Hello and Welcome

This is, or will be, a blog primarily about poetry: mine, yours,and everyone else's. I'm going to republish my poems here, talk about things related, favorite poets, po-biz, angst. I won't promise consistent updates, as I go through stages where I don't write poems, but you should see posts fairly frequently. And as I re-read this, I see I misnamed the bar. It's the Shipwreck Lounge, on Revere Beach. Ahem. Proof your work, poets.:-/

The following poem appeared in Barn Owl Review Issue I.


The Shipwreck Bar

I'm watching a drape-eyed girl,
callused fingers stretched
like paper over thin bones,
the star attraction in this bar
but this isn't one of those poems,
where there's some forlorn girl
and some hard-bitten guy
bouncing their tricks off each
other like quarters into an empty
shot glass or pumping each other
for information while her tiny
bare beach feet kick softly against
the runner. It's a poem about the
illegal bets being made all around,
the evening sun letting down outside,
and the bread-smell of Budweiser
in a cold long-neck bottle,
the scrape and craw of wooden barstools,
and most of all, it's about the way
the night negates possibility at the same
time the opportunities expand,
when that ship that's been creaking
on the wall seems to be coming in
again for you and for all your friends,
and it's about that drape-eyed girl
leaving the bar alone and walking
on the beach searching for stray kelp,
seeing a stray mutt,
and finding some old toy she left behind,
or something burning in the night mist,
something only she can know about,
something the world doesn't want her to have.