Before Prabakar's reading at The Goba Salon on December 18, 2009, Tom Daley (who is taking over Prabakar's position and booker and promoter for this venue they hold monthly in Ron and Sue Goba's home) emailed several of us, asking us to bring work (by ourselves or others) to read in honor of Ron's guest of honor.

I haven't been as close to Prabakar, Ron Goba and Keith Nystrom as others in the poetry scene, but I've become closer as I've joined their Friends of Poetry workshop since my own Goba Salon reading. I owe so much to Prabakar for not only inviting me to read for the salon (he had booked the talent for Ron since the two founded the series) but for being the person who first verbally gave me the invitation to join the workshop.

It was keeping this in mind, as well as trying in some way to honor his wish that he'd rather hear poems about his friends than about him, that I wrote the poem below, based on the first time Ron, Prabakar, Keith, and myself were at the same workshop together. I jotted down all the quotes as I heard them during the workshopping of Ron's poem and mine, making very few alterations.

 

Workshop Poem

Ron's poem sizes up
pointed, loaded weapons,
a Sigmund-style salvo,
"I was entertaining bazookas."
Phallic cymbals clash,
asking us to compare sounds.

Keith suggests a big black fanny pack
down by the poem's center
to keep weapon partially concealed.

Even so, could one still stand up
with said poem on stage
and not be asked to step down?

Ron scoffs. "Even Ashberry
played with his dictionary."
 
Prabakar scimitars my flailing sonnet,
finds the Kafka I'd sneak in at college,
rewrites one stanza into
a well wrought urn
to keep it in.

Ron leans forward: "What an incredible birth."