TOM'S POETRY CHANNEL

Contact Tom Lyford: tlyford@roadrunner.com

or snail mail him at:

TOM LYFORD
121 PLEASANT STREET
DOVER-FOXCROFT, ME  04426

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SOUND BYTES

    

     

PLAY: "Strawberry Rhubarb Blues.mp3"

PLAY: "Miracle on Pleasant Street.mp3"

MY MAIN MUSE

Mrs. Ann Kucera

Write, and nobody gets 'hurt.'

THE RIGHT STUFF

"...it's lonely out in space..."  --Elton John & Bernie Taupin

Fifty years ago, when the

psychological test results

were finally in, the scientific

intelligentsia pontificated:

Man will never—   can never—

travel the measureless emptiness

survive the stark loneliness

of the big-bang to the stars

so hopelessly social  is his nature

so utterly dependent is he

upon human warmth, upon real  contact

with his village... with his tribe...

today, a generation of innerspace-

astronaut sons and daughters and

nieces and nephews with uncanny

hand-eye-mouse coordination

self-strapped into the consoles

of wireless suspended animation

in space-capsule bedrooms

have launched their cargo lives

on  drifting trajectories through

the days, months and years of

cyber-space... utterly alone

and chatting endlessly

in virtual bliss

in virtual chat rooms

resolving virtual conflicts

with virtual combat

developing virtual relationships

leading steamy virtual sex lives

and leaving us, their

baby-boomer elders,

tethered back here

on terra firma by our

virtual umbilicals

WHEN I WENT TO THE MOVIES ALONE

When I went to the movies alone

I could weep in the darkness

when they put Ol’ Yeller down

or when the little blonde kid

wailed Shane! Shane! while Shane

rode off into the credits

     

When I went to the movies alone

it was holy like being in church

worshipping creation on the screen

(the creation of someone accessible)

each film being another chapter

in a Bible even I could read

When I went to the movies alone

it was like being in school

only a real school that only taught Life 101

all the stuff you really wanted to know

but were afraid to ask

the stuff they never had the guts to tell you

     

When I went to the movies alone

I learned how to go out in a blaze of glory

when to ride off into the sunset 

that you put girls on pedestals

and how to get Natalie Wood to fall for me

by the end of the show—

 

Oh sure, I’d sit with my brother when he went…

or Freddie, my cousin… Jerry or Steve…

but it was always so much more

spiritual

when I did that

when I went to the movies alone...

Chapbook: AMERICANA

Review of AMERICANA by Dana Wilde of the Bangor Daily News  01/22/07  p. C8

AMERICANA, by Tom Lyford; Green Bough Publishing, Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, 2006; 40 pages, saddle-stitched, $5.

   

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

In Tom Lyford’s world, every passing moment is a blast from the past. Either his own, Dover-Foxcroft’s, or America’s, frequently all three together. The poems in his chapbook "Americana" recount stupid teen tricks, a moonlighting McDonald’s Santa in 1972, a teacher left behind, and real encounters with Sputnik, Johnny Cash and Roman candles as well as imaginary encounters so vivid they might as well have been real with J.D. Salinger, Bob Dylan, Stephen King and Wilford Brimley. He fondly keeps decades’ worth of T-shirts commemorating events he somehow attached himself to, like the improbable Red Sox championship of 2004.

Lyford’s world, in short, is a wedge of America as it existed in the 1950s, ’60s and afterward, which a lot of people, especially Mainers beyond a certain age, will recognize. It’s sort of innocent and vulgar, dorky and charming, and also, upon reflection, sort of scary:

...what the hell was I thinking

roaring my rice-rocket at 65

down those breathless

horseshoe curves on the

kangamagus highway

But mostly, as those who have attended Lyford’s public readings around central Maine know, he has a relentless sense of humor about it all.

it’s fun riding around in stephen king

up here in maine, smack dab in the middle of

needful things and a bag of bones –

hey phyl, LOOK! The pittsfield exit!

that’s where rachel creed’s chevette mysteriously

loses power on her way back home

in pet sematary!

but phyllis never looks …

could care less …

won’t even read stephen king …

In these poems you do not encounter the verbal polish of the literary journal poets. But you do get unabashed pictures of how postwar backwater Maine has tagged along with the rest of the world. Lyford is a sort of anti-Bukowski — direct, funny and down-to-earth, but demonless.

