FOUR FEATHERS PRESS ONLINE EDITION: BITTER SWEET Send up to three poems on the subject of or at least mentioning the words bitter and/or sweet, totaling up to 150 lines in length, in the body of an email message or attached in a Word file to donkingfishercampbell@gmail.com by 11:59 PM PST on September 20th. No PDF's please. Color artwork is also desired. Please send in JPG form. No late submissions accepted. Poets and artists published in Four Feathers Press Online Edition: Bitter Sweet will be published online and invited to read at the Saturday Afternoon Poetry Zoom meeting on Saturday, September 21st between 3 and 5 pm PST.

Friday, September 20, 2024

Rob Tannahill

Gray Man Blues


I’m a ghost inside a meat suit

dirty blonde and eyes of ice

no desire for a square job

I’m a hustler tossin’ dice

the birthplace of this bastard

was up above the looney tunes

momma worked a double

on the day that I was brewed

she burned both ends of the candle

keeping up with baby booms

eleven o’ one p.m., Rockford, Illi-Noose

I’m a spirit in a flesh pod

who never learned how to choose

now this bittersweet gray man

sings the blues

 

let me tell ya about a girl

I’d be remiss to slush her

she was made of fire and flax

emeralds and disorders

her heart pumped straight-up caramel

her loins dripped honey bee puke

she nailed my heart to another man

and took the light out of my truth

now I’m walking to the gas hut

crimson shirt drips on my shoes

I’ll throw it in the dumpster

and get a free twelve pack of booze

drunken with my nipples bare

dreaming up new forms of doom

Dianne’s boy, sweetly bitter

with the blues.


now I’m forty, lost in Houston

on the withdrawal walk down Fannin

everyone here loves that cherry wine

I’m try’na find that bag of phantom

can’t remember how I got here

does the bus run when it snows?

gotta hightail it to Aldine

find a plug, powder my nose

cut me slack, babe, show me favor

let me drink deep of your flavor

with a crushed can and a bunch of change

waiting by the corner store

When I looked up to the starlight

something said, “Rob—that’ll do!”

my life is like an abandoned car

that’s still fat with unburnt fuel

what you think now, Mr. Bruni?

of these demons that consume me?

of the decades in the poison place

and the nightshade in my well

you said my epic would outlive me

but tonight I’m not so sure

every bet I make is even

they will never call me pure

my sweet soul still craves the spotlight

I guess it hasn’t heard the news

another cliché gray man

sings the blues.


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