A poem for make believe ~~ Paper Moons

 Paper Moons 

 

Now again have Paper Moons and

Cardboard Seas and Painted Rainbows

College girls with yellow dogs, most 

Bare foot, roller skates.  Cutoffs

Fellows with white VWs

Beetles with their folding cloth roofs  

Elvis and next come the Beetles,

Joplin, Me and Bobby McGee

Once again protests made legal

A fight for right with some lives lost

Kent State, John Lennon, your hero?

Against tyranny, war.  Shalom

 

Like "Back Then" now was gone, never

Would be the same. Super Seniors

Are stepping up to take their place

With Paper Moons, Painted Rainbows  

Gone forever those Paper Moons?

Who will step up, make us believe? 

Janis Joplin / Me And Bobby Mcgee [Live] 1970 - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iX-EcRKXJw
 

Working Class Hero - John Lennon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njG7p6CSbCU&index=1&list=RDnjG7p6CSbCU
_ _ _ _ _

 - "Back When" for me was working as an Aerospace Engineer (no degree then) at NASA Houston Space Center and working for College Degrees, mostly at night.  I did have a 1962 BW Bug with a folding top sunroof which took me where I needed to go.  It would be replaced by a 1969 Ford Thunderbird and a 1971 Hondo Motorcycle. These vehicles were all used as were all my other vehicles except two, the last in 1967. 

My hair was collar length and I smoked, mostly a pipe.  There really was a long haired barefoot cutoff wearing young lady who sat beside me in Differential Equations class. She made her "A" and I made my "C". (Car list--scroll down just before the red Ford Pickup)("Back Then" girls who were my friends list)(Our wedding picture)

 - Photo and Poem Copyright © 2017 Jimmiehov, All Rights Reserved

 - I'm linked with Fireblossom, aka Shay, at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Fireblossom Friday: It's Only A Paper Moon,  http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/2017/06/fireblossom-friday-its-only-paper-moon.html

Fireblossom's instructions were in part, "Write something that makes us believe in something that isn't real (i.e. a Paper Moon that isn't real anymore?) ... Please make it a NEW poem or flash fiction."

Memory Poem, My Favorite Uncle Howard - Weekend Challenge

Memories;

of Places and Persons

Memories can fail one

Memories can remind

Memories bring pleasure

Memories do not lie

Memories of a man

Man in the spring cornfield

He and this boy walked corn  

Hoes in hands they ambled

Cocklebur or milkweed

Beware green invaders

Our hoes will chop you down

Get their roots man would say

While walking the man would

Yodel and sing a song

One the boy wouldn't know

He'd stand amazed.  Radio?

Yes Country and Western

Their singers' voices loud

Man in corn, high pitch voice  

Boy tried to imitate

Memories of the man

Cornfield again, ripened

Leaves and stalks turned to brown

Shucking corn, harvest's good

Now walking rows again

Snapping each ear of corn

Away from its brown stalk

Tossing in the wagon

Two horses pulling slowly

Down those rows, knew their way

Stopping on command, wait

For man, boy, to catch up

Man was Uncle Howard

Most people didn't know

How well he could yodel

For sure to pre teen boy

Memory's last setting 

Hospital room, last days

He prayed for every nurse

Boy now man, last visit  

Memories last until

We remember no more

Uncles yodeling still

In Heaven's gold cornfields
_ _ _ _

 - This one is true.

 - Photo and Poem Copyright © 2010 and 2017 Jimmiehov, All Rights Reserved

 - I'm linked with Kim Russell , at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Weekend Mini Challenge: People and Places,  http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/2017/05/weekend-mini-challenge-people-and.html

Kim's in part instructions:  "Today’s challenge is to write about a place through a person or a person through a place."  After I finished I notice the word, "Mini".  My poem sure isn't very mini.
.
Excerpt from my previous blog:

"Uncle Howard was Dad's youngest brother, two years younger than Dad. I felt that I was his favorite nephew; he called me "Jimmy." My best remembrance of him is that he could yodel. He is the only person I know or have known who could yodel. He yodeled good, very good. He would only yodel when nobody was around, except me.

Uncle Howard's favorite song was Cattle Call:

"The cattle are prowlin'
The coyotes are howlin'
Way out where the doggies roam
Where the spurs are a jinglin'
And the cowboy is singin'
His lonesome cattle call
[Yodels]
He rides in the sun'
Til his days work is done,
And he rounds up the cattle each fall
[Yodels]
Singing his cattle call"

I still like to sing that song when nobody is around too. And I try to yodel. Uncle Howard never sang in public either. Not even in church. ... (More ... )"