tests she sat next to me!
We took Latin from Miss Osie Trimmer.
Her old sour puss could not have been grimmer.

The group I hung with did not drink or smoke.
We were all sober, but fun-loving folk.
I ahd my own car and tooled around town:
my snappy blue Dodge with windows rolled down.
I drove to parties and social events.
A gallon of gas cost twenty-five cents.
When we were young and had nary a care,
each time we gathered we danced the rugs bare.
the young friends I knew are old and mature.
Let me remember them just as they were.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Siren of Central New York
by Vi Ransel

The center
of Madison County
lolls languid in the lap
of the fat,
comely valley flanked
by the Sangerfield
and Chenango rivers
bordered by Adirondack foothills
wearing bedroom slippers
not hiking boots
refusing to loom
straight up, stiff and forbidding
in a dense armor of rigid pine,
rather reclining half-wooded,
half-maniscured and mown
seductively whispering
"Come up...
and see me
sometime."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Compaints By A Blue Collar Stereotype
Susanne Farrington

Looking back on it,
Life was good on Earth
Until it got very much worse.

The weather became unbalanced;
deserts widened and polar ice-caps shrank.
Foreignors stole our oil,
and our government seemed unable to save it--
though I'd have made the bastards really suffer;
Guantanamo was too good for them.

Our spinelses Congress stood up for lobsters,
polar bears and caribou,
refusing to drill for oil
deep under rich tundra,
refusing also to cut taxes
and cap gas prices at $2.50 a gallon,
like we had in the 1990s.

So now no one can afford to drive--
except for the Fat Cats in their Cadillacs.
Damn hybrid-driving Environmentalists
for ruining the economy!
They got what they deserved.

(Complaints about a Blue Collar Steroptype written in the future, is a poem that voices my fears about poor choices and inaction to worsening environmental degradation and civil unrest (which includes blaming the messengers of warning. SF.)