Vladimir got into a barroom brawl
Where he pushed his rival into a wall
Vlad went back to his seat
Sat down to drink and eat,
He finished, flushed, then exited the stall
Garbage poetry,
that’s why they make you pay—
a toll booth on the road to nowhere,
ink-stained palms held out
by men who couldn’t read a pulse
if it bit them.
Poets strutting like roosters
on borrowed dawns,
calling vanity “vision,”
calling noise “truth,”
calling themselves necessary.
Christ, the hubris
could pave a parking lot.
They workshop the life out of it,
sand down the blood,
polish the scream
until it sounds like a brochure.
Then they wonder why
no one listens.
I’ve seen better lines
scratched on barroom mirrors
by men who knew
they were already lost.
Those men didn’t pay to publish—
they paid with their teeth,
their livers,
their nights.
It’s hard to work
when everyone’s busy applauding themselves,
hard to write
when the room smells like resumes.
The real poem
is hunched in the corner,
drinking cheap beer,
waiting for everyone to shut up.
Most never do.
From Hip-Hop to bop, we ride the jazz tide, swing till you drop/underground Monk playin' some funk/Max Roach coaching the field, drums in the playbook/ Brother Jack McDuff runnin' for a touch down in the open filed/Superman and Jimmy Smith, the dynamic duo’s look flyin' high/Abstract truths on the wall, Warhol’s silver glow/Basquiat’s brush storms the gallery floor/Miles, out of the kool, breakin’ every rule/a trumpet thunderbolt/ stereo vinyl playin'/ Sonny Rollins vibes in the club, cookin’ up fresh notes/church bells ring in his horn/ Man, a river of quotes/The Jazz Messengers mark the milestones in the mist/Miles all the way live, his Sketches of Spain we can’t resist/ HiFi prayers/ Jazz time/ Peace and love for all mankind/Blue Mitchell in the barroom a mural on the wall/Man, it’s all right, baby, hear the crowd ignite/Wynton Kelly’s trio is out of sight like way gone/From street corners to jazz low down rooms, the groove is our creed/a lineage of legends planted in every reed/Spoken in breath, in rhyme, in rhythm’s Sly Stones art/a saga of swing that lives on, heart to jaged heart/ The soulful vibes keeps use alive
Ballad for Ruby and the Dice"
Angie, she whispered through cigarette haze,
The ghost of a name from my wilder days.
Under my thumb, I thought hearts would stay,
But wild winds never learn how to obey.
Paint it black, I told the sky that night,
When Ruby Tuesday danced out of sight.
She wore her sorrow like lipstick red,
And left my dreams tangled in the bed.
You can't always get what you want, they said,
So I drank to the dice and rolled love instead.
Tumblin’ dice down an old jukebox floor,
Each roll a prayer, or a closing door.
Wild horses couldn’t drag me back
To the innocence lost on that lonesome track.
Where honky tonk women sway and spin,
And hearts are traded like whiskey and sin.
Now I hum their names in the barroom light,
Angie, Ruby, and every midnight.
Chasing echoes in the songs they sung—
Still under my thumb, but forever young.
Let me know if you'd like it turned into a song or set to a blues rhythm!
i WAS WUNDOORING IF.....
i DON'T WANNA SOUND LIKE
A FOOL SAYING IT
NUT IF WE USED RAW LUMBER
AND MADE TWO BIG CRATES
AND SAT THE SMALLER CRATE INSIDE
THE LARGER ONE
AND SPRAYED SPRAYFOAM IN
THE AGGAPPED AREA
AND THAN PUT
A OVERLAPPING ROOF
UPON IT
AND POURED A CONCRETE
SLAB COULD WE USE IT AS OUR OUTSIDE
BEDROOM.
AND AN AREA TO TO STORE OUR
HICKORY NUT AND OLIVE OIL MIXTURE?
sINCERLY
eL bARROOM bASOONIST
WE PUT ROASTED HICORY NUTS
IN THE RAW BROWNSUGAR
MAN THATS GOOD
GREAT WITH THE
WHISKEY DRINKS TOO!
Beyond bright garish flashes of neon lights,
blaring music and drunken barroom fights,
it's my wish to find tranquility and solitude
within a realm where the moon is red-hued.
I'd gladly wander a crimson moonlit path,
far away from this world's uncivilized wrath.
Where warblers sing lullabies to me at night
while I watch a hungry owl take wing in flight.
Myriads of stars will be shimmering in the sky,
and in complete contentment I will peacefully lie.
As a red moon rising hovers far above my head,
I'll be sheltered without need of worry or dread.
In a quiet sanctuary of tall evergreen trees
I'd welcome the evening's cool flowing breeze.
With a blanket spread on meadowed grounds,
I'd revel with joy at Nature's awesome sounds,
like the trills of doves giving their mating call
and the muffled rumble of a distant waterfall.
There are no bastions here, nor fortified fences.
In this meditative place I can liberate my senses.
I'll be one with my surroundings, totally at ease,
as if I'm floating on calm waves of unruffled seas.
Far from cacophony that offends an idyllic repose,
beneath a sanguine moon, where no one else goes.
Life Weary, So Hungry I Could Eat A Dry Bone
Trekking through fire breathing desert, yes all alone
Mouth full of sand, shattered heart so heavy too
Life weary, so hungry I could eat a dry bone
Looking back at this life, where were the breaks my due
I recall all hellacious bad times that came
The motorcycle wreck when I was but fifteen!
