Pool Sharks and Snarks
These are poems about pool sharks, con artists and other frowned-upon but colorful figures from my past as a pool hustler.
In my youth, I was a pool hustler, playing money games until four a.m. in seedy Nashville bars. It was a dangerous occupation at times, but I met many colorful characters, all of them out to take other people’s money by hook or by crook. They inspired these poems…
Pool's Prince Charming
by Michael R. Burch
this is my tribute poem, written on the behalf of his fellow pool sharks, for the legendary Saint Louie Louie Roberts
Louie, Louie, Prince of Pool,
making all the ladies drool ...
Take the “nuts”? I'd be a fool!
Louie, Louie, Prince of Pool.
Louie, Louie, pretty as Elvis,
owner of (ahem) a similar pelvis ...
Compared to you, the books will shelve us.
Louie, Louie, pretty as Elvis.
Louie, Louie, fearless gambler,
ladies' man and constant rambler,
but such a sweet, loquacious ambler!
Louie, Louie, fearless gambler.
Louie, Louie, angelic, chthonic,
pool's charming hero, but tragic, Byronic,
winning the Open drinking gin and tonic?
Louie, Louie, angelic, chthonic.
If you like my tribute you are welcome to share it, but please credit me as the author, which you can do by copying the title and subheading. I used poetic license about what Louie Roberts was or wasn't drinking at the 1981 U. S. Open Nine-Ball Championship. Was Louie drinking hard liquor as he came charging back through the losers' bracket to win the whole shebang? Or was he just pretending to drink for gamesmanship or some other reason? I honestly don't know. As for the word “chthonic,” it’s pronounced “thonic” and means “subterranean” or “of the underworld.” And the pool world at its worst can be very dark indeed, as Louie’s tragic demise suggests. But everyone who knew Louie seemed to like him, if not love him dearly, and many sharks have spoken of Louie in glowing terms, as a bringer of light to that underworld.
There is more about the great St. Louie Louie Roberts after a few more poems about pool sharks and gambling…
Shark
by Michael R. Burch
They are all unknowable,
these rough pale men—
haunting dim pool rooms like shadows,
propped up on bar stools like scarecrows,
nodding and sagging in the fraying light . . .
I am not of them,
as I glide among them—
eliding the amorphous camaraderie
they are as unlikely to spell as to feel,
camouflaged in my own pale dichotomy . . .
That there are women who love them defies belief—
with their missing teeth,
their hair in thin shocks
where here and there a gap of scalp gleams like bizarre chrome,
their smell rank as wet sawdust or mildewed laundry . . .
And yet—
and yet there is someone who loves me:
She sits by the telephone
in the lengthening shadows
and pregnant grief . . .
They appreciate skill at pool, not words.
They frown at massés,
at the cue ball’s contortions across green felt.
They hand me their hard-earned money with reluctant smiles.
A heart might melt at the thought of their children lying in squalor . . .
At night I dream of them in bed, toothless, kissing.
With me, it’s harder to say what is missing . . .
“Shark” is only semi-autobiographical, as I had given up staying out all night by the time I got married and my wife Beth confirms that she never felt neglected or abandoned when I did shoot pool.
Con Artistry
by Michael R. Burch
The trick of life is like the sleight of hand
of gamblers holding deuces by the glow
of veiled back rooms, or aces; soon we’ll know
who folds, who stands . . .
The trick of life is like the pool shark’s shot—
the wild massé across green velvet felt
that leaves the winner loser. No, it’s not
the rack, the hand that’s dealt . . .
The trick of life is knowing that the odds
are never in one’s favor, that to win
is only to delay the acts of gods
who’d ante death for sin . . .
and death for goodness, death for in-between.
The rules have never changed; the artist knows
the oldest con is life; the chips he blows
can’t be redeemed.
