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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

Chorus:
I'm a country man in a lonely home,
Me, myself and I who know road?
Well, it's a deep tought nobody knows,
So I keep it alone,
For the night surley got to show....
Ooh...

Chorus:
I'm a country man in a...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

© 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...

Read More

Anna Belle 1619 (Part One)

She set out to Jamestown in 1619
She's a Nordic ship on the sea
She's purple in shades in streams
She bathes in the Caribbean breeze
She needs no bard's flattery
No barroom cajolery
Only God with...

Read More

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...

Read More

A young man, barely twenty-one,
On the town in search of fun.
The wrong side of the railroad track
And somehow never made it back.

A pickup truck, a black guitar…
I thought that they would take me far.
But music...

Read More

"Ballinger's pride will be the death of him,"
Was the last muttering of the old cyclops before 
The poison took over. Never trust unicorn bartenders.

Young Gallimay, the town's token centaur,
Walked into this scene:
Serren's body laid across...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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.
...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

Welcome friends, I know you will be most excited
with tonight's special guest that we have invited.

So, let's give a round of applause and a cheer.
Punctuation's star, Exclamation Point, is here.
  
Welcome.  It's good to see you, Exclamation...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

~~~
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 ......

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More