Caribbean Rum Shop Poem by Dennis Adonis

If you should ask a genuine Caribbean man, he would insist that the best place to have a man's conversation and maybe some political small talk is in a Caribbean rum shop.

Again, if you ask him where you can find genuine entertainment and sarcasm at his best; you would have to go to a Caribbean Rum Shop.

While the scene describe in this poem does not applies to all rum shops in the Caribbean, it is almost reminiscent of the true rural rum shop scenario in my homeland, Guyana.

Realistically, I can also vouch for a similar rum shop scenery in rural Trinidad, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, Cuba, and Belize to name a few.

But while I might not be speaking for everyone, the core elements of this poem are all based upon my personal experiences and the general picture that fits a typical Caribbean Rum Shop. Hence, my inspiration for this poem came from those very experiences.

I know, and you know, and we all know that rum forms an integral part of our Caribbean culture since the days of Christopher Columbus and the ravaging ages of Pirates.

And from that time to now, rum continuously creates some characters while it has no social impact on others who consumes it.

But for those rum-created characters; their behavior and conduct in a typical Caribbean rum shop can appear to be nothing more than animalistic, comical and idiotic, even in times when their behaviours are considered to be of the best.