They closed the corner store some time ago
the ciggies by the two we now forgo
our lucky bags now a recollection
as is browsing in the comic section.
Mechanics' Social Club no longer stands
their topless barmaids, striving local bands
and Sunday morns' all-comers talent show
both pubs have closed, there's nowhere left to go.
They closed the corner store some time ago
finally called the time and stopped the show
The cafe, bank the chemist shop, all gone
the street is quiet, not much going on.
We'll have a Tesco store sometime, they say
we know they're sure to place it far away
you'll need an Uber car, too far to walk
We'll miss the bench where you could stop and talk.
They closed the corner store some time ago
Nail salons and vape stores, now come and go
barbers, bookies empty charity shops
you see the homeless sleep, you see no cops
once walking up and down the street in pairs
graffiti daubs, the windows smashed, who cares?
An out-of-towner builds an HMO
inside the corner store we used to know.
Categories:
barmaids, nostalgia,
Form: Rhyme
I have conversed with the common man
in warm and well-worn pubs.
I have been a ribald, and a leery lout,
a seducer of barmaids.
I have been common,
the way a city pidgin is common,
its scabbed claws a common sight,
slipping in and out of poorly lit doors.
Poets are born poor, poorly treated,
and poorly thought of.
The wealthy used to be poets,
but their intelligence
was pawned and loaned to them
by the winking, wicked streets.
They made daffodils out of dog,
many swooned,
but the common people,
we spat out their perfumed souls
for they were distasteful,
much more so
than the knowing fools I talk to
in the most common of pubs.
Categories:
barmaids, poetry,
Form: Free verse
I met her in a bar in Trinidad,
a mother to the sisterhood was she -
three little girls what merry fun we had
and what sweet memories of you and me.
Madame Estrella, a tongue like a sword,
and Miss Heidi glamour puss in turn rolled
the tumbling dice on the ludo game board
with pigtails and rainbows and hearts of gold.
And sweet shy Gypsy up on Cotton Hill
wise beyond early years on me impress,
little barmaids my glass and soul did fill -
I miss your rare grace, joy, and youthfulness.
I will return so let the games begin
and for the last call at Pelican Inn.
Written: March 1993
Categories:
barmaids, friendship love, nostalgia, youth,
Form: Sonnet
When auld friends meet,
To chaw and waste,
And barmaid brings,
The Lad's the taste.
The more the taste,
The more the waste,
And under breath, the wives will curse when call for grace.
But wives agreed. They took the vows.
And grace can wait on hearth and stone,
Til' Lads' be done and oot and home.
Lad's cause no harm,
And some say charm.
And barmaids' heard,
Much worse the yarn.
Bring more ale!
The Lad's will call.
But barmaid says "No more to all",
She knows for where,
And Lad's know too,
That home is where their hearts are true.
And home come Lad's,
Til' next is time,
When taste is calling,
And waste is fine.
For Lad's work hard,
Complete the week,
But only once for they can meet,
Again to taste and chaw and waste.
Graham Alexander Devenish
Categories:
barmaids, celebration, cheer up, drink,
Form: Ode
Bar Stool Bed Sore Ode to the Record Machine
Smoking Winstons
At the Seaway Lounge
At 2:00 a.m.
The juke-box sighs out
Buck Stovell, Roy Crestline and an occasional Darla Parsell,
Whoever she is
Buxom barmaids who are 53 years old
Wear nineteen year-old gold stretch pants
Bleached blond earlobes
Wrinkled double chins
Kissing
Genuine Cherokee Indian jewelry
An old gray side-burned man asleep
In the corner
Beside the cigarette machine
Middle aged women looking very divorced
At the bar, two stools away
From the pretzel can
I sip on warm Blue Ribbon
That looses it color in the dirty glass
“Oh … lonesome me”
Juke-box oozing out tunes
As my jaw oozes out of socket and
Into my callus factory hands
Dirty finger-nailed
Sex-starved wrists
Palms ready to …
Put another quarter in the box
Nashville’s monument to love
In a shaggy bar, in Lawrence, Indiana
Categories:
barmaids, depression, drink,
Form: Free verse
A human tornado,
driven,
by influence,
by affluence,
by effluence.
The flotsam and the jetsam.
Come and get some.
I would not have came here
were it not for you.
You blame the walls,
I bounce off the walls.
The gift horse is here,
we claw at our eyes as he opens his mouth.
I stare into space and stare into space,
nothing, then galaxies pass by at pace.
starlit hands caress my face,
I am a human race.
I tell you of flying saucers and topless barmaids,
but you never believe me.
You tell me a fungus has spawned in my brain,
And as I was lost, I am found,on ground, again.
For a moment there you took me off task,
retreat or surrender, was that the ask?
But my lungs start beating,
and I breathe through my heart.
It is life that I cheat,
It is death where we part.
And in my pink and black neon euphoria,
I roll up my sleeves and I am back in the game.
Categories:
barmaids, addiction,
Form: I do not know?
Opera Star locked in death
Suicide laughs at the gambler’s fate.
Queen of spades steals his last breath.
Tchaikovsky’s opus gets a high rate.
Intelligence befalls the Queen of Spades.
Good luck is not in her game.
Gamblers, hustlers, and barmaids
Know misfortune’s historic acclaim.
There is in love no heart for her.
Suitors avoid her at every cost.
Paupers, bankers, friends or strangers
Bad luck befalls and the game is lost.
Her epitaph must surely say,
“She Partied Every Night.”
Money lost as the gambler’s play.
In laughter, her ghost takes flight.
Categories:
barmaids, fantasy, life, loss
Form: Quatrain