Drunk Butterflies near the Missouri River by Mike James

for Jason Ryberg
 “nothing but your blind, stupefied heart”
        John Thompson 

Lord, even without belief, today is enough. A little chant I say to myself. 
Structured right, it is a hymn. Not even I like to hear my singing. 

Yesterday, I almost got lost going home. I wasn’t following the advice 
Of every teacher: Pay attention! I got through school. Got home. 

I drive when I’m lonely. Take a lot of back, dirt roads. Never found 
A collapsed bridge in any river. My luck. That’s what keeps me driving. 

It’s August. Heat takes up everything. I think of weather. Think of rain. 
Nothing changes. It’s still August. With or without the river. 

I’ve always lived beside a river. Never once hopped across on rocks. I distrust currents. 
Don’t like darkness moving fast or slow. Will walk a long way to take a good bridge.

I’ve heard every cliché about home is true. I’ll say that, smile stupidly. 
I don’t always watch how hard the wind blows. I keep going. I go. 

Mike James makes his home outside Nashville, Tennessee and has published widely. His many poetry collections include: Red Dirt Souvenir Shop (Analog Submissions), Journeyman’s Suitcase (Luchador), Parades (Alien Buddha), Jumping Drawbridges in Technicolor (Blue Horse), First-Hand Accounts from Made-Up Places (Stubborn Mule), Crows in the Jukebox (Bottom Dog), My Favorite Houseguest (FutureCycle), and Peddler’s Blues (Main Street Rag.) He served as an associate editor of The Kentucky Review and currently serves as an associate editor of Unbroken. 

JOY ON THIS MONDAY NIGHT by Bradford Middleton

Another night lost to the bottle as tonight
I sit alone, Charley Patton by my side forever
More I hope as right now he sounds real good, and
The shit cheap whiskey and beer I got earlier,
All own-brand supermarket fare, taste real good
Cos tonight I just want this.
Me, alone, simply means joy as the beer, smoke
And the blessed Mudhoney come to make this life
Taste alive for the first time in a long while.  The
Writing will get done whilst the drinking will continue
And the smoking will help guide the way as another
Night is lost, yet again, to the sacred bottle and smoke.

 Bradford Middleton was born in south-east London during the summer of 1971 and won his first poetry prize at the age of nine.  He then gave up writing poems for nearly twenty-five years and it wasn't until he landed in Brighton, knowing no one and having no money, that he began again.  Ten years later and he's been lucky enough to have had a few chapbooks published including a new one from Analog Submission Press entitled 'Flying through this Life like a Bottle Battling Gravity', his debut from Crisis Chronicles Press (Ohio, USA) and his second effort for Holy & Intoxicated Press (Hastings, UK).  He has read around the UK at various bars, venues and festivals and is always keen to get out and read to new crowds.  His poetry has also been or will be published shortly in the Chiron Review, Zygote in my Coffee, Section 8, Razur Cuts, Paper & Ink, Grandma Moses 'Poet to Notice', Empty Mirror, Midnight Lane Gallery, Bareback Lit and is a Contributing Poet over at the wonderful Mad Swirl.  If you like what you've read go send a friend request on facebook to bradfordmiddleton1. 

Sanctuary by Byron Hoot

The sanctuary of a bar

is something the right kind

of theologian would know. . . 

how entering is stepping

over a threshold, how the conversations

are prayers, the libations

sacred elixir, the breaking

of bread an act of communion

made in-between laughter

and sighs, stories of joy

and sorrow

                   where the art

of forgetfulness -- God's own

art -- is practiced for awhile

and the liturgical response, "One more"

is absolution for all that can't

be absolved.

                     Like all things religious, however,

it can be taken too far

and sanctuary becomes bedlam

of heart and soul and body

and mind just like any other

sanctuary can become. . .

                                           though like all

theology "Last call" is but

a temporary closing of the doors.

