I don’t do poetry unless compelled by a class assignment. So, here is what little I have produced…

The class was assigned to write poems based on one of several African masks. Here is mine.

---

O’ Your Beaded Mask

Such love and care
For your false face,
Every bead you chose,
Every bead you placed.

Much to show,
Much to hide,
Until you lost sight
Of the person inside.

Can you tell
Which is more real?
What the mask hides,
Or what it reveals?

---

Most of the students in my Creative Writing class were young enough to be my grandkids. They treated this old man very cordially. In return, I gave them a taste of what it was like to live in the “olden times.” Shockingly, they had never heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Apologies to Rutger Hauer

I've seen things,
and heard things,
you people wouldn't believe.

Dew glistening on ice-cold milk bottles
sitting on our doorstep.

The clickity-clack of a phone dial spinning out a number.
For Google, dial zero.

At 30 cents a gallon
the gas station attendant would “Fill’er up, Bud?”
For another three bucks, he would 
           Change 
                        Your 
                                  Oil.

Good enough to get the station wagon to the drive-in 
where giant men and giant women glided across a giant screen
as we changed into jammies and conked out in the back.

Until the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And “Kennedy’s been shot!”
(which one?)
And Southeast Asia.
And on and on and on and ON!

Made us see things, 
And hear things,
You would believe.

-- Dan Blanks, 02/10/2025