Long Barroom Poems

As I look back upon a terrific, exciting, and storied career,
I revisit the trove of golden memories, which I hold so dear.

Although some were bad, they have been predominantly sweet;
But the most striking one, still...

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Mitchell: Good sirs, my word was fair. No discrepancy stains the pages of my ledger. The fifth tier is a sub-basement beneath the cellar floor of the temple’s vestibule. Any woman who is not tagged...

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With thoughts of getting fish-faced on a Friday night, 
I dropped anchor in a portside bar 
To contemplate the crooked path to closing time; 
Couldn’t guarantee I’d get that far.

I ordered a tequila, called myself...

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WHEN The WIND COMES DOWN LONG LAKE in OCTOBER 
 
(1 AM in the morning  -  Naples, Maine)

When unseasonable lake water balm 
meets you tripping out of Ricks’ Café 
after midnight
you know those...

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Thru an opened bedroom (albeit screened) window...

Accessible twenty four hours a day
seven days a week,
fifty two weeks a year.

Spring 2022 Curtain call at
Highland Manor Apartments unit b44
framing Mother Nature nook
ever changing scene unfolds
analogous to storybook.

I...

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© Ben Burton 2-20-2015

If I were Edgar Allan Poe
I'd been dead many years ago


Two score, no more, the poet bore
Before rejoining his Lenore


Reflections now, from sixty-five
I'm wondering how I have survived


For, having shared his mental...

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It’s been so long
Since I’ve been home
Many a year
I’ve been on the roam
As the years turned to days
Days turned to years
Time is an hourglass
Showing ones deepest fears
As I sit here
In this barroom 
Smoking a cigarette
Leave...

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I see we are open again.
It’s time to welcome old friends.
The homely, the lonely, 
they who want only
to have somewhere to place their rear ends. 

The people I bear are so glad.
The stories I hear...

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I see we are open again.
It’s time to welcome old friends.
The homely, the lonely, 
they who want only
to have somewhere to place their rear ends. 

The people I bear are so glad.
The stories I hear...

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This time Lord I'm coming home.
     Hungry, tired, all alone.
I feel the angels comfort me.
     This is where I want to be.
This time Lord I'm coming home.
...

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When cowboys sprawl 'round the camp fire after the days work is done,
They strum guitars and tootle harmonicas and sing to have fun.
Real cowboys don't sing Honky-Tonk or She Done Me Wrong stuff.
They leave that...

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We are going on a trip to the British Isles
and Channel Island of Guernsey and Normandy.
This sure should be quite a cruise. Here is my
first poem I am writing about it even though I
have not...

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T-Bone was our camp cook
when we went on the trail,
whiskered an' b-grizzled
with a wit that never failed.

He took no guff from anyone,
not even the boss man,
'cause he controlled his eaten too
when he rattled those tin...

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Hank had cowboyed and rodeoed fer nigh on forty years,
Ridin' in sleet, rain and snow a-herdin' cantankerous steers.
His hide was tough as leather and his legs was slightly bowed,
But brandin' dogies and fixin' fences was...

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A lone desperado rode his lathered cayuse to old Santa Fe.
It was high noon, sweltering hot and dusty on that fateful day.
The handsome young outlaw wore deadly forty-fours on each hip,
And there were multiple notches...

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~~~
Tis a gladness found in sadness
mostly pleasure
wince of pain
From an odor round the barroom
none the boys could e'er explain
Like a billowed line of washin'
after gentle fallen rain
Tis the wail of spring befallin'
on a barfly
oh ......

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Interview with a Real Drinker.

A: “Sir, can you tell me, why do you drink?”
B: “So that I’m rendered unable to think!”
A: “Then, can you tell me, what do you drink?”
B: “Anything, friend!” (With a laugh...

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COUNTRY MUSIC IS ON:

There we go,
Flashing all the fever from my bones.
Now I'm grown,
Smiling with beauty as supposed;
That inspires so,
Because it's something that I've proposed.
I believe no one can oppose;
For the concept balls down between...

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She’s into sushi and sapiosexuals, 
Yogis with crystals, and vain intellectuals.
Just a flutter-by wisp with a thin portmanteau,
Who doesn’t believe what she’d rather not know.
Her porcelain features come straight off the shelf.
She plans for the...

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I’m front and center in this barroom 
Every single night of every week
The things I’ve seen would honestly
Make you cringe in disbelief 
And seldom does one look at me
At least for very long

It sure gets...

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my blue sky dream forsaken
i now chase the ever faster rabbit
of promised fairy tale
his pronounced face forever plastered on billboards
and barroom halls wanted posters
after all don't we all wish at some point or another
to chew...

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The Nap
        by Odin Roark

Through a smudged barroom window
A child stares in at the old man

In his darkened corner spot
He sits on a rickety chair
Head bent downward
Bleary eyes...

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Years ago, I indulged, all my temptations 
But now I've made, the straight and narrow, path my way
As I sit here in church, I'm at a loss for my words
I've never seen so many sinners...

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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...

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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...

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