THE POETRY OF WILLIAM TAYLOR JR

William Taylor Jr. is the greatest poet that I know. I feel fortunate to have raised a glass with this man, whose words have reached some silent part of me and stayed there since I first had the good luck of being introduced to him. His work is powerful, insightful, and worth every second of your attention. He has been kind enough to allow us to re-post the occasional poem of his here on the TLRS website. You can read his contribution to the Tenderlogues project here.

THE FACES AND THE VOICES AND THE REST OF IT

I wake up
and call in sick to work
because some days the faces
and the voices
and the rest of it
are just a bit too much to face
and time is needed just to stare at walls
or get righteously drunk
or do nothing at all
which seems to be a dying art
in a dying world
it is a Sunday afternoon
and I walk along Geary Boulevard
until I find a bar that has no name
just a doorway to a darkened little room
an escape hatch from the day
I duck in there
and the bartender is kind
I order a beer and she gives me that
and a shot of something on the house
I look up at the television screen
and see the city of New Orleans
underwater
and a voice says hey Elvis
I turn my head
and at the end of a bar
a blonde woman old enough
to be my mother
flashes her tits
I smile weakly and buy her a beer
glad to have found
a new place to hide.