Everything’s a Gun Now
At the bar where he got shot
I was in the line of fire
The three year old
at the food store
holds a banana
like a pistol
“One Killed in Bar Brawl”
the headlines said
Can you be wounded and not shot,
I ask
people laugh in rapid fire
rat a tat tat
One man threatened
with a cue stick
the other
pushed a gun
into the soft of his belly
I’ve got the thousand yard stare until
the car with the broken muffler
sounded like a gun
He doubled over
after a mute report
a middle finger
can blow my head off
Face gone cardboard grey
It is writ holy
that
you’re a militia
of one
life ebbed into a blood puddle
The double barreled guy
on the radio
turns words to bullets
Eventually I’ll get what’s
coming to me, he says.
Speculations On A Lost Shoe
Three days running I’ve noticed
a woman’s sandal
set out on a picnic table
near the beach
waiting to be reclaimed
I imagine its owner
walking the shore
steadying herself
on her lover’s arm
after the last notes
of the blues fest
carried over the late summers waters
as she tucked her footwear
in her handbag
and let her painted toes
ooze sand between each
until that left one
tumbled out
and was cruelly taken by the lake
And later still
when she found it missing
she asked herself wistfully
“Is this the price of love?”
In his later years, Gary Beaumier has become something of a beachcomber and has self diagnosed himself with “compulsive walking disorder.” On a number of occasions he has cobbled together wooden sailboats.
He is a finalist and semi finalist for the Luminaire Award for several of his poem.
He has had three poems published in Flumes Winter 2017 and one poem in Third Wednesday as well as one poem in Chaleur Magazine and an upcoming recording in Lit_Tapes. He taught poetry in a women’s prison.
