Bar None by Connie Johnson

You hipped me to Everette Maddox

Bar Scotch on loan from a library in Alabama

reminding me that I met you, not in a bar but a library

o bearded philosopher/Afro poet with

one-more-for-the-road insights

and I remember them all

 

But back to Everette,

so keenly informed on what it means

to live without what you can’t live without

NOLA man thru and thru, making me want to stroll down

Bourbon Street again, look eye to eye with an alley cat

with his own take on the human condition

 

It’s all about the angle

the vantage point 

 

If not for a library, I never would have met you in the first place,

o Afro poet/soul philosopher who hipped me to Everette Maddox

I read him and feel closer to you; it makes me proud to be a poet, too

this often penniless task of putting pen to paper

but I can’t help but savor it, I’ve got so much to say:

“planets blazing in innerspace”

 

Somebody out there listening

 

 

Connie Johnson is a Los Angeles, California-based poet whose work has appeared  or will be forthcoming in Iconoclast, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Jerry Jazz Musician, Voicemail Poems, Misfit Magazine, Exit 13 and Mudfish.