A Poetry Sporadical of Repeating Forms
A Poetry Sporadical of Repeating Forms
A gig for two nights at a club by the beach.
Walking in sand with our sharp Cuban heels.
Waves in the distance, stars within reach.
A gig for two nights at a club by the beach.
We’re up from the city, they can tell by our speech.
We smoke cigarettes by the Ferris Wheel.
Black leather jackets, a club by the beach,
walking in sand with our sharp Cuban heels.
The gigs take us farther away from our home
in Boston, a ramshackle house by the Pike.
We’re looking for work with a fine-tooth comb.
The gigs take us farther away from our home.
From Portland to Amherst to Hartford we roam.
We’ll play any club that has sound and lights.
Some nights we forget that we have a home
in Boston, a ramshackle house by the Pike.
This week we headline a bar by the sand.
Next week New Haven, then Cambridge, then Maine.
Forty minutes on stage, four hours in the van.
This week we headline a bar by the sand.
We’re writing new songs, hatching new plans,
but any momentum feels hard to sustain.
Days run through our fingers, just like the sand.
Next week New Haven, then Cambridge, then Maine,
then Beverly, Manchester, Worcester, Lynn,
Methuen, Northampton, Somerville,
then Boston, then Gloucester, then we start again,
Beverly, Manchester, Worcester, Lynn.
If we don’t get some airplay, if the crowds start to thin,
we’ll run out of money, we’ll run out of will.
Beverly, Manchester, Worcester, Lynn,
Methuen, Northampton, Somerville.
Dave Morrison resides in coastal Maine, after years of playing guitar in rock and roll bars in Boston and New York City. His work has been featured in literary magazines and anthologies, and read on Writer’s Almanac. Clubland (2011 Fighting Cock Press), a collection of poems about rock bars, is his seventh book.