Your band kicked life

in the ass, memories

of exquisite youth beckoning

for another swing of the axe.

An electrical engineer by day,

you morphed into blues guitarist on nights

and weekends.

A band known as Shaken Not Stirred,

you belted out rock covers in bars

and roadhouses from Webster

to San Leon.

Sunday afternoons started early

many cruising the bay

oiled up with a cooler full of beer.

hearing guitar and the rhythm of blues rock

with groupies clustered round the band.

Bud Light, Coors and Corona

cranked the experience up a notch

when the boating crowd arrived.

They parked their toys at the Turtle Club,

a floating barge with a bar and a stage.

Quickly, they climbed out of their boats

in their trunks and bikinis,

ordered up beers or shots of Tequila

and rocking out to Eric Clapton

or Stevie Ray Vaughn covers.

You plugged in your Fender

riffing out a final Texas Blues number

a ZZ Top cover and shattered the speakers

one more time. 

Glasses were clinking and tushies touching;

dancers sweating together, 

drunk on the dance floor.

Dizzy and thrashed, soaked revelers hopped

back onto their boats and cruised home satiated.

Marsha Johansen lives in Albuquerque, NM and holds a Bachelors in Business Management. Her collection of poems called Around the Edges was published in 2018. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, DailyDrunk, PoetryLovers.com,  SadGirls Club and the Fixed & Free Poetry Anthology and elsewhere.