Tag Archives: drinking

Marcus Bales, ‘Rule Number One’

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For Linda, who said it first

 If you’re going to have a reading
then no matter where you are
for a minimum of breeding
you have got to have a bar.

You will fill up all the seating,
they will come from near and far,
if the best part of your greeting
is “Why, yes we have a bar!”

But the evening will be fleeting
even if you’ve booked a star
when it’s alcohol they’re needing
and you do not have a bar.

They will freeze in scanty heating
and they’ll swelter till they char
if you advertise by leading
with the fact you have a bar.

Though it’s raining or it’s sleeting
if you offer them a jar
they’ll be aleing, beering, meading,
and absinthing at the bar.

But when poetry starts bleeding
out of every scab and scar
all you’ll see is me retreating
if you haven’t got a bar.

*****

Marcus Bales writes: “For an interesting while I had an art gallery in a downtown mall in Cleveland. The mall rules said it had to be open on Saturdays — when there was no mall traffic and so no real reason to be open. So I held the Every Saturday at Noon in the Galleria Poetry Reading. Dramatically unsuccessful at first it eventually found its audience and we had a good time. But in talking about why, serving only coffee, Linda pointed out that if we could serve alcohol attendance would improve. Since it was an art gallery, and there is a tradition in art galleries of serving wine at openings, I changed the title to the Poetry Reading Art Opening and said wine and coffee would be available in limited quantities. That did the trick. It quickly became the best-attended poetry reading in the city, any day, any time. Then the authorities got wind of it and someone from the city visited and pointed out gently that while it was a tradition to serve wine at art openings in art galleries, it is technically illegal by state law, even if it is free, and they cited the appropriate code. In the end it didn’t matter much, since even the most successful poetry readings count their audiences in the low-to-mid-tens of people, and by then people had got in the habit of Saturday At Noon, and kept coming anyway even after we stopped serving wine. But the idea for the poem had formed.” 

Not much is known about Marcus Bales except that he lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, and that his work has not been published in Poetry or The New Yorker. However his ‘51 Poems‘ (which includes the above) is available from Amazon. He has been published in several of the Potcake Chapbooks – Form in Formless Times.

Photo: “Open Bar” by Trevor Benedict – MrEcho is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Shamik Banerjee, ‘In a Family Gathering’

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Before the booze-up session, all are statues.
Their prior falling-outs lodge doggedly
Upon their mouths like pillars of a building.
The visit’s just a plain formality.
But when the drinks are served, all lips begin
To open slow like rusty dungeon doors.
A glow of cheer unfolds upon their cheeks
Like dawn illuminates night-darkened shores.
Once they have reached the point of being swacked,
Then one by one they clear the awful air
Infected with self-pride, distaste, and spite.
The daftest cousin turns into Voltaire.
The silent uncle starts to sing his praises
Of how he’d saved three bullocks in a flood.
The two-faced aunt becomes a freedom fighter:
I’ll kill and die for us! We are one blood!
And I, the teetotaller, sit and weigh
If they’ll return to stone the coming day.

*****

Shamik Banerjee writes: “The absurd, ridiculous, and perennial drama between my relatives’ families inspired me to write this poem.”

Shamik Banerjee is a poet from India. He resides in Assam with his parents. Some of his recent works will appear in York Literary Review, Willow Review, Thimble Lit, and Modern Reformation, to name a few.

Photo: from original publication of the poem in Dear Booze: https://dearbooze.com/cocktales/f/in-a-family-gathering

Marcus Bales, ‘Me and the Moon’

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Her presence was the organizing spice
that made the dish; the multivalent pun;
the compliment whose humor takes you twice
as far aback in unexpected fun,
her laughter tinkling like a scoop of ice
cubes thrown on glass bottles in the sun
that heats a summer vacation afternoon.
This morning though it’s only me and the moon.

Me and the distant moon, who’s not as far
away as she and I have now become.
She laughs that laugh while I sit in this bar
and wonder how I could have been so dumb
to leave where all the things I value are
and vanish in this alcoholic slum,
regretting what I’ve kept and what I’ve strewn
this morning when it’s only me and the moon.