Fair Game
by Michael R. Burch
At the Tennessee State Fair,
the largest stuffed animals hang tilt-a-whirl over the pool tables
with mocking button eyes,
knowing the playing field is unlevel,
that the rails slant, ever so slightly, north or south,
so that gravity is always on their side,
conspiring to save their plush, extravagant hides
year after year.
“Come hither, come hither . . .”
they whisper; they leer
in collusion with the carnival barkers,
like a bevy of improbably-clad hookers
setting a “fair” price.
“Only five dollars a game, and it’s so much Fun!
And it’s not really gambling. Skill is involved!
You can make us come: really, you can.
Here are your balls. Just smack them around.”
But there’s a trick, and it usually works.
If you break softly so that no ball reaches a rail,
you can pick them off: One. Two. Three. Four.
Causing a small commotion,
a stir of whispering, like fear,
among the hippos and ostriches.
Originally published by Verse Libre
Rounds
by Michael R. Burch
Solitude surrounds me
though nearby laughter sounds;
around me mingle men who think
to drink their demons down,
in rounds.
Now agony still hounds me
though elsewhere mirth abounds;
hidebound I stand and try to think,
not sink still further down,
spellbound.
Their ecstasy astounds me,
though drunkenness compounds
resounding laughter into joy;
alloy such glee with beer and see
bliss found.
Originally published by Borderless Journal
I met my wife Beth, then Elizabeth Steed Harris, shooting pool at a Nashville bar called the Natchez Trace. Beth was new to the Trace and asked who could teach her to shoot pool. Everyone pointed at me. We went on to create a new form of pool called “twister pool” as Beth used her ample décolletage and other (ahem) assets to distract me from running the table…
At the Natchez Trace
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
I.
Solitude surrounds me
though nearby laughter sounds;
around me mingle men who think
to drink their demons down,
in rounds.
Beside me stands a woman,
a stanza in the song
that plays so low and fluting
and bids me sing along.
Beside me stands a woman
whose eyes reveal her soul,
whose cheeks are soft as eiderdown,
whose hips and breasts are full.
Beside me stands a woman
who scarcely knows my name;
but I would have her know my heart
if only I knew where to start . . .
II.
Not every man is as he seems;
not all are prone to poems and dreams.
Not every man would take the time
to meter out his heart in rhyme.
But I am not as other men—
my heart is sentenced to this pen.
III.
Men speak of their "ambition"
but they only know its name . . .
I never say the word aloud,
but I have felt the Flame.
IV.
Now, standing here, I do not dare
to let her know that I might care;
I never learned the lines to use;
I never worked the wolves' bold ruse.
But if she looks my way again,
perhaps I will, if only then.
V.
How can a man have come so far
in searching after every star,
and yet today,
though years away,
look back upon the winding way,
and see himself as he was then:
a child of eight or nine or ten,
and not know more?
VI.
My life is not empty; I have my desire . . .
I write in a moment that few man can know,
when my nerves are on fire
and my heart does not tire
though it pounds at my breast—
wrenching blow after blow.
VII.
And in all I attempted, I also succeeded;
few men have more talent to do what I do.
But in one respect, I stand now defeated;
In love I could never make magic come true.
VIII.
If I had been born to be handsome and charming,
then love might have come to me easily as well.
But if had that been, would I then have written?
If not, I'd remain; damn that demon to hell!
IX.
Beside me stands a woman,
but others look her way
and in their eyes are eagerness . . .
for passion and a wild caress?
But who am I to say?
Beside me stands a woman;
she conjures up the night
and wraps itself around her
till others flit about her
like moths drawn to firelight.
X.
And I, myself, am just as they,
wondering when the light might fade,
yet knowing should it not dim soon
that I might fall and be consumed.
XI.
I write from despair
in the silence of morning
for want of a prayer
and the need of the mourning.
And loneliness grips my heart like a vise;
my anguish is harsher and colder than ice.
But poetry can bring my heart healing
and deaden the pain, or lessen the feeling.
And so I must write till at last sleep has called me
and hope at that moment my pen has not failed me.
