Oh! Those Days Of Black 'n White Cookies At Morelli's Kitchen In The Early Morning. Poem by Frank James Ryan Jr...fjr

I'm Remembering the day's
we'd eat black and white cookies,
the size of pie-plates,
my best friend and me,
early dawn baked
in the old world kitchen
of Morelli's Brick Oven,
Bridge Street, North Harlem,
where Morelli lives on in soul.

Remembering when-
Our boob-tubes were boxes
no larger than lap-tops
when, then, such a term
meant your pet Irish Setter
was licking the scalp
of your fathers bald head!
And such days they were
that kids of today
might label these times-
'totally un-cool';
if only they knew,
if only they'd seen-
when Sullivan hosted
on Sundays at eight,
in pure black and white.

Remembering when-
Philbin and Downs,
drank joe together,
Chock Full 'o Nuts
each Heavenly morning
'til the game shows kicked in:
What a deal, What a deal!
Hall gave the full 'Monty'
with a young Carol Merrel,
quite a mid-morning dish
a decade before
Dick Clark architected
his great 'Pyramid';
he died, but never aged.

Remembering when-
Nightly News at Six,
and eleven once more,
had Huntley and Brinkley
who gave us the word
like Gospel and Serpico,
no bias nor banter
or stoking the flames
of political ''erection''(ahemmm)
be it left or right handed,


Now flat-screen and Botox
air-brush our tech-minds;
the ten o'clock anchors
look more like a promo
for an afternoon visit
at Madame Tussauds.

Now, we live without Cronkite,
without his panache,
his scrupulous mantra,
stoking the public
with pathos and pertinence
like he did that black friday
in nineteen sixty-three;
as we all rained together,
and a good man named King
how he cried and preached,
how a different outcome
on that Friday in Dallas
could have made to the world,
could have been a fresh start
of a new social order;
yet it died in Dallas
that sad afternoon,
was buried in the earth
with Arlington's souls-
three days later.

Now, fifty years past,
some still bear the chains,
relive them in flashbacks,
these memories and fears
and their scars,
wounds forever
impressed upon faces,
and mindsets of they
who remember...are reminded
by moments in Life
from yesterdays flashbacks-
forever.

For it seems we still remain
changeless in time,
congenitally programmed,
habitually biased
in choice and taste,
to colors on face.
Oh, those days...Those day's
how I'll always remember
the day's we ate
those black 'n white cookies!








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Frank James Ryan Jr. / FjR