Poem for the Day: Poetry Workshop with Tony Curtis

Poetry Workshop with Tony Curtis

He tells jokes and Irish tales, takes you into
a Dublin pub with barrels of whiskey, his words
phrasing like the soft swish of a poured pint.

When the room writes to the tasks of the day,
he slips you into the backlog of home, through
old grumbling nights with the porch light on.

His guitar is the sound of dusk under the
lemon tree, or laneway where you smoked
cigarettes made from Gum tips. He sets your

mood, as distinct as the sun is to the stars,
even the planets are aligning themselves
with your laughter, throbbing into the room.

He's better than that Tony Curtis in Some Like 
it Hot. Hilarity like a gunshot waking you up,
as if poetry writing could lift you from your

heavy bootstraps in winter, take you to the park
like a kid on the roundabout, a bag full of chocolate
drops going round and around. Then like a breeze,

he lets loose without discretion, letting sticky,
gooey wrappers fall to the ground, so that your
swallows of marshmallow and cocoa feel like

sex, chewy nougat like intercourse, strawberries
rolling about like tongue seduction. In the end, he 
has you where he wants you  - writing poetry.