Author: Jerry Brotherton

I am The Backyard Poet and I warn you that, not only will I ramble on about nothing but, I have been known to stand upon my soapbox and rant about things I care nothing about just to hear the sound of my own voice. I will try to force my opinion upon anyone willing to pay the slightest attention.

Warriors of 1972

On By Jerry BrothertonIn flash, Short Stories8 Comments

We called ourselves warriors. But we were just  another group of stale, complacent, and bored little boys who were too old to be kids but too young to be men. Stuck in a tiny town somewhere between nothing and nowhere while the rest of the world was in turmoil. We smoked Marlboros… holding the butt between our finger and thumb like James Dean, or just letting it dangle from our lips like Bogie.

We didn’t give a shit about anything beyond the next weekend; because in our minds we were invincible. We were brothers…we always had each other’s backs. We were afraid of nothing and nobody, especially when we were together. The place that we were together the most was a dimly lit, dirty, and damp hole in the wall that had the stink from decades of stale beer and cigarette smoke; a place known to us as ‘Shaky Dave’s Pool Hall’.

Shaky Dave’s was a place where five dollars would buy you a lot of camaraderie and twenty bucks could get you some companionship for the night.  But it was just about the only place in town where a boy growing up in the turmoil of the early seventies could learn some of the answers. Even if he didn’t know what the real questions were.

I learned a lot of important things at Shaky Dave’s. Things I thought I needed to know. Like how to cuss, smoke, and chew tobacco. There were a few things I learned about the opposite sex there too. We all knew that only one kind of girl would hang out at Shaky’s…and you definitely didn’t want to invite her home for dinner. These were girls who had developed a reputation of sending more than one high school boy off to face the world as a man.

The men who frequented Shaky Dave’s were hard men who’d been there and back again. Even though I wasn’t really sure where there was, I was at least smart enough to realize that it was a place I never wanted to visit. Honestly, I had doubts as to whether or not a few of them that had been there had ever made it all the way back.

These men had their own handshake that sometimes would last for five minutes, they talked in words we couldn’t understand and wagered an entire week’s salary on a single game. Sometimes, more money changed hands in that place on one day, than my dad made in a whole year. Now those men were real men, tough, mysterious and, in a way, exotic.

We played snooker, because that was the game real men played. We drank because they drank…We fought because they fought. We tried our best to be one of them. Because, that was our great expectation from life, to be one of those men… to someday leave childhood behind and be accepted into manhood. To be able to walk through those doors made of heavy wood, order a Jack Daniel’s and a Budweiser and step proudly up to the Snooker table, and claim our rightful place as men of ‘Shaky Dave’s’.

Now He’s Working for the Man

On By Jerry BrothertonIn Poetry, Rhyming10 Comments

Not long ago a son of mine

Not much more than a child

Was a rebel against a system

So young, free and wild

But the government discovered him one day

Standing in the unemployment line

They took him into their confidence

And rebuilt his thoughts one brain cell at a time

From Henley tee’s and Chuck Taylors

To silk shirts and ties he moved

From rebellion to conformity

His individuality they removed

Now he peddles their inadequacies

Their selfishness and greed

Thumbs tucked into suspenders

To emphasize his maturity

I’m pretty sure he has them fooled

And is a double agent for humanity

The Before and After

On By Jerry BrothertonIn Non Fiction, Short Stories17 Comments

When I was a much younger version of myself, there was an order to my existence. Life and death made sense to me because science told me the truth about the universe. The one thing I thought I knew was that energy could not be created or destroyed. So the concept of Heaven and Hell were just mythical constructs created by man to rationalize death.

We simply choose to place our loved ones in the Here-After to create the illusion that we might one day see them again. It eased the sorrow we felt at their passing. I understood that and I accepted death as a simple transference of energy from one thing to another.

Death made sense to me because ‘age’ dictated that people had outlived their life span. After all, our bodies are frail things and can only sustain life for a finite amount of time.

Besides, I was young and healthy. Any thoughts of the end were far from my mind. Maybe I would live forever or at least technology would develop to a point where our lifespans would make it seem like forever.

Oh yes, I was happy with my beliefs.

But that was when I was young.

The voices of destiny have started to whisper their harsh words of mortality into my ears. It’s no secret that I am the next to youngest of fifteen children. Now whatever your thoughts on that might be; we can discuss on some future blog. The reason I mention it here is because, much too quickly, my huge family has dwindled from fifteen children to seven.

And now, my body is moving further down that corridor of existence, and I can feel it beginning to break apart. Age is forcing my beliefs to crumble and I find myself spending more and more time (probably too much time) thinking about what the future holds for me.

So, I need to believe that I’ve been wrong all these years. I’m hoping that there’s something more than just the now and that there is some place set aside for me in the after.

Death of a Friend

On By Jerry BrothertonIn flash, Short Stories13 Comments

I screamed his name but he wouldn’t move. He just stood there staring at me with a confused look on his face. Why didn’t he follow my brother, the risk taker, the careless one, the one who had jumped across the tracks in front of the train? Why didn’t he stay behind with me, the responsible one… the one who never took chances and always did the right thing? Either way he would still be alive. But his indecision sealed his fate. All I could do was stand there and watch his lifeless body flash in and out of the shadows of the moving train as it flew past. I stood there in silence until the tracks were clear and it was safe for me to cross. As I approached his lifeless and mangled body I couldn’t help but to think…“What a stupid ass dog.”

The Voices in My Head

On By Jerry BrothertonIn Non Fiction, Short Stories9 Comments

I was sitting at my computer, as I usually am in the dying hours of each day. I had my headphones on and was engulfed in the music from my favorite play list. Letting the rhythms pass through me like a gentle brook, hypnotizing and relaxing. But somewhere in the middle of Kenny Chesney’s ‘Chasing Demons’ a frail and timid sound tried to push through the notes. It was barely audible in the beginning; as if someone from a distant neighborhood was calling out for their loved ones to come in for the night. I ignored it and continued with my nightly ritual. But the noise sulked and brooded; reminding me of a spoiled child that had been forced to stand in the corner. It fidgeted and twitched; stomping around in my mind, becoming louder, demanding to be noticed. As it became clear that I was not to be rid of it I picked up my pen and let the noise pour into it.

At first it rambled too quickly. Its sentences were incoherent and confused and its structure was laughable. But as the noise learned to control its emotions it calmed and gained confidence. A coherent word here and an intelligent sentence there until it became its own voice bordering somewhere on the edge of competent prose. Through my pen the noise began to court the page, stroking its ego with eloquence and coaxing the words from the depth of the paper’s blank stare. It no longer needed me for guidance and I let the ink caress the emptiness between the blue lines. I lost track of the music. There was only the sound of the pen carrying on its seductive conversations. I sat helplessly by and let the noise sing its song. It became so engrossed with itself that it did not feel the need to confide in me as it rolled the words from nothingness and brought them into creation.