Byron Hoot was born and raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, lived there until he went to college – a twelve year excursion.  He never returned to West Virginia but he never left it.  Appalachia, the hills and streams, the people, his memories of those first eighteen years are  embedded.  Now he lives in northwestern Pennsylvania. . .  still in Appalachia.

            He has recently had poems in The Watershed Journal, Tobeco Literary Arts Journal, on www.northsouthappal.com./appalachian-literature.html. and in Pennessence.  He is a co-founder of The Tamarack Writers (1974) and The Fernwood Writers Retreat (2019).  

TIC TOC TAVERN SONNET by Patti Cassidy

One more beer and I’m off to work, he toasted.

One more gin and I’ll head uptown, she purred.

One more nip and I’ll catch  a cab, he promised.

One more rye and I’m on my way, she whirred

One more scotch and I’m heading out, he shouted.

One more snifter and then I’m done , she slurred.

So it’s one more night at the Tic Toc

One more night at the watering hole,

One more night where nothing changes,

One more night the gremlins stole.

One last time, the barkeep shouts it

Then finally the big bell tolls

It’s past last call at the Tic Toc Tavern,

It’s time to hit the road.

Patti Cassidy's been on the poetry beat for most of her life, but she's best known for her  plays- many of them set in bars. Find her in Boston... or Paris. Or wherever fine spirits are sold...

Eternal Youth by David Lewis Paget

I was travelling through a countryside
That I’d never seen before,
As it grew dark, the mountainsides
Loomed threatening, over my car,
The cloud hung low in a louring sky
And my headlights cut through the gloom,
Ahead on the twisting, bending road
I had hopes of a cosy room.

There wasn’t a house or a farm out there,
The valley was threading down,
The deeper it went, the darker yet
With still no sign of a town,
I thought that I’d have to drive all night
And my eyes were growing dim,
When back in the trees, I saw a light
And a sign: ‘The Dew Drop Inn’.

I pulled at the bell for the Publican
And I heard a shuffle inside,
A shadow loomed, and the hinges creaked
And the door swung open wide,
A man so gaunt that his face was grey
And his sallow cheeks were thin,
Stood trembling in the doorway there
In the hall of the Dew Drop Inn!’

I followed him in, not saying a word,
He motioned me into the bar,
Then poured me a whiskey and water
While I stared at a glass topped jar,
It drew my gaze as I sipped my drink
For the contents bubbled and swirled,
And I said: ‘Just where is the Dew Drop Inn?’
He replied: ‘At the End of the World!’

His voice came bubbling out of his chest
Like the rasp of a rusty saw,
His hands were trembling, where they lay
And he kept his eyes on the door.
‘That jar, it changes its colours, look!
From red, through green and gold…’
He said: ‘They told me one sip from that
And a man would never grow old!’

I stared at him, and I saw him frown
With a tear at the edge of his eye,
This ancient man with the trembling hand
And I said: ‘Well, that was a lie!’
He shook his head and he turned to me
‘It depends what you want it for,
I was twenty-two when I took my sip…
I’m a hundred and sixty four!’

‘I didn’t age for a hundred years
I revelled in youth, so long,
But suddenly I grew weary, thought
That there must have been something wrong!
I lost the zest for a youthful life,
Was beginning to feel my years,
All of my friends were dead and gone,
This life is a valley of tears!’

‘You’re telling me that one sip from this
Will give me a hundred - True?
I’ll still be fit and I’ll still be strong,
At a hundred and thirty two?’
‘You will, but there’s a condition
You must take on the Dew Drop Inn,
And stay in this cursèd valley then
‘Til a seeker of youth walks in!’

I’m standing behind the counter with
My eyes on the outer door,
I’ve stood like stone for forty years
And paced a track on the floor,
The Publican left, the moment I sipped
He went with a joyous cry,
In search of a path from the Dew Drop Inn
Where at last, he could finally die!

