Best Beery Poems
This garden city
Concrete skyscrapers loom;
Greenery punctuate
Tree-lined avenues
Bourgainvillea clusters;
Traffic jam companions
Waltzing slowly
Overhead bridge;
Ant-people below
Old neighbourhood
Heartland community;
Ageing populace
Feeble old lady
Speeds on wheels;
Electric commotion
Playground
For small kids and big;
Noisy charades
Fitness park
For young and old;
Fighting spirit
City side walk cafe
Crowded after hours;
Beery happy hours
Noticeable absence
Dry spell ending;
Sudden torrential rain
Umbrellas raised,
Parasols hoisted;
Too late this drenching
Side walk cobbler
New lease for old shoes;
Assorted wears
Hyper art queue
Long-winded delay;
Fussy customer
Bank ATM await
Ready to dispense;
Urgent pocket money
Office podium
By shopping mall;
Buzz of human traffic
Downtown hype
Temptations galore;
Mostly unnecessary
Leon Enriquez
23 Apr 2014
Singapore
In Liverpool, England, there is one street containing
all the Chinese restaurants, side to side, back to back
and stinking drain to sea.
where once a year, twirling dragons pierce the afternoon air,
passing old men with suits and moneyed-hands, their
young thugs standing close with tatooed skin.
the crowd, mostly mums and dads and tots in prams, heaves
like weed on a Kowloon sea...hungry for the firecracker
bangs and dim-sum smells and potted green tea.
this riot of shifting colour drags and pushes at the cobbled
road underfoot, as the dragon takes another bag of pak choy
greens placed ten foot high, while the lithe boys dressed in
kung fu black and draped with skill, reach up to pluck the
fiscal bunch and pass it down, hand to hand, out of sight,
to the flashing, bouncing jaws beneath
and soon the fire cracker thunder and emptied shops
call the street to book: and a carnage of paper to-go boxes
and spilt terror join with the bars' beery breath
saying...go home now Englishmen, you are not our brothers,
this is our place not yours..go home til next year
Morning newsprint
Wet soaking rain;
Bleak news today
~~~~~~~~~
Play school kids
Stare as I pass;
Curious eyes follow
~~~~~~~~~
New age cakery here
Exquisite creations;
Addictive morsels
~~~~~~~~~
Beggar in rags
Face soiled and weary;
Pleads for a meal
~~~~~~~~~
Our society is well-fed
Yet the poor abound;
Poverty of all sorts
~~~~~~~~~
Molasses and coconut cream
Desserts that enchant;
Another round please
~~~~~~~~~
Evening rain pours
Run for cover;
Temporary refuge
~~~~~~~~~
Worst case scenario
Business venture fails;
Try again later
~~~~~~~~~
Cheers!
One for the road;
Beery ways steer
~~~~~~~~~
Leon Enriquez
11 February 2015
Singapore
and I remember the pilled-doctor
rolling by, rolling by, and the beery
priest, in the sky, in the sky
and the woman in the taxi, oh my,
oh my, and her husband the pugilist,
big guy, big guy
and the lamp-posted street and the
beery priest and his altared feet,
all rolling by, rolling by
and the maggots in the trash can
meal long gone, meal long gone
and the yellow kitchen dish
squissh, squish,squish buttered
frying fish,buttered frying fish
and the black, smiling police woman,
come to bed, come to bed;
and the little bouncing snappy dog, bounce
the ball, bounce the ball
then the man in robes from Pakistan,
Pakistan, all the sights, if you can,
if you can;
and now I'm old, now I'm old,
with silver hair and linen shirts
and children three in pants and
skirts.
and if at night I stop and stare,
stop and stare;
I see who I was;
living there.
Emotions war against sense,
And his mind remains
A pot pourri,
And thoughts in his head
When he lies in his bed
Would make Dorian Gray
Appear pristine.
He wishes to moralize
On a corrupt example,
Yet from the wicked cup
He hath supped a sample.
He appears to think in extremes;
He is beau-laid and realist,
Whose inspiration stems from his dreams.
"Life is a beautiful strain for me,"
One sun-drunk day he said,
"But I pray I say what my soul needs to
Before the heavens decide me dead."
But his mind is a disorderly drawer
Full of confused categorizations;
He has that Scott Fitzgerald illness
For dates, times, rhymes and quotations.