XII.
Beside me stands a woman,
a mystery to me.
I long to hold her in my arms;
I also long to flee.
Beside me stands a woman;
how many has she known
more handsome, charming,
chic, alarming?
I hope I never know.
Beside me stands a woman;
how many has she known
who ever wrote her such a poem?
I know not even one.
I may have invented a new poetic form here: the rhyme-rich prose poem. This poem is also not autobiographical.
Prose Poem: Litany
by Michael R. Burch
Will you take me with all my blemishes? I will take you with all your blemishes, and show you mine. We’ll suck wine from cardboard boxes till our teeth and lips shine red like greedily gorging foxes’. We’ll swill our fill, then have sex for hours till our neglected guts at last rebel. At two in the morning, we’ll eat cold Krystals as our blood detoxes, and we will be in love. And that’s it? That’s it! And can I go out with my friends and drink until dawn? You can go out with your friends and drink until dawn, come home lipstick-collared, pass out by the pool, or stay at the bar till the new moon sets, because we'll be in love, and in love there's no room for remorse or regret. There's no right, no wrong, and no mistrust, only limb-numbing sex, hot-pistoning lust. And that’s all? That’s all. That’s great! But wait... Wait? Why? What’s wrong? I want to have your children. Children? Well, perhaps just one. And what will happen when we have children? The most incredible things will happen—you’ll change, stop acting so strangely, start paying more attention to me, start paying your bills on time, grow up and get rid of your horrible friends, and never come home at a-quarter-to-three drunk from a night of swilling, smelling like a lovesick skunk, stop acting so lewdly, start working incessantly so that we can afford a new house which I will decorate lavishly and then grow tired of in a year or two or three, start growing a paunch so that no other woman would ever have you, stop acting so boorishly, start growing a beard because you’re too tired to shave, or too afraid, thinking you might slit your worthless wrinkled throat...
This is my favorite true story about shooting pool and gambling …
My wife and I were having a drink at a neighborhood bar which has pool tables. A “money” game was about to start; a spectator got up to whisper something to a friend of ours who was about to play someone we hadn’t seen before. We couldn’t hear what was said. Then the newcomer broke—with such force that his stick flew straight up in the air and shattered the light dangling overhead. There was a moment of stunned silence, then our friend turned around and remarked: “He really does shoot the lights out, doesn’t he?”
ST. LOUIE LOUIE ROBERTS
by Michael R. Burch
"St. Louie" Louie Roberts was the best shotmaker I've ever seen, and I've seen many top-notch pool players in my day, including Johnny Archer, Buddy Hall, Allen Hopkins, David Howard, Keith McCready, Steve Mizerak, Alex Pagulayan, Jose Parica, Efren Reyes, Mike Sigel, Earl Strickland and Nick Varner. I even saw Steve Davis score the first televised perfect 147 in snooker history. (I was vacationing in England when he hit the magical number, in a match televised by the BBC.) But the most charismatic, audacious, exciting, crowd-pleasing pool player that I have seen personally was Louie Roberts. He was an incredible, fearless shot-maker. There was something otherworldly about his game, when he was in stroke. He had a higher gear than ordinary mortals. I remember watching him advance through the losers' bracket at the 1981 U.S. Open Nine-Ball Championship, promoted by Mike Massey at the Downtown Sheraton Hotel in Chattanooga, Tennessee. As I remember things, Louie had lost his opening round match in the double-elimination tournament, and then almost lost his second match to a little-known local player, Nat Green. In that match, there was a controversy about someone breaking out of turn and the referee not catching it, so that Louie ended up breaking the last two games despite an alternating break format. Louie took advantage and won the "double hill" game. After that, he seemed to freewheel, drinking openly (or pretending to), bantering with fans, and disdaining safeties. If his opponent made a ball out of turn, so that two balls were lined up evenly on the spot, Louie would hit the head ball with so much spin that he banked the second ball in "long rail" ... a shot I have never seen anyone else attempt in a major tournament. Roberts went on to defeat a perplexed Buddy Hall, who just shook his head at Louie's crowd-riling antics and incredible shotmaking. It had been a longtime dream of Louie's to beat Buddy, who was the world's best nine-ball player at the time. What Louie accomplished that day, and how he accomplished it, was magical, and I'll never forget how he had the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand until he was proclaimed the victor, to delighted cheers that included my own.—Mike Burch
#POOL #MRBPOOL #MRBLOUIE
“Scowl” is not about shooting pool, per se, but reminds me of some of the more colorful people I met shooting pool.
