Poetry: Selections from John Yamrus

he said:

 

if only 

it wasn’t all 

a struggle to make ends meet.

 

i wish 

there was just 

one day when i didn’t 

have to worry about bills or 

my job or how i’m gonna get thru 

 

the next couple weeks. 

 

i looked at him. 

 

he was young. 

 

he 

didn’t know 

that things like that never end. 

 

they never 

completely go away. 

 

they’re 

always there. 

 

hiding. 

 

and the secret 

to it all 

 

is to go 

and make a life around them.

it was

 

over 

50 years ago, 

and i was doing an open mic 

 

with the local literary group, 

 

and 

they were all 

very serious and artsy 

 

and their poems 

were precious and hammered at 

 

and careful 

 

as were 

their clothes and 

the way they walked and talked 

 

and as 

far as i can tell 

it was the same sad crowd,

 

week after week, 

reading the  same sad poems 

 

over and over again,

 

when 

in walks me 

with my long-hair’d, 

beautiful future wife and a guitar player. 

 

it felt like 

everyone turned around 

to see who this new guy was, 

 

and the guy 

up on the stage 

stopped what he was doing,

 

and with a 

pretty good ad lib 

he looked at us and looked 

at his partisan crowd and said:

 

look who 

just walked in...

Peter, Paul and Mary!

 

that 

was funny...

 

but 

it stung 

and it stuck 

and it taught me 

something that i learned 

right then and there and never forgot. 

 

that was 

more than 50 years ago,

 

and 

as far 

as i can tell, 

i’m still the only 

one still on the scene, 

 

still doing the deed.

 

and to 

quote Terry Malloy

in ON THE WATERFRONT, 

 

all they ever got 

was “a one way ticket to Palookaville.”

John Yamrus’s career spans more than 50 years as a working writer. He has published 35 books (29 volumes of poetry, 2 novels, 3 volumes of non-fiction and a children’s book). He has also had nearly 3,000 poems published in magazines and anthologies around the world. A book of his selected poems was just released in Albania, translated into that language by Fadil Bajraj, who is best known for his translations of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Bukowski, Ginsberg, Pound and others. A number of Yamrus’s books and poems are taught in college and university courses. His most recent book is Selected Poems: The Directors (Concrete Mist Press)