Portside

Happy Hour

By Jerry Dyer

The neon in my brain is burning blue,

and lighting up the night behind my eyes.

Bars are filling their pulpits and their pews.

Animals are escaping from the zoo:

Cougars climb the hillsides, and hawks the skies.

The neon in my brain is burning blue.

The corner drunkard tells the world his views;

the air is filled with gossip and with cries.

Bars are filling their pulpits and their pews.

I watch a panther circling a ewe,

and hear beneath her laughter quiet sighs.

The neon in my brain is burning blue.

Elbows are bending, then returning true,

and the voices mix wisdom with the lies.

Bars are filling their pulpits and their pews.

We are all pilgrims, lost, without a clue.

I pray that my heart, though heavy, will rise.

The neon in my brain is burning blue.

Bars are filling their pulpits and their pews.

Jerry Dyer is a recently retired educator, having taught primarily English and ESL (and German) at the secondary level. Jerry's primary poetry home has been San José, where he served briefly as a board member of Poetry Center San José, and his prime orbital was the Willow Glen poetry group. He was one of the founding members of the Willow Glen Poetry Project, which produced a blog of weekly readings, and which also published three anthologies between 2011-2015. He also has published a collection of poems, available on amazon, entitled "What I Don't Know."