Scowl
by Michael R. Burch
apologies to Allen Ginsberg
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by social media, overdressed obsessive savers dragging themselves scowling through albino streets at dawn looking for a Facebook fix while cautiously protecting their Personal Data,
addleheaded quipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the latest Podcast,
who in poverty for lack of a Smartphone upgrade sat hollow-eyed smoking medicinal weed in the unnatural illumination of their rebooting routers while contemplating the wonders of AI,
who bared their brains to ChatGPT and saw Marvel-ous angels in YouTube ads while waxing nostalgic about things they never actually experienced,
who passed through minor universities with solid B’s hallucinating careers as computer programmers advancing quickly to systems analysts, ready to compete confidently with robots,
who were never expelled for publishing obscene odes on bathroom stalls or Subway walls, but were always well-behaved and polite to their supervisors,
who always wore appropriate underwear to job interviews and never burned their bras in defiance of Big Brother,
who never grew their hair too long or sprouted scraggly beards while returning on redeyes from Big Apple job interviews,
who never ate fire in paint hotels, or drank turpentine in paradise alley, or purgatoried their toned torsos night after night with dreams, or with drugs, but only with reruns of Games of Thrones,
who never wandered blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of canada & paterson, but rather sought the mystical illumination of AI,
who scorned peyote for the tantalizing Tweets of Technocrats sharing their opinions like oracles,
who never once chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from battery to the bronx on benzedrine, but only arrived at the next job interview drained of brilliance in the drear light of the latest breakup between Ross and Rachel,
who were always ready to please their oppressive employers with robotic diligence while advancing in their careers like automatons,
who never sank all night in the submarine light of bickford’s but floated high on the stirring strains of the Spice Girls and Justin Bieber,
who talked continuously seventy hours about the advantages of homoeopathic medicines, a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists more progressive than Wonder Bread and Wireless Bras, all crying “me too,”
yakety-yakking facts, anecdotes and memories all plastered incessantly on Instagram,
whose intellects were disgorged for seven sleepless days and nights with eyes dulled by monitor radiance, as if they’d been marooned on the moon with Maroon 5,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of unambiguous selfies shot with the ubiquitous holy iPhone, suffering Whatsapp withdrawal sweats and Internet downtime migraines worse than any heroin addict’s,
who wandered restless at midnight wondering when Paradise Lost would be restored, i.e. the Internet coming back up, while making prophets of Green Day,
who never lit cigarettes in boxcars or even knew what boxcars were, but rode Virtual “Reality” snowmobiles to the north pole, then bragged about their conquests on Quora,
who never read plotinus poe st. john of the cross but knew by heart every word uttered in the Marvel Universe and every word of Klingon ever spoken on Star Trek,
who never loned it through the streets of idaho seeking visionary indian angels but only revered Warren Kenneth Worthington III,
who experienced bliss when the Big Bang aired in supernatural ecstasy and a nerd nailed the cute girl (Aye, there is hope for us all!).
