Bar None

Silva's Saloon in Bernalillo, New Mexico

(after this piece gets bubbling there's just about every bar I can remember

plus a bunch just out of the blue, back in my drinking days . . .

but Silva's Saloon in Bernalillo, New Mexico, has got to be

the greatest "museum bar" in the Southwest, bar none . . . )

Language poetry is the puttering pop-pot fiduciary fireless non-magnet.

Little Scotties fucking each other's gizzards North equals South equals a long way

Hump suck fuck. A dramatic mirror-image explosion of Jean Paul Sartre backwards,

an implosion of Jean Cocteau. We artists are common as puddle muddles

Mud puddles dried up is pottery á la langoiterage Silver Cue. Silver Dollar,

Fred's, Le Chenil Rouge, Casa Blanca, Silva's Saloon, and all the other

history of bars in Bernalillo. Actuality breeds contempt.

Absinthe fakes the hard on farther. Jack the Stripper. Casbah on

the Rio Grande. The Silver seduction in the Gold back room.

More than you bargained for, drunk, in the back of Frank & Phil's.

So many bars have come & gone so many bars have come & gone.

Dope shot up the curtains in the back room. Filling a block of four.

Filling the rental car up with unleaded before returning it at 7 AM.

American speech is an introduction to the trend of the world, which

reflects which reflects. I will create a bar. The Herbert Hoover Lounge, no

the Hoover Vacuum Cleaner Suck Off Spot, the Electrolux Excitement,

the Energetic Electric Indication, Silent Madness, The Magic Johnson Wax Museum,

the Hen's Come Back Bar, the Everything I Ever Wanted Bar, the Non-Bar Bar,

The Hedy Lamar Bar, the Office Bar, Smitty's, the Thunderbird, the

House of Ivy, the House of Malnutrition, the Answering Machine Bar,

The HIV Bar, Gino & Carlo's, El Rey, the Mineshaft, the Horseshoe,

the Green Lantern, Rulon's, the Trojan Horse, the Coyote Double-Yip,

Okies, El Monte's, the Mint, the Roundabout, the Skylark, Claude's,

the Raven, the Star-Buck Pleaser, the Blue Note, Birdland, the Haig,

the Violent Tributary, Peace Bar, Jack's, Rosa's Cantina, the Quarters,

Upside Downside, Max's Kansas City, Fat Chance, the Eclectic Vomitoria.

larry goodell / 7Nov91 / placitas, new mexico / from Fugitive ABC's, poems 1991