Tom Lyford, 60, is a retired English teacher and lifelong resident of Dover-Foxcroft. He kept to himself as a poet until recent years when he has published five chapbooks and given readings at the Schoodic Arts Festival, Borders Books and several Maine libraries. His works are available at

www.festivo.org/lyford.

• • •

Chapbook: PLEASANT STREET

POETRY AT THE GRANGE HALL SUPPER, BEEF AND BISCUITS

 

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

A Review of Pleasant Street: A Chapbook of Baby Boomer Ballads & Poems

Review by David Moreau from Wayne, ME

published in OFF THE COAST, May 2006

If Tom Lyford's book, Pleasant Street, was food it would not be a fancy restaurant meal, paella with saffron, or something like that. It's more like a casserole for a grange hall supper. But it's a good one, home-made with real butter and herbs from the garden.

Described as "a chapbook of baby boomer ballads and poems," Pleasant Street tells the story of Lyford growing up in the fifties in Dover-Foxcroft. Its poems are about such things as playing marbles in the school yard, rummage sale Saturdays, lusting after the girl wearing only high heel majorette boots and a three foot high pack of Old Golds (costume) in the TV commercial, and getting sick from sneaking sips from the boss's pint of Jim Beam when working alone at Cole's Esso. The writing is lively. In the poem "Good Ol' Boys'" he describes riding his bike,

...engined by the ace of spades

clothespinned right into the spokes

whacketty-whackettywhack

Lyford skips words as quickly as a playground jumprope. In "Jumping Into Spring," he describes

two girls

two rising and falling

playground pistons

flouncing pigtails & ponytails

while the chant goes

outgoesthedoctoroutgoesthenurse!

outgoestheladywiththebigfatpurse!

Lyford describes Pleasant Street as a biographical memoir, so we have no problem with identifying the poet as the person in the poems. Maybe he did, or maybe he didn't

(heist) valve stem caps

off the tires of idling cars out in front of

bob roberts' grocery

but what does it matter? These poems describe the world that Tom Lyford remembers. He is the main character, the star of the show. This could be a danger, except that he is so damn likeable. When he describes the aftermath of eighty-two pound Aunt Sadie slamming the door on his hand,

a shrill squeal piping out of me

like steam from the teakettle left on the stove

me flippin' around like a hooked sunfish

on the bottom of a boat...

then we feel for the guy.

He doesn't claim to be the leader of the pack. And although in "Lament" he writes

kerouac & ginsberg

& their beat generation

already leaving me behind...

off the road

off the bus

he is not a complainer. He does not see himself as an outsider, just one of the gang, calling the reader to come along. Who wouldn't want to join in?

The book is interspersed with old photographs of the town, the elementary school, Lyford as a toddler hogging the rhubarb, or as a youngster with a buddy wearing fake nose-and-glasses with bottles of Naragansett King Size lined up in front of them.

 

And the poems are snapshots as well-- lusting after Wendy and Tinkerbell, delivering newspapers and figuring out how to give vampires a "sunrise surprise." It doesn't try to pretend, fortunately, that those were the good old days and, by comparison, these are the society-gone-to-hell-in-a-handbasket days. It's just stuff we can see and share. Like in "Merrick Square Market: A Travelogue"

& the headlines cry ike! ted williams!

while the philco way in the back beats out

"the ballad of a teenage queen"

& your red ball jets pad reverently

over the oil-darkened hardwood

past the register's ka-ching promise

of a copper indian head showing up in your change...

