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.