Sir

A sir who must be sirred I am

among the red-eyed youth it’s

yes or no that’s spoken with

after-sir attached yet I never

did expect it come upon me quick

with life its own to live bush-

browed hints the lips that seem

a history of speaking love or

hate a library of spoken words

for between upon precisely at

the wrong time salt and pepper

hair’s no certain clue it is so

ready to say ‘old’ but not say

sir ah yes these youth who serve

through red-eye from the night

before see crow’s feet know it’s

time to sir and do their sirs

without considering it one day

shall fall to them to pick up sir

to carry on the sham of this

respect. By God, I have waited

fitful years to hear that word

spoken out of some deep unsaid

respect but no, the chewing gum

cashier chick says her sir so

mechanical I doubt she recognizes

a sir had come and gone over

her wet-paint red-passion lips.

I know the boy, the neighbor’s

son who watches Bogart on late

television blue screen face from

my attic where I watch him move

whose moves are Brando

and his lust invisible to all

outside the range of language

on TV I watch his lust develop

there below where he knows I

watch with trembling hand.

He never says when serving me

his sir (that one perhaps a very

last knows both the meaning and

the crimson coated act of sir)

Mississippian John Horváth has published poetry internationally since the 1960s (In Parenthesis, The Write Launch, Streetlight, recently in Quagmire Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal (Best of 2018), Brave Voices (Zimbabwe)). In total, Horvath has published nearly 500 poems since the 70’s. After Vanderbilt and Florida State universities, following a bad parachute drop in Iraq leaving him 100% disabled with the VA, “Doc” Horváth taught at historically Black colleges. To promote contemporary international poetry, Horváth edited the magazine at www.poetryrepairs.com from 1997 to 2017.