the brown paper bag poetry club

the brown paper bag poetry club

 

this small, musty room

accepted our mould

a long time gone.

 

but rules live here;

still-born memories

once begun.

 

lacking license,

there can be no drink

in here.

not without

the regulation,

brown paper prophylactic.

 

shuffling beneath

damp autumn eyebrows,

we pocket rummage

as words spill over the postered walls;

advertising clubs

for babies we’ll never have now.

 

in here we are kings

(sorry ladies,

there are queens here too,

but us men are so much more insecure)

clinging to our illicit kingdom;

cracked lips moistened for the drawl.

 

we shape words.

we shrug,

and shirk

and lose.

 

each empty bottle

in a brown paper bag,

another cold

dawn bruise.