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Fred Babbin

December Sunset

The pink-blue sky
With the grey-blue buildings
And windows all in pink
With the jet-streams flying
The pink becomes blue,
Becomes grey,
While our eye forms abstract designs
In the cold.
And the charcoal streets
With their white-blue lamps
To cancel out
The god-given darkness.
And finally, to the stillness of the night
We close our eyes
And dream of other worlds.

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The Bloody 20th

The Bloody 20th

Century 20
The Bloody Century
If not the worst
The teacher of the 21st
To maim and kill
And rape and fill
The streets with blood
And warm the air enough
for rain to flood and wash away
our great and noble plans
and with only passing peace
To let us be prepared for death
From tsunami, earthquake, drought,
Bullet, bomb, atom or starvation,
In this time of great confusion

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Paramita

Life is a dance
in an unknowing universe-
without an audience.
So we must give life
it’s perfect meaning,
for God cannot.

Do not protest,
for no one listens.
Cry and cry
in the darkness.
Be brave.
Be quiet.


(2007, Chicago/Someone took this poem and created a picture with it, without my knowledge. If you want to see the picture, put 'Fred Babbin poetry' into a search engine, and click on 'Flickrs'.)

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Pills, Life and Death

The doctors with their pills
plug the holes in the dikes of life
keeping the ocean of death at bay
But the dikes crumble slowly
or fast.
and the ocean takes over
to make new waves,
one following the other
some more foamy
some more relaxed
not much more than swells
one following the other
Just as the waves of life follow each other
some notorious, some titanic,
some broken by themselves or others
some joyful
but most unknown

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Why Do I Wear Red Suspenders?

My red suspenders –
Red—
Not the scarlet red
of the used-up, spent blood
of the veins,
but crimson—
the bright-red oxygen saturated
arterial liquid of life.-
That link to consciousness
and stimulant of existence.

As blood supports my life,
those braces, those garters,
those hangers, those supporters,
those suspensories,
those Red Suspenders—
help cover my nakedness
as the God-made garment covered Adam.

And so the mundane, the ridiculous,

[...] Read more

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Ode to Her

Ode to Her

The white bones
of my father
are so white,
as though they come
from the white sands of Santa Fe
And why do I think of him?
Because I am old
and can only think of the past
with Matisse, O'Keeffe, Modi-
gliani,
the West bank, the Left Bank -
Did you ever get there?

But do not write in sorrow,
Do not write on the dead
they do not exist
they will not exist

[...] Read more

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57th and Kenwood

The neighborhood described in this poem is in the University of Chicago area, as it existed over 60 years ago. Most of it no longer exists, due to one of the first Urban Renewal programs in the United States. The 'Bomb' refers to the atom bomb, of which the University had a large part in the planning. I worked there for a short time. I wanted a picture of that corner for my poem 'Lost', and Ms. Schlesinger kindly sent it to me, so I wrote this poem.

Dear, Dear, Ms. Schlesinger
You are the messenger
That brought back my memories to me.
Old Lola Goff, The Tropical Hut,
John Snowden, Shag Donohue
And Bob Marshall too.
Joyce Piven
(whose nee name I just cannot think of) ,
Who strode into Steinways
like Cleopatra,
with everyone staring, and thinking, “Who is is she? ”
The Woodworth tree, with it’s nails of poison, that shortened it’s life,
Replaced by another, not real at all.
And Ms. Lawless, forerunner of Gordon’s,
Who isn’t there either,
She had a hi-fi, with classical records,
where lunch was Paradise contained.
And John Snowden was Chef, so charming and willing to please.

[...] Read more

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