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Coffee House Revelation

Dave Oakes


The place was not really all that big
There were no more than 30 at most
Drinking coffee and reading their stuff
I waited my turn while feeling faint as a ghost.
Always I have hated to speak to any group
Especially ones where I feel inadequate at best
I am just a writer of feelings that take over me
Not in the least a poet like all the rest.
Don’t really know why I came here at all
To this little coffee shop called Higher Ground
I guess I felt some real urgent need inside myself
To find out if my life’s love had any meaning around.
My heart began to beat increasingly faster rhythms
Palms beginning to get soaked all over with sweat
Stomach turning over full of giant butterflies
And the sicker my nerves make me the more I fret.
I finally make my way to the front of the crowd
Taking the seat with the microphone, I’m all alone
All the faces looking up at me as I stumble to start
Trying to get the words out took all the nerve I have known.
I hadn’t even shared my stuff with others until recently
And now I was doing it before an audience that was live
Even though each of my poems meant so much to me
I figured that to anyone else they would probably be jive.
Somehow, I made it through the first one with cracking voice
Never more than a few moments away from breaking into tears
It was like sharing my life’s most haunting times with them
I began to feel real emotions I hadn’t really felt in years.
The emotions that came when I wrote them were there
But putting them into words where others could hear
I would never have expected this day to ever come
The emotions bursting forth were almost more than I could bear.
It was almost like a cleansing of my soul that night
Like my poems I ran through every emotion I could conceive
From the utmost terror that I would be laughed at and jeered
To the absolute joy I felt when I was nicely received.









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