All those shots that should have given me greater fame
Those barroom brawls, man that one dude was so damn mean
I laughed, I ran full amok, a bit crazy
I cried like a baby when they shot down Dean
I raised hell doing farmwork but was not lazy
School was a blast but math work I wasnt too keen.
Trekking through fire breathing desert, yes all alone.
Life weary, so hungry I could eat a dry bone one.
Mouth full of sand, shattered heart so heavy too
Looking back at this life, where were the breaks my due.
Robert J. Lindley, 6-08-2023
16 VERSE SONNET , WITH 12 SYLLABLES
EACH VERSE
Note_
My life in my youth was anything but dull.
I worked as a club bouncer, farmhand, factory working manager 4 times, carpenter, roofer, bricklayer, metal fabricator, even worked at a car repair once.
By day, Turtle is coincidental
he sits outside of a Chinese restaurant
by the side of an ornamental pond
that is always empty of fish.
The traffic creates
a dusty coat on his stone shell,
yet his eyes are wide open,
they do not blur the world
as it cascades along in its rumbling boxes,
its leaking mechanical lungs.
The still night does not land here
until three in the morning,
then Turtle disappears, changes form,
reappearing in a dark and empty barroom,
there he spins whisky and ice in a glass,
until dawns first yawn
then gulps he the whisky down.
When light creeps under the rooftops
Turtle returns to the oriental pond,
sits upon the edge
tries to recall what will come next,
shudders once
before turning back to stone.
That’s what the Ground hogs whistle:
‘hell or high water’
then they put on their old-timey spectacles
and the glasses slip
to the end of their stubby snouts.
The squirrels climb too high
for the lower depths of Hades to reach,
but the hawks are not religious.
Daddy bought the farm
his old lady, the unmarried one,
died also
tugging at his shirt tails.
The waters receded some,
hell closed its barroom doors
to all the better critters.
Only the bottom feeders
were allowed in;
not the whales
they had outgrown heaven
and hell,
the high waters kept them safe
until the oily whalers
came back
to reclaim the low ground.
“Amazing Grace” never grows old
A hymn for all times and places
Even the most jaded will sing it
I’ve heard it in barroom spaces
‘Tis often sung in worship services
By the choir and the congregation,
The story of John Newton is told
How the slave trader found salvation.
An English cleric of some renown
Words he wrote tell us he became free,
“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me,”
“I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind, but now I see.”
Written August 22, 2022
He was my friend
For just a few years,
Our friendship cemented
Over ciggies and beers,
And chatting up birds
On long boozy nights
And standing back to back
In barroom fights.
We had an arrangement
That we never abused
We drank on credit
In the bar we used,
,Every two weeks
When payday came around
Even the comrades knew
Where we’d be found.
Standing at Elli's bar
We patiently waited
Whilst our tally was
Carefully calculated.
With the account settled
That was when
With the first drink
Our tally started off again.
We were last to,leave
Every single drinking night
And I swear sometimes
It was almost first light.
When his postings came
We said goodbye
Promised to keep in touch
But we neither did try.
For a little while
I tried to carry on
But it wasn't the same
With him being gone.
I heard he carried on
Just the same
And every now and again
I'd hear his name.
I'm pretty certain he's dead
After all these years
Fron too many ciggies
And too many beers
But he was my mate
My very best of friends
When we burned our Candles
From the middle and both ends
I don't want to get drunk anymore.
These hangovers I truly deplore.
Yet as the sun goes down
you know where I'm bound:
goin' drinkin' just like before.
I don't want to get drunk anymore.
My behavior is hard to ignore.
Friends say it ain't fittin'
so tonight I'm quittin'
and walkin' out this barroom door.
I don't want to get drunk anymore.
Yet I'm back here just like before
and I'm writin' this poem
for my lover at home
and hopin' she don't lock the door.
You know I'll get drunk evermore
and be the lush most abhor.
There's no use resistin'
'cause you know that I'm fixin'
to go drinkin' just like before.
She presses into the noise
like a tabacco leaf
pressing into the shape
of a coffin nail.
The smoky haze that fills
this darkened place
does little to camouflage
the weariness of life.
Old-time music beats
a familiar rhythm,
and once again she dances
with strangers who fail
to give her silence.
Of visits I’m fond, like that buxom blond~~come up and see me some time!*
*In She Done Him Wrong (1933), Mae West as Lady Lou, a barroom singer, says to Captain Cummings (Cary Grant), “Why don’t you come up some time and see me?”
August 25, 2020
entered in the Flirt with Me Contest placed 1st
sponsored by Bobby May
WHERE OPPORTUNITY ABOUNDS
She sat all alone in the dimly lit, smoky barroom
Nursing a gin and tonic that the ice had melted in
Her countenance was that of someone jilted
With a look that showed disdain for men
Two stools down there sat a stranger
Whose face had the same look as hers
It had a veritable blank stare look
That takes place when jilting occurs
Suddenly the bartender said rather loudly
Last call for the lonely hearts club
And at that moment their eyes met
The dim glow from the dimly lit bulb
Seemed brighter than ever before
He approached her ever so slowly
And offered to take her home
Her thoughts were he is so lowly
But the opportunity seemed quite harmless
So she accepted his generous offer
After all, they both were so lonely
And such a chance may have much to proffer
1 November 2019
Last Call For The Lonely Hearts contest - collaboration sponsored by Line Gauthier
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.