dedicated to the mother of Charles Bukowski’s daughter
1st Chorus
There’s a cultural desert outside
Critics got a right to cry, for Christ’s sake
No water for days
Not even a camel
Not even a Camel: or other censored
Cigarette commercials
We’d even settle for some of that menthol
Footage, y’know, we’d consider this easy
Weather, as good as a gallon of strawberry
Soda; maybe, some sort of Oasis
Get it
2nd Chorus
With respect to inebriated victims
Love is a beautiful crime
Executioner as divorce attorney
And we feel the same California weather
The wind moves in puckering
Pencil-skirts of single secretaries, as
They stroll into buildings owned by
Corporate criminals: and it’s the cruel
Metaphoric hijacking of both
Democracy and the feminine center
3rd Chorus
Evil devils damn all those whom you need,
Too often, to bless, Frances: cesspool publishers
Putting gutsy poets on the crucible: all the while
We find ourselves on boats moved by the moon
Into peaceful island harbors you deserve on your
Daughter: a girl appropriately named Marina
4th Chorus
And some of us are, still, lost in the desert
Los Angeles (1995)
From: Crosswalk Casserole
Summary
“A FEW BARS ON A BAR-ROOM PIANO” by Michael C. Ford is a poem centered on place and geography, love and relationships, family. Its imagery is anchored in Los Angeles, California. The poem develops its subject through recurring images and shifts in emotional pressure rather than reducing the experience to a single statement.
Analysis
Voice
The poem uses direct address, creating an intimate and sometimes confrontational relationship with its subject.
Style and form
The poem is line-driven. The poem moves by accumulation: images, references, and tonal turns build on one another, so meaning emerges from their relationships as much as from narrative sequence.
Themes and imagery
Its strongest thematic currents include place and geography, love and relationships, family, nature. Concrete images give those abstractions physical weight, while changes in diction and pace keep the poem from settling into a single emotional register.
Reading the poem
A productive way to read “A FEW BARS ON A BAR-ROOM PIANO” is to watch how its images change function as the poem progresses. Details that initially establish scene or memory become emotional evidence. The result is a poem whose argument is carried through association, rhythm, and image as much as through explicit statement.
Explore this poem
Source & rights
Source: Crosswalk Casserole (Lawn Gnome Publishing, First Edition, 2013)
Rights: © 2013 Lawn Gnome Publishing. All rights reserved.