Five Poems
by Keith Melton
Small Town Moon
Seven o’clock, happy time
The gin eaters already dry
A tattooed bar maid keeps the AWOL’s in line.
Seven-thirty, and in no hurry
A decade of soldier boys
Betraying pretty eyes
And suddenly she looks like all the sweethearts
Far away
All the lonely hearts
Needing a juke box holiday.
Parade left and parade right, her mystery
To stun the night
When hard money goes easy
In a quick embrace
A room at the top of the stairs
All cash and little grace
A reflection of her hips in a dime store mirror
A bus station
Tossing its tired light to the sky.
A picture of a little girl
A tiny crucifix
A freight train keeping metronome
A small town moon
Dreaming of world’s far away.
Portside Liberty
Radio voices in a half-lit room and morning aches
Like a broken bottle.
A cup of coffee, a shave and how many times
It makes no difference--
The hammered lights pimping cigarettes
Lotto, scrambled eggs, blue faces in a dirty window.
And no place to go, highballs at half price
Come blow me down
Later we venture to the Block
Seeking charm city girls in fleshpots.
The loneliness of our repair
Neon in an alleyway
Streetlamps gone dark
Faces in the glow of a cigarette.
Chinese, Slavs a queue of Filipino’s with money
From pea coats--
Lipstick rented by the kiss
First names and lies, desperate port of call.
The Red House
Remembering when romance was a dark car
On a cul-de-sac, a cheerleader
And a six pack
A tender debate before
Ransacking love and a gold ring after graduation.
We gather in the stadium grass
Our marriages defeated, the Future come to pass--
When Willie suggests a night with working girls more fun than any drunk.
So decades gone with the provenance of youth
We spend the night’s oblivion on first name girls
Who know where youth lies buried
Tiffany, Rose, Angelique
Hollywood glamour in the Land of Nod.
And fearful the years have left us flat
Richard wagers the first man to reappear with a lady on his arm
Wins a night of double scotches
And you’d think he won the Pulitzer
For the charm of his releases, soon he’s got a beauty on the go
And its plain she sympathizes
So they wander off, Willie and I holding the bag
My world on a G-string, his kingdom for a girl.
And retreating, unsure
Contemplating the question
Why is age the over/under--
Heather comes hither for a 20 dollar cocktail.
And imagining her defiance, rebellious to the end
A debutante in her garters
Willing to pretend for money
Suddenly the pipe fitters roll in
The accountant’s just behind, the teamsters
Displaying the callousness of men.
For Sunbelt girls with high heel dreams
Inhabitants in our Time Machine
Conversation
In a velvet booth, old friends searching for lost youth.
White Horse Tavern
No toil tonight but lifting a glass
To the waving girl
Sailors ‘round a Hostess City barstool
A ritual on Bay Street
Beneath the plaster squint
Of a one eyed pirate.
And loneliness
Needing its hullabaloo, nighttime its treassure
Suddenly, there she is, a reason to live
Her silhouette
A dream
Her laughter elegant in the extreme.
The caress of her hands
To make sea legs stretch and men
Fall head over heels.
Navigation
In her eyes, a blonde galaxy
To hypnotize
Whiskey
Closing its soft ether about the brain
Neon nights
Sailing dreams to a rented bed.
Coffee Redux
Confessing
The crux of the lips earned twirl toward sup
Daylight
Remembers its passion.
Scent
No longer dream
Daylight in its lean, darkness
Worn away
A hallowed inflection
Everyday.
Time’s passing
In between, memory scattered like smithereens
Then another cup--
The dun treasuries of mother’s milk
Sweetened first in lust
To snarl at the demons in morning’s lingering protocol.
BIO: Mr. Melton holds a Master’s in City Planning from Georgia Tech and a BA in Economics and International Studies from the American University. His work has appeared in numerous publications including Amethyst, Agape Review, Big City Lit, Blue Collar Review, Compass Rose, Confrontation, Cosmic Daffodil, Deep Overstock, The Galway Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Lyric, Mississippi Review, The Miscellany, Open Door, Plum Tree Tavern, Poet’s Artists and Madmen, Pure Slush, Siren’s Call, WayWords, and others. He lives in Bluffton, SC.