Poets Corner

Mike’s Place is special,

If your looking for 1960 with computers.

On Sunday afternoons aspiring poets

Read to the like minded.

Most often the few poets gathered

Will listen politely as another of their number

Tell of love, journeys taken, 

Lives lost and magic.

When the microphone is working

And the cannabis smoke is pervasive, 

The psychedelically enhanced  corner space

Holds a transitory aura.

Walls painted in vibrating reds and greens,

In the form of geometric designs

And huge faces with glowing blue eyes

Speak of a bar that does not take itself seriously.

Usually by mid- December Mike has picked a tree.

It has to be small, and decorated with care,

For it will, as custom dictates,

Hang over the elevated reciters platform... upside down.

Mike maintains it symbolizes

The waste and materialism that Christmas represents,

That would, with the new year, once again

Dump the refuse on the heads of the poor.

Mike is a cynically hopeless romantic

With a life time longing to experience

A communism that never existed,

In a world peopled by Jimmy Stewarts.

As expected, worn chairs and couches

Sit in disarray near the poetics corner,

Supporting a variety of life forms,

Each with its own interpretation of the tree hanging over head.

Several believe that by not falling on their skulls

The tree ushers in a safe, and rewarding New Year.

Of course within a day of the trees appearance

Decorations are scattered over the readers podium.

Tim, convinced that he will one day

Be a prime-time TV talk show host,

Always dresses in blue suit and red tie.

He calls the poets corner into session.

Tim introduces each poet to an invisible multitude

Who deliver an imagined thundering welcome

To each presenter. He is not disillusioned

By the hollow scattering of applause.

While the rest offer meaningful reflections

That no one cares to follow,

Perhaps 2 readers understand 

And offer light comedic pieces,