And now the moon is pretty far advanced
along its ambit’s arc above this place
where one is propositioned, not romanced,
and conversation lacks both wit and grace.
I shuffle now where once I might have danced
and face the fact that this is what I face,
however jaded or inopportune,
this morning while it’s only me and the moon.

L’envoi
Barman! Bring another tinkling glass
or two, and we will claim that we’re immune
to all this pitiful alas alas
this morning, you, and me, and the goddamned moon.

*****

Marcus Bales writes: ” ‘Me and the Moon’ was prompted by Cleveland singer-songwriter Alex Bevan’s post on Facebook back in the oughties, I think. He posted early in the morning that he was looking out the window at the dark and reflecting on his life, thinking that it was just ‘me and the moon’. He’s happily married, and so am I, but the poignance of the phrase somehow seemed significant, and I instantly absconded with his idea. As I recall, the poem was pretty quickly written because however happy we may now be, we all have regrets or unhappinesses to remember. I’ve never been much into the bar life but at the time my wife and I had discovered a wine bar we liked to hang out at where we knew the bartender, and I was eased into just going to the bar to chill and observe and listen. Of course Western culture is soaked in alcohol, but I had not been. It was interesting to see how the whole thing worked — and didn’t work.”

Not much is known about Marcus Bales except that he lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, and that his work has not been published in Poetry or The New Yorker. However his ’51 Poems’ is available from Amazon. He has been published in several of the Potcake Chapbooks (‘Form in Formless Times’).

“LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 100” by Mikes Camera is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Marcus Bales, “Single Malt Drinker”

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Marcus Bales

Marcus Bales

Single Malt Drinker

He’s a single malt drinker, and he’s told us a story or two,
And everyone’s heard one they swear has just got to be true.
He always has money whenever it’s his turn to buy,
And carries himself so that bigger men nod and don’t try;
And all sorts of women have paused there to give him the eye,
And some of us do and some of us don’t wonder why.

He’s a single malt drinker and he’s got a nice touch with a cue.
I won’t say that he’s never lost but the times have been few.
He doesn’t get drunk though he sips through a fourth of a fifth;
His memory’s remarkable, poems, sport, science, or myth.
But he never has hinted which outfit that he was once with,
And there’s hardly a pause when you ask and he says his name’s Smith.

He’s a single malt drinker, no piercing, no ring, no tattoo,
And unlike the most of us he doesn’t snort, smoke, or chew;
He knows the back alleys that we know, Berlin to Lahore,
And speaks all the languages we do and a couple of more.
We’re waiting ‘til spouses have called us to stop at the store
On the way home to comfort — and wonder what he’s waiting for.

He’s a single malt drinker, and he’s told us a story or two,
And maybe we’ve missed out on hearing the one that is true:
Those wound up too tight for too long will all wind up unwound,
And everyone knows that each of us ends in the ground,
So find you a place where you choose your own unwinding sound —
We’re laughing and drinking and swapping our stories around.
We’re laughing and drinking and swapping our stories around.

Marcus Bales writes: “No comment from me. I think it’s narrative enough to not need one. Mike Whitney sings it here, if you want to call his interpretation of it an author’s comment.”

Not much is known about Marcus Bales except that he lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, and that his work has not been published in Poetry or The New Yorker. However his “51 Poems” is available from Amazon.

Poem: “Any Tourist Island”

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When the deep darkness dulls the dirty land
Before the moon meanders through the stars,
Invisibly the sea creeps up the sand
As night-blind drinkers lose keys to their cars.

Ah, the winter, with its delights and hazards! Escape it when you can, and explore fresh delights and hazards! That’s life, isn’t it.

This little poem was published in Lighten-Up Online, aka LUPO, the UK’s top light verse online magazine. Editor Jerome Betts carries on the work begun 12 years ago by Martin Parker: a quarterly issue of some 30 full-length poems, and as many again of the 4-to-8-line variety. Contributors include every current poet you have heard of who can write light engaging verse that rhymes and scans – unless, that is, they expect to be paid for their poems!