Category: Poems

Ray Romine Poems

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Stout Fella

I’ve noticed folks do not agree
On what they say regarding me:

“A generous, good-hearted fool”;
“A miserly tight-fisted ghoul.”

“A terribly hot-headed crumb”;
“As even-tempered as they come.”

“The upright sort–all purity;”
“No morals showing I can see !”

“The flap-eared brainless dodo type , “
“Intellectually quite ripe.”

“Low,” NO, “High !”; “Stopped”… “Just started”–
“Cowardly”…. and, “Lion-hearted!”

So, I will choose the names I like,
Sifted from the many;
My own opinion of myself
Is just as good as any!

by Ray Romine Tuesday, September 23, 1947

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Storm

The angry wind whips beetling clouds
Across the canvas of the sky;
Mad whirling leaves from grimy shrouds
Jump at this ghostly chance to fly.

The dragon lightning snorts a sheet
Of ragged fire, while thunder’s shout
Awakens rainfall’s steady beat
Top put the conflagration out.

by Ray Romine Tuesday, March 24, 1953

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Stopped Completely

You called me Ray: I answered “Hi!”
And right up till we said goodbye
You were the essence of aplomb–
Well-poised, serene, relaxed and calm.
I might, dear friend, have been the same
If I could have recalled your name.

by Ray Romine Friday, January 23, 1953

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Stop- Gap

Who likes to write, and yet who doesn’t dare
Describe the horrors in his own life’s night:
The gray and ghastly shapes, the livid white
Of searing conscience; or the horrid pair
Of blood-rimmed eyes sunk into every care,
Must feel some lack of words that serves him right:
To bring the horror in one heart to light
Might drive the reading world insane for fair!

And so he sugar-coats his dreams, to hide
The spot where cold and quaking drama grew,
And writes a lot of tripe–about like this.
(So any lover, with his one beside
Him, leaves realities for this fresh clue,
And too far gone for words, can only kiss!)

by Ray Romine Wednesday, August 21, 1946

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Stop Me (i Dare You) If You’ve Heard This One

Just a bit to my shame
I admit I could name
For obscurity’s season-end showing
The jump-the-gun wag
Who remembers the gag
And stops me before I get going.

But at the same time,
I won’t, give you a dime–
In fact, my contempt’s undiminished–
For the heckling-type bloke
Who says “I’ve heard the joke”
A second before I have finished.

And yet I can’t learn–
I keep trying to turn
Up some chap whose folks brought him up rightly,
Who, if he can’t guffaw
At my every old saw,
At, least keeps his lip buttoned tightly!

by Ray Romine Tuesday, June 9, 1953

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Stone Wall

There’s an old stone wall that’s almost down
Over on the other side of town.
It’s not so pretty in many ways
As it must have been in its earlier days,
And yet a fascination there
Hits me hard when I pass and stare.
It’s green with algae; it drips with moss,
And though it’s old, there’s no sense of loss
About that wall–it is grim and sage
And, indifferent, it dares old age
In a way I should like to when I grow old
And my cells are mossy, and down, and cold.

(I shall have no plaints, if, after all,
I still can learn from an old stone wall.)

by Ray Romine Tuesday, October 8, 1946

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Stocking Run-out

How do you tell when the summer is over?
By the br-rang of the school bell, or brown heads of clover?
Earlier evening and much later dawn?–
I tell when my bottle of leg-make-up ‘ s gone!

And I can’t pretend that I don’t dare,
With nylons at one-eighty-five a pair.

by Ray Romine Monday, September 8, 1947

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Stir-crazy

The woman never did exist
Who owned the will quite to resist
The fatal ever-present lure
Of Buggy-riding Furniture!

by Ray Romine Wednesday, September 12, 1945

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Sterner Stuff

Teheran and Potsdam and Yalta
Should have taught us Americans alta
Beware of appeasing,
Since stealing’s more pleasing
To such Nations as have the galta?

by Ray Romine Friday, September 7, 1951