A long ago memory of a young boy's afternoon at the town barbershop


Saturday Afternoon

Horst is a dapper man
Brillcreamed pompadour
White starched
Barber's smock side buttoned
His theater
Plate glass spotless overlooking
The town park
The frames and door painted green too many times
The lockset gleaming from obsessive Brasso
He is master here
A conductor
His choir the clientele
Their voices basso profundo to countertenor
Vary as the day progresses
the latest news the libretto
Always in flux
His opus moves from furious contention to soft introspection
Rhythm, time and improvisation at his whim
Drawing out dissonance and harmony
Directing with comb and scissor in fluid graceful gestures
Never missing a lock or nicking a painfully exposed ear
occasionally punctuating an intermesso
With swashbuckeled stroke of a cutthroat razor
While young boys sit rapt in awe on the red leather window seat
Anxiously waiting for their turn
The huge porcelain silver throne
His podium





Poetry by josephus The PoetBay support member heart!
Read 557 times
Written on 2012-02-13 at 19:00

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Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
This is a jewel, Josephus. It's very nicely written, and it placed me back into that chair, back in the days when I had hair and I wanted one of those amazing pompadours.
2012-02-16


ken d williams The PoetBay support member heart!
...and you knew you'd ,
Reachde manhood ,
When the old barber ,
Aside you when you ,
Payed him ,
... anything for the weekend , sir
2012-02-14


countryfog
A nostalgic return to my own childhood too . . . this is so vivid with the little details that you do so well. I remember especially the smells, tonics and talc, cigar smoke; sitting on a board placed across the chair arms when I was really young, and later feeling grown-up when I paid the seventy-five cents myself. There were two "social media sites" back then - the barber shop and the corner tavern. Seems so long ago, and just yesterday.
2012-02-14