.....A holiday longing fraught with Greetings of
Wished for Light from Champs West....
Twas the corner of Kellogg and Western Christmas lights are festooned
Winter solstice is basking there is a full moon
The snow is a static of cable-porn and in flurries
When out of the echo of night the poets do scurry
Headed as if without any rest
To the emerald oven of a bar in the direction that is west
They arrive here once a month to congregate and to read
To gregariously chatter while engaging in banter
And offer keen insight in prose and pentameter
And empty more than just a few alcoholic liters
so
Please join us now, chug a Jameson or a Pabst
As we reminisce over of a year gone by fast
And toast to our future with Holiday cheer
For the writers and souls who have chosen to spend their year here:
There is
Sexy Sarah who cheers for my immortal white sox
And Nora whose licorice root
I mistook for a fallen dread lock
And who earlier in the year looked at me rather vexed
As she accompanied me on the “237 reasons” why we should have more sex
Blessed be thy scholarly erudition of wit that is a capital J
Who reads William Gaddis and sips a deep pipe
And Harshi whose smile is an autumnal slant of light
Shannon came back from New York to now join us
Erica, Brandice, Steve, Amanda, Hippie-Hannah and Bay
All chomped on burnt liver and chugged Guinness on Bloomsday
Nate with his tunes and Huck with his poetic score
And that one dude who broke the chandelier the moment he
Entered the door
Professor Worley, Demetrice here was last seen
And Adam who read and then joined the Marines
We were visited by the columnist from the paper who all the bars love to lynch
And Diane Happ who I kissed on the lone piano bench
The classy woman who scribes for the serial “Midwestern fowl”
And what a pleasure it always is to bask in the presence of the Doctor Blouch
They all congregate here in this neon leprechaun nest
with Phoebe whose paintings yanks at athletic cup near my chest
To read poems by Sylvia Plath, William Butler Yeats, selections from James Joyce and Anne Sexton
And hear the radiant chimes of Megan Canella
whose bra-size I’m just not allowed to mention (double G), reading
Poems about meandering jaunts in nearby cemeteries
Poems about one night stands in dual-eternities
Poems about superheroes and longings and unbidden sin
Poems about angels with dildos and Dionysian menstruation
Poems fraught with metaphor and ricocheting insight
Like Ethan who captured the color words make as they wane into light
Jessica Stephenson read with poise and searing intellectual allure
And conveyed what it feels like to truly Live, LOVE and conquer
Jenifer rose clapper recited her high school diary chronicle
Aron Felder’s fiction was both picaresque and rather comical
Anna Christenson who reminds me of the jovial wife of bath
Andrew King whose rhymes always makes me laugh
There are souls who will love you, alcohol in excess
Dave Griffin who likes to mime about the first time he saw a breast
Danny Severance read poems that are austere and demure
Alfredo whose wit just cannot be deterred
Britanny, cool Abby and Jessamyn all listened to
the wisdom imparted to us by Duffy’s truisms
and partied with the likes of both Gilbert and Hale
who sip godamn Presbyterians and who never fail
to splash a smile on my face—so next time
you find yerself combing the streets of west Peoria
Empty-pocketed and lonely in search for a jaded euphoria, an epiphany or a story
Feel free to enter
This den that was covered in the journal star
Leading one to inquire, “whatever happen to draft beer in this bar?”
Where the atmosphere is convivial regardless if the crowd is surfeited or few
Learn how to hush when the bartender yells ‘Silence in the pews!!!”
It matters not if yer an intellectual, broken hearted, coy or just fey
Just stop in and read, you have so much to say
And then party
w. the language defibrillators those local poetic boozers freely who feast
In this establishment whose name means opposite of east and is far from a loser
On the corner of Western its not very far
There’s always mountainous crates of cold PBR’s
To swig and to sip and to give you a chill
As you listen and acknowledge
That poetry is valid and has meaning still
And we owe it somehow all to a poet named Will.
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