Like any work of art, there are some things one might not approve of. I found the use of lower case letters for names and titles to be annoying. I read that even e e cummings didn't want to do that, but his publisher insisted. And the use of rhyme and meter in the last poem, "Curmudgeon Blues," comes across as silly, the literary equivalent of putting mini-marshmallows in the lime-green jello mold.

But on the table at the grange hall supper, this book is like a big dish of beef and biscuits. It's just plain good. I heartily recommend digging right in.

POETRY AT THE GRANGE HALL SUPPER, BEEF AND BISCUITS

 

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

A Review of Pleasant Street: A Chapbook of Baby Boomer Ballads & Poems

Review by David Moreau from Wayne, ME

published in OFF THE COAST, May 2006

If Tom Lyford's book, Pleasant Street, was food it would not be a fancy restaurant meal, paella with saffron, or something like that. It's more like a casserole for a grange hall supper. But it's a good one, home-made with real butter and herbs from the garden.

Described as "a chapbook of baby boomer ballads and poems," Pleasant Street tells the story of Lyford growing up in the fifties in Dover-Foxcroft. Its poems are about such things as playing marbles in the school yard, rummage sale Saturdays, lusting after the girl wearing only high heel majorette boots and a three foot high pack of Old Golds (costume) in the TV commercial, and getting sick from sneaking sips from the boss's pint of Jim Beam when working alone at Cole's Esso. The writing is lively. In the poem "Good Ol' Boys'" he describes riding his bike,

...engined by the ace of spades

clothespinned right into the spokes

whacketty-whackettywhack

Lyford skips words as quickly as a playground jumprope. In "Jumping Into Spring," he describes

two girls

two rising and falling

playground pistons

flouncing pigtails & ponytails

while the chant goes

outgoesthedoctoroutgoesthenurse!

outgoestheladywiththebigfatpurse!

Lyford describes Pleasant Street as a biographical memoir, so we have no problem with identifying the poet as the person in the poems. Maybe he did, or maybe he didn't

(heist) valve stem caps

off the tires of idling cars out in front of

bob roberts' grocery

but what does it matter? These poems describe the world that Tom Lyford remembers. He is the main character, the star of the show. This could be a danger, except that he is so damn likeable. When he describes the aftermath of eighty-two pound Aunt Sadie slamming the door on his hand,

a shrill squeal piping out of me

like steam from the teakettle left on the stove

me flippin' around like a hooked sunfish

on the bottom of a boat...

then we feel for the guy.

He doesn't claim to be the leader of the pack. And although in "Lament" he writes

kerouac & ginsberg

& their beat generation

already leaving me behind...

off the road

off the bus

he is not a complainer. He does not see himself as an outsider, just one of the gang, calling the reader to come along. Who wouldn't want to join in?

The book is interspersed with old photographs of the town, the elementary school, Lyford as a toddler hogging the rhubarb, or as a youngster with a buddy wearing fake nose-and-glasses with bottles of Naragansett King Size lined up in front of them.

 

And the poems are snapshots as well-- lusting after Wendy and Tinkerbell, delivering newspapers and figuring out how to give vampires a "sunrise surprise." It doesn't try to pretend, fortunately, that those were the good old days and, by comparison, these are the society-gone-to-hell-in-a-handbasket days. It's just stuff we can see and share. Like in "Merrick Square Market: A Travelogue"

& the headlines cry ike! ted williams!

while the philco way in the back beats out

"the ballad of a teenage queen"

& your red ball jets pad reverently

over the oil-darkened hardwood

past the register's ka-ching promise

of a copper indian head showing up in your change...

Like any work of art, there are some things one might not approve of. I found the use of lower case letters for names and titles to be annoying. I read that even e e cummings didn't want to do that, but his publisher insisted. And the use of rhyme and meter in the last poem, "Curmudgeon Blues," comes across as silly, the literary equivalent of putting mini-marshmallows in the lime-green jello mold.

