Poemcrawl

On Saturday, as you may know from earlier posts and the illustrated Barney-filled chronicles at Dan's, we went out to hear Shafer & Jaime read at the Ear Inn and then celebrated Marion's birthday (which is actually today--happy birthday, M!). The plan was to write an exquisite corpse poem at each bar. I became "keeper of the poems." Here are the first two. Not sure if one was written at the blues club later on. Yours truly had pizza and skipped out by then.



Terrapin on Hudson

(For Dena at Henrietta Hudson’s)



warrior of Cuervo serves her harsh mistress

(I’m going to come somewhere in the middle here)

where the chumps wait out on the street

(I’m going to tell you what you already know)

the cellphones ring up some ridiculous story and

(clothes sopping us up like twill napkins)

my candle always burns for wonder girl

(what does wonder fricking girl know anyway)

she knows that where there’s smoke, you bet there’s fire

in 2062 Haley’s Comet will be visible in the night sky

will you gaze with me?







Reciprocity

WXOU : UOXW



“You’re assholes,” he offers, wiping the dregs of patrons

who wander out and away from the Marion birthday bar crawl.

“Poets make shitty tippers,” thinks the bartender

but then we give him a stack of two-bills then and there.

Whereas, deep down, his weepy poetry heart

it’s 85 degrees inside someone’s pants.

“What a weird thing to say!” though the barman Bill.

“Anyone know Green Eggs & Ham?” asks the math prof.

Math and biology have conspired to make me a monster.

(Hold on a minute, hold on. I think I’ll come here.)

So where were we. Sean sings to Shawn in flip flops and light floods

over his toes and slinks past table legs. “We were

drinking the one about the bartender and his pants.”

Drinking and wondering “Is this goddamn Bazooka gum

written in goddam Hebrew or is it Arabic?” Mediterranean,

they decide. For 1000 years they sit there.

Dead habits die hard. At it again. Here I am, Guinness in my hand.

“You just can’t fight progress,” said

the wiser of the two crows.

Raven beaks are thicker than crows’.

Signed, us all.