Bug Juice

Cowboys, Indians, horses, sailors, blue marines

and soldiers from almost every war

packed my toy box tins and cardboard boxes

in the bedroom I shared and living room too.

Courtesy IPFinance blog

On the open Singer was the ranch, high in the mountain

where I’d set up all the horses and block them in,

using rows of spools of Mom’s colorful thread.

I’d post a lookout or two at the top of the round disk spinner

and another lookout atop the spout where the needle jigged

its thread through the hole to the hidden spool.

My favorite cowboys sat nearby in a circle telling tales

around a fire by the chuck wagon and oh, so slowly,

I brought on either the Indians or rustlers

over the drawer handles to sneak up and swipe stallions.

A snapped twig would set the stage for the big fight,

a free-for-all where the rustlers would fall,

my favorite cowboys winged

and afterward, as the last of the bad guys ran off

or were stacked in a pile of dead-for-now,

my guys, the heroes, returned to the campfire

for black coffee, hard tack and tall tales.

When I first went camping

with the Boy Scouts

out in the far reaches

of Wildcat Lake in Blairstown

where mosquitos drowned in our drinks,

I half expected bad guys of some sort

to rush down from the mountain top

and we’d use our kerchiefs

and scout knives to fend them off

and save our bug juice.

- By Anthony Buccino
First published in Poetry Quarterly Winter 2010
Included in AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty
This version varies from earlier editions

Copyright © 2010, 2012 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

American Boy, Pushing Sixty

AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty

About life and growing up in New Jersey in the 1950s,1960s, and 1970s, and growing older in the 1980s, 1990s and the oughts.

By Anthony Buccino

From the center of the Baby Boom, this working class verse begins under a wooden class room desk as an air raid siren sounds, and captures the summer spell and its simplicity in drinking water from a garden hose.

"I read your book through and through twice. Absolutely enjoyed it. Your words flow so freely."

On Kindle    NOOK

Small Press Reviews

ONE TRUE LOVE

ONE TRUE LOVE

Did you spend the last fifty years with her
in the morning kitchen worrying together
through evening bouts of doubt
Are the children safe?
The grand kids okay?
Will the K-car start tomorrow?
Can we afford to fix it if it won’t?
What’s on cable TV tonight?
Is your dog getting enough cheese?

Did your one true love leave you
looking like a frigging penguin
standing alone outside the prom hall
with that stupid look on your face?

What about those wild nights
and the long rides
and the long talks?
Where did those endless roads lead?
But for your one true love to someone else
and you shifting through an empty cupboard.

Have you carried around your broken heart
crushed so long ago by your one true love
or have you mended and moved on
to find the one other person in this world
who could love you this much?

Do the stitches in your mended heart still sting?
Do they twitter and twitch with reminded regrets
on those days when nothing will go your way
and you long for the one true love who got away,
forgetting for an instant the one who holds your hand?

- By Anthony Buccino
From AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty

On Kindle

Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino
Photo and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

WHAT'S IT LIKE TO BE

What’s it like to be
Married to different people
At different times, of course,
But how is it different?
Do you spend a lot of time
Comparing this one with that one?
Do you try not to repeat mistakes
That you’ve learned?
What is it like
Each day to be with
Somebody who is
Different than the one
You thought you’d spend
The rest of your days with?

- By Anthony Buccino
From AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty
On Kindle
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

FIRST KISS

No wonder he had to steal a kiss! (1970)

My first kiss came on a cold November night,
A Saturday after Thanksgiving in a stranger’s church.

My first kiss was a surprise, not for me,
I’d been thinking about it all night.
But she was surprised when she tried
to shake my hand in peace I charged in
and stole that kiss.

Her light blue eyes – I am still remembering
And the round cheeks of her smiling face
That Saturday I kissed her.
It was the only time.
On Monday we headed back to Jersey
And I never saw her again.

- By Anthony Buccino
From AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty

On Kindle

Remembering November 1970

Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

ALL THE BEST FOODS

ALL THE BEST FOODS

Turns out the little pills
they assign you every day
that fix your cholesterol
and manage your sugar
and keep your blood steady
and fix a bunch of things
that won't fix themselves
and as you take that
handful of meds
you are reminded
to drink more water
because water is good for you
but not too much water, you know,
you have a separate pill for that
And remember those pills
you take by the handful
some work best on an empty stomach
and some work best
after you've eaten a meal
but with all of them you'll find
the foods you ate all your life
and all your favorites
are the foods you can no longer have
and this will help you live longer
thanks, what ever for?

