amy

Amy passed away. As a bartender, you meet a lot of fucking people over the years. Most of these people try to prove to you they are artists, or special in some way. A few of them are, but what ever, their tip is as good as the next. No mater where you meet a giant, be it a bar or at a bus stop, your whole body knows it. Every part of me knows Amy is a giant.
Amy organized and attended poetry nights at my bar. Her poems shamed the preening contrived colegant bullshit that flowed out of some of those mouths like sewage into the Willamette after a rain. Her vocabulary, not just the words she used, but the tone and vulnerability with which she read lines like, “I believe in energy, rising through the beige in my carpet,” made me pause. There is such a thing as optimism in this here little universe, I realized, trying to silence the poets around her by filling their faces with liquor. Amy always paid her bar bill with a check. What year is it again?
Amy is the poet laureate of my world, I-5, loosing friends to meth, aging with a sense of humor and laughing louder than anyone around you. She took these things in her deliberate stride and translated them into beautiful honest words. Kind of like Bukowski squared plus redemption. Maybe Loretta Lynn, cross dressing. No, Amy is Amy.
Amy is present tense, as I have her book in my library, between E.E. Cummings and The Essential Lenny Bruce.
Poetry night was over when she drunkenly grabbed the mic and sang, ‘Me and Bobby McGee.’ Folks, I’m going to find me a jute box, drink me some gin and play, “Me and Bobby McGee.” Here’s one from her book, before I put it back home.

Dying For Her Sins
1.

Jesus gave unto others,
hung with prostitutes
murders, thieves.

I tried this,

picked up travelers
shared power bars,
cigarettes

wandered to dens of crack houses
followed the way men’s eyes watched me

felt the warmth of them whispering
how nicely I’d grown up, filled out, became
something they’d like
to put their hands on
dicks in.

How would Jesus deal
in a woman’s body
when the masses became
the few, then just
a man who leans in,
cheek to cheek with Jesus
wine on his breath,
whispering baby
you can be my personal savior any day.

Would Jesus react like I did on New Year’s Eve
when the man by the bathrooms asked for a hug
then grabbed my ass?
Would he back the man against the wall
spread his fingers over the man's chest,
squeeze and twist, yell
“How do you like it, huh? How do you like it?”

Amy Marie Young

“
From ‘Throw Momma From the Train’

Momma: Holy Shit! What a dream I was having! Louis Armstrong was trying to kill me!