who rode in rented limousines on prom night dreaming of similar hookups while listening to Justin Timberlake prophetically sing “Cry Me a River,”
who lounged wellfed through houston seeking sex or Smartphone games only to relate their lack of success on SnapChat,
who disappeared into the bowels of Bluetooth wired to their earbuds never to be seen again, not even on Reddit,
only to reappear on TikTok investigating 9-11 conspiracy theories and posting incomprehensible memes,
who burned vape holes in their arms protesting the cancellation of Friends, then posted the pictures on Pinterest,
who distributed languid Tweets mildly protesting the term “slacktivism,”
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the bullying of jocks,
who bit their abusers with sharp braces and attacked them with protractors stored unconcealed in their plaid shirt pockets’ plastic holsters,
who howled on their knees for faster Internet access, like monks for transcendence,
who watched Internet porn until their libidos shriveled,
who were blown, then blown away by sexy Avatars,
who balled so infrequently they had only 2.02 children,
who preferred Marvel’s Angel to those of religion,
who lost their loverboys and/or lovergirls to the lures of the latest Video Game and LinkedIn,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with Alexa until they came eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who preferred the snatches of virtual girlfriends to those of their real ones (And safer as well!) trembling with joy after sunset but redeyed rising from lack of sleep perusing Paradisal Porn,
who went out VR-whoring safe from venereal diseases, fabled Cocksmen and Adonises of their sheeplike Android Dreams, the Marvel-ous Masters of innumerable lays of girls with artificial breasts bigger than Bot-swana,
who starred in sordid movies as their Avatars, grabbed snatches of sleep, then woke with sudden Smartwatch alarms in order to arrive dutifully at work on time, if slightly worse for wear,
who never walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for an east river door to swing open to a room full of steam-heat and opium,
but instead employed E-Readers to study Ulysses in preparation for MFA exams,
who never ate the lamb stew of the imagination but only digested slimy eels dredged from the muddy river bottoms of Babel-on,
who wept at the music of Britney Spears pouring endlessly from their Smart Speakers,
whose best friends and heroes were Sheldon, Leonard, Howard and Raj (And how earnestly we prayed for them to finally get laid!),
who never sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, nor rose to build harpsichords in their lofts,
but instead worshiped the gods of American Idol and bowed prostrate before a heavenly Voice,
who confused rock-‘n’-roll with fizzled pop, whose anthem became “I Want It That Way” sung by the Backstreet Boys,
whose archetype was Eminem’s Stan, the Holy Grail of Fandom,
who screamed “Save the whales!” while shucking oysters and watching Predator reruns,
who never plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, but instead preferred vegan Egg Replacers,
who never threw their watches from roofs to cast their ballot for Eternity outside Time, but dutifully set their Smartwatches to remind them when to exercise, and stop, and when to record Sex and the City,
who never opened actual antique stores but sold their families’ heirlooms on eBay,
who were never burned alive in their well-tailored suits on Madison Avenue but were run down after hours by the drunken taxicab of Leisure Suit Larry,
who never jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge but once bungeed from the Bridge to Nowhere on a dare,
who never sang from their windows in despair, but posted many aggrieved missives on their sacred Facebook walls,
who barreled down many Virtual Highways in their Virtual Hotrods despite never mastering a real-world stick shift,
whose only Mario was a plumber,
who never drove crosscountry seventytwo hours pursuing a vision of eternity, but once played Gran Turismo seventytwo hours nonstop,
who never made it to Denver, but managed the Broncos thanks to Madden,
who never fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation, but blessed each other in the names of Marvel-ous Odin, Thor and heavenly Asgaard,
who retired to California to cultivate legal weed and thus never ended up in jail pleading to pay their bail with BitCoin,
who never demanded sanity trials but questioned the nature of reality having grokked The Matrix,
who never threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers but were always attentive to their mentors,
who like the Cambridge ladies were invariably interested in various things like insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,
who in humorless protests revolted mildly against the trumping of the paris accords,
who would have been bald by now except for hair plugs imprecisely implanted,
who never bickered with the echoes of the soul in foetid halls as their bodies turned to stone heavy as the moon,
but always thanked their mothers on Facebook after watching It’s a Wonderful Life (obligatory at Christmastime) for the umpteenth time.