- By Anthony Buccino
From AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty

On Kindle

The poem was first published in RATTLESNAKE REVIEW 12/2007

Copyright © 2007, 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Photo from Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum, NYC, by Anthony Buccino
******************

BAD BOYS

BAD BOYS

We had tough guys in my neighborhood.
They were always angling for a fight.
They were the first guys in the trouble du jour.
When we got caught the cops gave us a rap
Then when we got home Pop whooped us good.
But with some tough guys it never sank in.
They tried the next worse thing and then the next, too.
After so much trouble they got to go in the Army
and fight in the jungle.
Maybe they'd get it out of their system. Or not.

- Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.
From AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty

RUMOURS OF WAR

RUMOURS OF WAR

Curled on the floor
under my desk
I’m waiting
for the end of the world.

The bell keeps ringing
and we kids lie silent
with dust bunnies
and scraps of paper.

Philomena always whimpers
when we find ourselves
like this.
She’s learned to
whimper softly or fear being
thrown out on the street.
And we all know the street
is no place to be
at the end of the world.

Curling up with eyes
and ears covered
we hear the sounds
of silence wash across
the classroom: A belly rolls
a sniffle sniffs, and our nun
stands bravely at the door.

If Jesus were here would he be
in the doorway with her talking up
Religion grades or snuggled
under the desks with us?


- By Anthony Buccino
From AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty

Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.
******************

CURSE OF THE BUTTONS

After David Tucker

I’m going to be late.
I can’t help it you see,
but this shirt I planned to wear
isn’t doing anything good for me.
The sleeves are laughing,
the left and right.
I try to feed each hard round button
through invisible slits
but the front buttons
are fighting hidden holes
as fingers with no feeling
try to press a quarter through a dime slot.

I’m going to be late
And I know it.
There’s no short cut set for me
I’m hoping the next time
I return weary from work
when I toss this shirt
into the laundry bin
that I’ve remembered
not to unbutton
and the buttons stay buttoned
through the wash and rinse
or the next time I head out
these numb fingers
again will delay me.
Curse these shirt buttons
I’m going to be late.

- By Anthony Buccino
From AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.
******************

TELEVISION ENDING

Father knew best
when he left it to Beaver.
Always by the end, every thing was solved
until next week
Wally and Bud and Princess, all smiles
when it was time to move on

But what of real life
that no one knew
It wasn’t the familiar,
happy television ending.
Sometimes the bad guy
got away
sometimes the other guy
got the girl
sometimes nobody
lived happily ever after

- By Anthony Buccino
From AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.
******************

RUBBER TIRES

RUBBER TIRES

Picture a car, a midsize car,
rolling along slowly.
And picture your hand flat out
in its path,
And picture the car slowly
rolling over your hand.
The rubber tires giving in
a little, but not too much,
And the car itself hard
but not too heavy that
one-quarter can roll
over your hand without
breaking a bone or a tendon
or whatever makes up your hand.
Now picture the soreness
in your joints as pain pulses
alternating numbness and pain,
a tingling passes without a bell
And sparks like needles pierce
out of your fiery fingertips.
Can you picture this?
Now, put down the pen
you can only see,
not feel in your hand,
and leave the poem,
you and your gnarled tics and fits,
you’ve made your point
with your throbbing arthritic funnel
that passes for your writing hand.

- By Anthony Buccino
From AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty

Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

******************

COWBOY OF OCTOBER

COWBOY OF OCTOBER
by Anthony Buccino

I was the fastest gun on the block and could out-draw all comers
from cowboys on the Motorola and cousin Tommy next door
to curly-haired Gary on the corner.

I had big guns, pistols, derringers and a cavalry style single shot rifle
and a backwards facing pistol holder.
I had cowboy boots, sans spurs, though, and a vest
with wriggling fringe all around

I fought off circling Indians from the berm
of my living room couch, and the Singer machine
I died a hundred falling deaths shot through and through
I killed a thousand foes in hundreds of battles too
I tramped over mountains of hassocks
and camped under indoor laundry line clouds.

I rode for hours on worn out armrests,
through walk-in closets, endless darkened woods
and dry, dusty desert trails.
I stomped through blinding blizzards
with my home made snow shoes.
I crossed amazing rivers atop my trusted horse.

I was never true from one day to the next
my tales and adventures never picked up the next day
where they left off and the very next day I might have been
a fighting GI in World War Two, like my old man,
or the ranch boss over my minions of little men

Those little men of mine, frozen forever in plastic poses
whooping it up or falling off a bucking bronco.
Oh I had my favorites and maybe could still find them
in the gazillion boxes stuffed in the deep, dark attic
but the little men knew not from one day to the next
what would be their name or their purpose
until the little boy looked into his dreams.

From AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty
Copyright © 2010-2017 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

LAST DOG

For Zamboni

You benefited from dogs before,
dogs tied on a chain and staked
Dogs penned in cold plywood houses,
dogs that dug into cool pools of rain water.
With each passing dog came an improvement
from the yard stake to the first floor
to the doghouse and the heavy chain
to a nap in front of the fireplace
to a penned-in doghouse
raised off the cold ground
and overflowing fresh straw inside,
for sleeping behind,
a burlap bag door.
From a shared pen
to the basement crates side by side.

All to you, the last dog who sleeps on a $200 orthopedic cushion
Intercepting concrete cold chilled by an underground spring.
You, the last dog,
who whimpers when left outside alone,
Who nudges again and again
for a long-nailed belly rub.
You, the last dog,
who takes the kid’s dirty laundry
And cuddles it like a pillow.
You, who never learned
to take a biscuit in a gentle way
Or come when called
if there’s a better deal elsewhere.
And I won’t go into the things you ate after a scolded “NO!”
And the way you returned that contraband.
Oh, you remember, don’t you, the slime ball in your crate that day,
It had us wondering which end it came from and what it was,
Until some prodding proved it to be a sock you ate
From a stranger’s shoe left on the soccer field one night.

You are the last dog for this old man.
The mornings are dark and cold in winter
And the summer nights
full of stinging mosquitoes.
That, six, is the magic number,
that, after you,
Last dog, there shall be
no seven, no other dog.

- By Anthony Buccino
From AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty

Also appears in Retrieving Labrador Days - Dog tales in prose and verse

Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.
******************

WATER FROM A GARDEN HOSE

Before we knew what sweltering is
Gary and I sweltered, playing hours
on sun burnt days in Jersey summer.
We wrestled our way across the path
and tumbled, gritty and sweaty
at the spigot on the side of his house.

Our slippery hands tugged down the hose
and our small hands twisted the tight knob.
Gary grabbed the snaked garden hose
and waited for the rush of water
so we could get a drink and be gone
before we got chased for making mud
in the peonies and the snowball bushes.

- By Anthony Buccino
From AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

NEEDLE

Gless Avenue, Belleville, N.J.

We lived the cliché: Grandma downstairs
without a word of English;
Children frightened by the needle
she proffered and the thread;
And by the big old woman, herself
whose strange breath and odd teeth
and white-yellow hair
framed her large nose and haggard face;
She cornered the little girls – my sister
and two cousins on the stairs
as they tried to pass by in play,
talking in a gibberish tongue
thrusting a needle at their eye
as a thread danced in the breeze,
a kite tail without its cross ties,
held tightly in the swollen,
battered, stuttering old hand.
What she wanted must be so obvious.

- By Anthony Buccino
From SIXTEEN INCHES ON CENTER
From AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

LAUGHTER

I like the sound of the word fronds
I think, though, it should end in a Z
And all I can think of
is a palm frond.
I suppose you can hold a frond
in your palm
without saying you're holding
it in the palm of your hand.
After all, where else do you
have palms?
You have balls on your feet
But are there palms on your feet too?

I like the sound of the word balms
and the way it ends in a closed mmm
like some thing you ate that tastes too good
for words and all you can say is mmm
and soothes you like, well, like a balm

I like the sound of the word laughter
although I think it should own an F
in there some where.
It reminds me of living happily ever after
but when you change one letter
it changes to a sound like water
(at least, where I come from, it does.)
I know laughter and daughter
and I like the sound of each
in its way to make me smile.

AMERICAN BOY PUSHING SIXTY
- By Anthony Buccino
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

HEAVY WATER

Any aquarium cleaner
will tell you
that a gallon of water
is eleven pounds.
And put enough
of them together
and find
that makes for
heavy water on hand.
But the other kind
of heavy water
is the kind
that will drown you
and you won't
even get wet.

AMERICAN BOY Pushing Sixty
- By Anthony Buccino
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.
*****************

MILKWEED

Gless Avenue

Billy said
if you cut open
the milkweed
and drank the white stuff
that drools out
then, you can get drunk.
We looked at him
like he was nuts.
Why would anyone
want to get drunk?

AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty
- By Anthony Buccino
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

COWBOY

All I ever wanted was to be a cowboy.
When I dreamed, I dreamed of horses
in our one-family house’s garage
in Belleville, New Jersey.
Alas, the only horses I’d ever seen
were at the 6th Street pony rides across
from the Newark City Subway station
where we caught the trolley to shop
at Bamberger’s department store
in downtown Newark, New Jersey,
on Saturday mornings.

AMERICAN BOY: PUSHING SIXTY
- By Anthony Buccino
Copyright © 2010-2017 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

Book covers

Most of the poems on this site have been collected in one or more of the following books.

Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.