Australian Poet, born in the UK but migrated to Australia in 1958. Writing since 1966, predominantly introspective poetry until 2005, then launched into Narrative and Gothic verse. Taught English to college students at the Wenzhou Medical College in 2005-6, from which came his Chinese collection. Lives in a Cornish cottage on the Yorke Peninsula, South Australia, retired, but still writing and publishing poetry. A prolific writer whose work has been called addictive by many readers.

Flower Girl by Michael Lee Johnson

Poems are hard to create
they live, then die, walk alone in tears,
resurrect in family mausoleums.
They walk with you alone in ghostly patterns,
memories they deliver feeling unexpectedly
through the open windows of strangers.
Silk roses lie in a potted bowl
memories seven days before Mother’s Day.
Soak those tears, patience is the poetry of love.
Plant your memories, your seeds, your passion,
once a year, maybe twice.
Jesus knows we all need more
then a vase filled with silk flowers,
poems on paper from a poet sacred,
the mystery, the love of a caretaker−
multicolored silk flowers in a basket
handed out by the flower girl.

Michael Lee Johnson lived 10 years in Canada during the Vietnam era and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada.  Today he is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, DuPage County, Illinois.  Mr. Johnson published in more than 1072 new publications, his poems have appeared in 39 countries, he edits, publishes 10 poetry sites.  Michael Lee Johnson, has been nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards poetry 2015/1 Best of the Net 2016/2 Best of the Net 2017, 2 Best of the Net 2018.  210 poetry videos are now on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos.  Editor-in-chief poetry anthology, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/1530456762; editor-in-chief poetry anthology, Dandelion in a Vase of Roses available here   https://www.amazon.com/dp/1545352089.  Editor-in-chief Warriors with Wings:  The Best in Contemporary Poetry, http://www.amazon.com/dp/1722130717.

https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Lee-Johnson/e/B0055HTMBQ%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

https://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=Michael+Lee+Johnson&type=  Member Illinois State Poetry Society:  http://www.illinoispoets.org/

San Pedro Del Pinatar (Drug Store Garbage Can Blues) By John Doyle

The Moon is clean-shaven,

Jean Renoir’s flick-knife blinded in its glare;

he cuts and slits his reels

until they bleed less and less,

in the kind of silence

morning sunshine gathers moonshine's stubble in.

Damn your eyes rages the man

standing on the ladder 

hammering nails 

into Christ - he will not live to tell the tale.

My grandmother prayed for men like him,

men found dead in burning pubs all alone

on newspaper front-pages

in the early 1980s.

On the city's coal-charred limits

the lizards lick sandpapered trees.

San Pedro Del Pinatar is sticky, barren,

an abstract of burned soldiers

and failed post-modern

architects - Spain the searing mirage 

of tourist children's sand-castles

in black and white films from 1970.

Your dashboard mirror

is pale and sickly, lacking sleep, hydration -

the shadows of everything you did to me -

sneaking down the highway

where the constellation of Cygnus

twists like a dead snake

around the only speed-limit sign

for the last two decades -

evening's traffic

murdered by keypad daggers,

tobacco-spit 

in a stallion-tamer's tin-bucket.

You were a virgin

sitting underneath the cedar trees

in Murcia,

begging me to share cuss-words with you,

I made morbid jokes

about a clown's makeshift noose,

missed airport taxis

as you twirled your

$20 wedding dress to the melody of the

drugstore garbage can blues,

the city-street

sodden shoes,

the ashes of your father's guitar

like salt sizzling in puddles.

The song-less trees

hung like martyred renegades

over the cowering shopkeeper, 

who stopped and offered water to the shamed martyred mother.

They had a painting of Jesus in the cafe next morning,

with a spliff in his mouth.

My grandmother prayed for people

who mocked like that,

I know that my grandmother

was right.

John Doyle became a Mod again in the summer of 2017 to fight off his impending mid-life crisis; whether this has been a success remains to be seen. He has has two collections published to date, A Stirring at Dusk in 2017, and Songs for Boys Called Wendell Gomez in 2018, both on PSKI's Porch.

He is based in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland. All he asks is that you leave your guns at the door and tie up your horses before your enter.