In All the Crummy Little Barrooms of the Soul

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This poem was published in Puptent Poets in the European Edition of Stars and Stripes in 1964 and also in the Houston,  Texas, publication The Albatross in 1968.

Listen to poem:
I wait in all the crummy
little barrooms of the soul.
I look about and sniff the air,
drink, and wait.
In the demi-world of honky-tonks,
which vie against night's
inner gloom, beneath mantles
of thick smoke, pinches,
slurred speech and propositions,
I leer drunkenly about,
swimming in the haze
of my heebie-jeebies.
I wait.
After the smoke clears away
and the honky-tonk tones die,
when the scraggy light of the
morning after spreads, mustily,
across the floor,
I wait.
After the hangover, 
after the aching head, glazed eyes,
belches, and specks
which move around my head in circles,
I see a different sort of light:
A flatter sort.
In the sordidness,
ergo filthy waxy sawdust on the floor,
I have seen a conjuration
which I sought.
But soon it disappears
and will not come again.
Illusion slips from mind
with lifting drunkenness
and break of sensibility  
and pain creeps in which
is not merely physical.
Oh well.
I must try again tomorrow night.
There will always be another night.

Copyright © | Year Posted 2011



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Date: 3/7/2020 5:20:00 AM
Fantastic poem. So real. Audio highlights the naked truth of life, leading to the hope, the promise , but the illusion of- there will always be another day-- and another night! Truth- not another minute are we guaranteed as we walk through this darkened world. A fav...
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