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enjoy this writing in the 6" x 9" 2015 ISBN# paperback book the Chosen Few Click on the cover or any linked text to get a copy of the Chosen Few			Enjoy this 2015 Chicago open mic book as a snapshot of writings read on stage by assorted Chicago open mic writers as performed in shows from 2012-2015 at “the Café Gallery” open mic as a 6"x9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book!

The Ballad of J.J.Jameson

Dan Cleary

We were all outlaws of a sort
And so he found a home
With us-- where he could be himself
And read the doggone poem.

His Boston accent marked him out--
The way he stood, his stance,
His robust rolling Yankee wit,
His tough take on romance;

His deadpan humor most of all,
Masking a tenderness
For those small things that occupied
His private universe

And which he carefully crafted in
His sonorous ribald poems
About the Lady Rutherford,
And, was it her Legumes?

This man (now let me say it here)
Was no one other than
The bustling character we knew
As J. J. Jameson:

Who, for what now seems a brief time,
Once held the floor with us
When we with him would read our works
Mute and inglorious--

From one wild reading to the next
We’d go about at will
Vying with one another and
Using our verbal skills

To plug the issues of the day
As they came whizzing by
Accepting whatever applause was due
When hitting a bulls-eye.

The world went onward as before
We barely caused a blip
To ruffle up its dry repose
Or for an instant tip

Its interest to us all the while
We rattled on and on
Reading our stuff, and, as we did
Having a bit of fun!

We read in hangouts of all kinds
Taverns and coffee bars
Invisible almost in plain sight
For years and years and years;

We read at summer festivals
Went up and down the scale
From one packed venue to the next
Leaving a paper trail.

We never knew in all that time
That along with us rode
A genuine real-live fugitive:
A man who had shed blood

And who from prison had escaped
Twenty odd years ago--
Finding his way from Boston, Mass—
To good old Chicago.

We only knew, no matter what,
That he was one of us,
A man, imperfect if you like,
But warm and generous;

A man engaged in working out
Those things he grappled with
And in the meantime holding forth
With dignity and wit;

A man, I’ll put it to you straight,
We’d grown to know and love,
In whose fond company we found
A sparkling treasure-trove----

Whatever he’d done those years ago
Although a brutal crime
Was somewhat expiated by
The blurring span of time

And by the fact, the man we knew,
The man who shared our woes,
Our periodic ups and downs,
Our various highs and lows,

Was not that man, but was someone
We might have called a friend
And so have stood by right or wrong
Up to the bitter end---

As if, in form of a salute
To his poetic peers
He said, as the cops took him in
“I’ve had a good twenty years.”

Or, as he always used to say—
It was his special touch—
When bringing a reading to a close:
“Dziękuję, thank you very much.”

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