"I have a clear flowing mind,
But I cannot foretell
When the clogging black clouds will arrive,
For they will arrive.
Live with the love, then bear the pain
Recurrent like the monsoon rain."
He is afraid of happiness
For the inevitable despair that must follow it;
Afraid of happiness
For its cruel impermanence.
Like Zola, the seasons in life, for him,
Are inevitable.
"All artists," he says, "are at once alike and unique
One day, it's clear,
The next, hazy, like a beery vision,
The fulfilment that they seek."
Misty dreams of sweet-smelling roses
And swaying streams
Bring him chills and pains in his soul and being;
He lives his life through a melancholy tragedy,
And has an ever-yearning mind.
("Some Sun Drunk Day He Said" has the dubious honour of being a near-unadulterated slice of juvenilia, having been conceived as some kind of poem when I was about 20 years old.)
Fishwives
In junkets to
the golden shore
Beside the cobalt
sea of lore
Was told of dwellings
and rapscallions
Of ramshackled wood
and galleons.
Where ancient mariners
and the breeze
Sailed upon
the unknown seas,
Where wives and fish,
in nets, were caught,
And the spoils of labour
sold and bought,
And 'neath the starry skies
would sing
Of trawlers and
the nets they'd fling,
Starboard bow
and guillemot peck
The flapping herring
upon oily deck.
Where wives and fish,
of griddle and broth
Spit and cuss
in their beery froth,
And carving ships
in dry whalebone
The men, of gods
and serpents, moan.
By dark, by habit,
by candle lit
Gather in separate
huddles, sit,
Weary lines upon
a salty thread
Weave and knot
their minds to bed.
To dream of junkets
to a golden shore
Where told of dwellings
that are no more,
Where supper served
in a driftwood dish
Would taste as sweet
as wives and fish.
Very well, my dear, she said through coloured glass,
Through teeth of blood and silver
As the doorway hurtled past;
I then stood on the front step, with the rain beating down,
Until he bared his thuggish fangs
And I drove from the town.
I had done no wrong, offended none, and yet
He bore a numbskull grudge
In rage and beery sweat;
Each escalating threat of unfinished business spoke,
Of coming round and knocking
Things grew way beyond a joke.
My aging failing heart began to age and fail anew,
The sickness quickly spread
With blood work left to do;
Though of innocence protested, all stupidity is deaf,
Only one track on his mind:
To batter me to death.
SCORNED ELEPHANT
Squat and stuck
On the flat wetted
Skid-streaked take-off strip
Snub-nosed Jumbo sprawls about dissipated
Under the beery stares of uncouth deriding youth.
Swine scorn a pearl, greedily grubbing for acorns.
How can they know lustre outlives lust?
Their ignorant grunts are taken for granted.
Prima ballerina now she’ll dance
Gaily gaining speed she’ll start to prance
Leaping up the air will free her swift
Graceful strength not seen but felt in lift
Two wings full spread to soar in pride
Shimmering sheen of pure pearl
Diminishing sight, the freedom girl
Fast bound to America by knots untied.
...............................................................
Note.
Observng people in a foreign airport, mocking American values, I saw the Jumbo jet as the symbol of US life. First verse is unrhymed for the foreigners, second verse is rhymed with run-on lines for the American values - freedom and untied knots.
To the foam of the caps of the beery sea
I lift my lips to re-pleasure me,
And the tide runs on full till the last long wave
And it's "Bottoms up!" to the writing brave!
After one too many beers, in the wee hours of the night,
I whizzed around town in my motorbike, feeling light;
I zoomed into a dark side street and who or what did I meet
but potholes, like drunk hobos, recklessly crossing the street!
I ran over some of them, they fought back and muddied me,
made me swerve and splash into murky puddles I couldn't see.
I stopped to catch my breath on the black deserted highway
by my bike, the only one that stood by me, I should say;
but nastier than potholes, the asphalt was a different case,
it leaped and stood bolt upright and slammed hard against my face;
In a split-second eternity, I swam the eerie border
of the real and the unreal, this beery night to remember !