But on the table at the grange hall supper, this book is like a big dish of beef and biscuits. It's just plain good. I heartily recommend digging right in.

RESUME

Please go to Tom's new website and blog:  http://www.tomlyford.com/

Two chapbooks of Lyford's poetry, Pleasant Street: A Chapbook of Baby Boomer Ballads & Poems and Poetic License were published in 2005;Tom's third chapbook entitled On Becoming a Man of Substance was released in May, 2006 and his fourth, Americana, came out in November. All four in-print books are still available .

Recent poems have been published in Sakana, Bangor Metro, Off the Coast, Wolf Moon Press Journal and The Bangor Daily News. In the May 2006 issue of Maine's Off the Coast , Dave Moreau reviews Pleasant Street, and Dana Wilde reviews AMERICANA in the January 22, 2007 issue of the Bangor Daily News. Both reviews may be viewed on this site by clicking on "Reviews" in the menu .

     Lyford was selected as one of the presenting poets at Winter Harbor's Schoodic Arts Festival in August 2005. He co-read with Belfast's Poet Laureate, Elizabeth Garber, at Bangor's Borders in February 2006; in March and April was a featured poet at Camden Library's Spring Poetry Series and Damariscotta's "A Symphony of Poets" library program respectively; and in mid-November he was a featured reader with Darcy Shargo and Robin Merrill at The Harlow Gallery in Hallowell, Maine. During April, 2007, Tom was featured with another Maine poet, retired educator Ken Nye, for the National Poetry Month celebration at the Rumford Public Library in Rumford, Maine.

ORIGINAL SIN

When I was ten (back when the

Sunday-school purpose-of-life was

never to tell a lie and to think only

pure thoughts) I could never dig what

Popeye saw in librarian-plain Olive Oyl

What was keeping me up nights was

the little independent theater in my head

starring those jailbait Disney girls of Peter Pan

the mermaids of Marooner's Rock, the real

reason for flying into Neverland for the weekend

Scantily-clad and always

happy to see you, the island girls'

welcoming and entertainment committee

for lost boys looking for

a bit of R-and-R

Sweet petite Tinkerbell,

all pouty and deliciously jealous

in that hot little jungle-green number

and those legs, Mr. Disney—

what were you thinking?

Oh I might not choose

to swing on a star

but hey, carry ‘moonbeams’

home in a jar?

back to my room?

And of course Wendy, my first pin-up

gliding around night and day in little more than

her modest and sexy powder-blue nightgown and slippers

more than willing to play house, darn your socks

or sew your shadow back on

RHYMES WITH 'EUPHORIC'

(a.k.a. Reefer Madness)

once upon a time in the late 40’s

shortly after i began cutting teeth…

the nursery became...

all of a sudden

baby’s first opium den—

mom still marvels how i

stopped crying and

dropped right off to sleep

just like that

after massaging a dollop

of her favorite

over-the-counter opiate

into the tender and swollen

teething sores of my

five-month-old

gummy-gum-gums

PAREGORIC: the mom’s best friend

a product that really worked for once—

and my brain (no dummy, even then)

as eager to learn as any pavlovian dog

coming alive with messages flashing

in and among the synapses:

brain to gums, brain to gums, come in please...

roger, brain, this is gums, go ahead—

10-4 gums, that last dose was a beaut

whatever you do, just keep’em coming— you copy?

roger wilco that, brain— over and out...

yes, message received:

laugh and the world laughs with you

cry and you cry and get stoned

i like to imagine my cunning little self

swaddled in a powder-blue security blanket

jonesing for my next fix—

wonder if i snored like a banshee

as a little babe coked to the gills...

bet i did a lot of gratuitous ‘crying’...

hell… i’d have cut extra teeth if i could’ve

 

(Click image to read the dosages)