Tony Pena

Awash With Words

On a night so clear, literary
limelights beckoned from
beyond bridges and tunnels.
Despite being dumb enough
to forget my smartphone,
the cyberspace vault of all
my fair to middling musings,
I stayed on track, taking
the train to the mother
of all muses, Manhattan,
where streets snaked about
like a lit fuse about to ignite
again, the embers of a young
man’s passion to chronicle

life as can only be lived
in the greatest of cities.
My yellowing imagination
craving state of the art ink
from my soul, so I picked up
a notepad at Duane Reade
along with a cute little BIC
stick the size of a sore
thumb and sought bygone
watering holes which, even
under new management,
still hosted the same ilk
of characters, cracked
but aglow in nightshade.

I drank elbow to elbow
with prostitutes, pimps,
prophets, and prey
regaling me with tawdry
tales of tension and tenacity
in the mecca of our madness.
And the cathartic words flowed
faster than the comatose ale
as the saga of urban souls
wrote itself so well, I persuaded
myself to adopt the pseudonym
of Sir Charles in tribute to
the patron saints of cities,
Dickens and Bukowski.

A tad drunk, grimy, and beat,
but ecstatic, even once home
in the ho hum, so I force fed
the Maytag my rags, seasoned
by the city, before showering
the soot off my skin in song.
I pounced on the sofa to go
over the Pulitzer bound notes
but they were lost in the last
place I’d seen the scribblings,
deep in the dark of my denim
back pocket where suds
put out the sizzle, leaving
yet another dream out to dry.

Published in Dear Booze, 2024


Kamikaze Canary

Fuck your coal mine.
I ain't going down
no more with tunes
no longer trilled
for your court.
I'm gonna sing
in a darkness
of my choosing
and when death
takes this bird,
as it takes all
living things,
then it shall be
with one talon
guarding my heart,
the other grasping
my enemy's throat,
whistling hallelujah
till my feathers turn
from yellow to black.

Published in Waymark, 2017


Noir Boy

I’m no tough guy
in the Sam Spade
sense of the words,
preferring to leave
the hard boiled
to the eggs
in a Lee J. Cobb
salad but I do love
basking in the black,
grey, and white
shades of a sinful
city donning a dark
halo like Bogey wears
a Borsalino fedora.
Down and close over
the eyes so nobody gets
a clear shot at shattering
the window to my soul
with a silver bullet
from a snub nose 44.

Published in Golden Laurels, 2021


About the Author

Tony Pena was formerly 2017-2018 Poet Laureate for the city of Beacon, New York.

His new book of poetry, Triad, is now available on Amazon

A volume of poetry and flash fiction, Blood and Beats and Rock n Roll, is available at Amazon.

A chapbook of poetry, Opening night in Gehenna, is available from author.

His prose and poetry have found refuge recently with 101 Words, Alien Buddha Press, Cajun Mutt Press, Dear Booze, Death Wish Poetry, Drinkers Only, Fevers of the Mind, Mono, Odd Magazine, Rye Whiskey Review, The Erozine, The Literary Underground, The Lotherian Poetry Journal, Trailer Park Quarterly, and Witcraft.

Also, Best of the Net nominations in 2019 from the Rye Whiskey Review and the Dope Fiend Daily.

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