THE SOLDIER
HE SAT DOWN WITH US
A BEERY GROUP OF YOUNGISH MEN
NOT WANTING TO BE OLD AND REACH THIRTY
WE TALKED OF SEX ESCAPADES AND
MONEY-MAKING SCHEMES WHICH HAD
FALLEN DOWN
AND BOUNCED AWAY FROM THE TV NEWS
“I’D SHOOT YOU FOR THREE HUNDRED”,
HE SAID, NOT SMILING,
I NODDED IN CAUTIOUS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT,
HIS BARBED WIRE EYES LOOKED AT HIS WRISTWATCH
LATER YOU COULD HEAR HIM COUGHING IN
THE TOILET: THEN IN A SHORT WHILE
HE WALKED THROUGH THE ROOM WITH ITS
STORM OF TABLES AND CHAIRS WHICH
PARTED MOSES-STYLE TO LET HIM THROUGH,
COUGHING AND CURSING, ANGRY THAT
THERE WERE NO MORE WARS TO FIGHT,
EXCEPTING THE ONES IN HIS HEAD
We don’t talk no more
Were not friends
And you don’t want me
Not in this life or the next
Say I’m to butch for you
I don’t see how
When I do all the things you like
You use to call me to your bead
A usage I could take
But now you don’t even beckon me to eat
Breakfasts lunch and dinner
And I don’t know how to approach you in this state
When I know you don’t even want to see my face no more
I’m a bad person
A ***** that lies too much
And yell to loud all filled up with anger then and now
Because I only told you once that I wanted you
And you told me you did not want a relationship
So why bet a dead hours
It won’t get up to let you ride
Dead is dead
And life is breath
Yet I can’t breathe when I’m around you or away
I guess this is how Zombies feel
I’m living in the cracks of to day and tomorrow
I’m a bad friend
A ***** that lies and yells to much
I’m always angry
And it radiates off on to you
A heater in summer days you can never turn off
And you can’t deal with this heat
Just two people trying to be whole
And two puzzle pieces that don’t match
Can’t be smashed together
I’m to proud to beg you back
Yet if I did
Got on my knees and kissed your feet
I don’t think it would get me any were
You have heard all but this one
The only one who has read them all
But you will never read these words
That are rushing out like vomit
And I don’t know how to handle
Seeing your face every day
I want to touch you
Hold your hand because I’m sad
I can’t seem to let things go
I ****ed up and I know
But the secrets that we shear
I do keep
A keeper of so many keys
Yet not one that will open the door to you
A Stone Butch Blue
I could never warm
I miss you now
And you miss how I use to be
Ask what I want from you
Dead is dead
And a Zombie friendship will never raise agene
So why do I let you flout in my mind
I want to beery this friendship
Like you beery the dead
Yet I can’t lift the shovel to start
The cryptic hole to beery your soul
Or maybe it’s my soul I wish to beery
But no one can lend a hand
When suicide
Had her legs splayed out wide
After one too many beers
in the wee hours of the night,
I whizzed around town on my
motorbike, feeling light.
I zoomed into dim sidestreets
and who or what did I meet?
Deep potholes, like drunk hobos,
recklessly crossing the street!
But nastier than potholes,
the pavement was a different case.
It leaped and stood bolt upright
and slammed hard against my face !!
Mermaid Fascination
Put a sea-shell to your ear and hear
the storm that blew and the call from
the mermaid you met when wading
along the shores of Peru.
The tail thing is a myth because I met
her late in the evening in a pink room
perfumed to cover for the odour of
beery men, who live in dread of dentists.
She was glad to see me and I seeing
her, although not at this place, yet she
took an hour off her busy schedule and
we made love without haste.
I dig a spur of the moment
into the feral flanks of a rocking horse.
I belong to the stars
and the wide-open anywhere.
My heart belongs to Molly Maguire
a colleen from the low bog country.
No wait, this is a dream sequence
brewed to overflow at 3 in the morning.
The beery light is turning sour
as I check my watch for tics.
My problem is to many cookies
not the edible kind
the kind that clog up a computer
or a brain (same thing really).
When I struggle out of this muddled bed
I am going to get myself a deep scan,
clean up some dirty memories
so that I can plug into a sharper faster reality.
Might even rewrite this poem
into a clearer form of gibberish,
but will probably be too busy today
downloading a spinal cord
into my aching
and malfunctioning mainframe.