Posted on

Sing Me A Song Of Now

Go back, if you like, to the “Good old days”
With horses hitched to the plow–
The tractor is better in many ways:
Sing me a song of now.

You drool of the gals as they used to be;
The guys then were fooled, for they
Bought a pig in a poke, it seems to me;
You see what you get, today.

You may chortle of grandfather’s place on the farm
If you want to, but I’ll be mean,
And ask you just how you could see any charm
By the light of his kerosene!

And down at the end of the old board walk
Leaned a sort of cut-off dormer
Where folks collected to sit and talk;
But I can sit where it’s warmer.

The Gramophone, maybe, appealed to you
As it tinned out “Nellie Gray”.
I’ll take the radio, hot or blue,
(And I think it is here to stay).

Though Dobbin may have been fast enough
In the gone-by days of yore,
He can hardly be said to have the stuff
For Nineteen-forty-four!

by Ray Romine Sunday, November 26, 1944

Posted on

Lines Designed For Muttering At 25th Class Reunion

A quarter of a century
Has passed since we, blithe, ventury,
Descended on an unsuspecting world.
Full of super-heated air,
We were young and debonair,
Freshly powdered, dressed, and pressed and newly curled.

We were filled with good intentions,
New ideas and inventions;
And we thought we’d do the world up fancy-plus.
But, ignoring our persistence,
Our good world, with fine resistance,
Stayed pretty much the same in spite of us.

Which is good, we must admit,
For–(can you imagine it)
What would Mother Earth resemble pretty soon
If her face were bing shifted,
And continually lifted,
By those squirts that high school gives us every June?

So these graduates don’t rate
Highly with old grads–but wait–
I believe they’re snapping out of it, by Heaven!
Yes, I think it’s very moving
How of late they are improving:
They’re the children of the Class of ’27!

by Ray Romine Monday, April 7, 1952