Old Rhythm

[Erthona]

Liz,

My fingers dance
and strike and dance (Redundant makes for a weak opening)
(My fingers strike and dance)
as I play a the beat
for the as couples to dance
and dance and dance( period)
as The smoke from(the) cigars   (must have direct article)
brushes my neck
as I brush the neck (of my guitar?)
as he brushes her neck
with his rough, dry lips; (we already know the lips belong to him, redundant)
and I move my lips
and the blue(ness) escapes as the blues
and my cells are alive (are alive in my cells)
with the red of the night (period)
as the blue escapes

like The blue(ness) surrounds (semi-colon)
like the wind surrounds  (comma)
like the city  (comma)
like the air surrounds (period)
the A small coin (comma)
(large) enough for a drink (comma, or en dash)
a drink meant to make
please make my fingers
dance.

Do you mean:

A drink meant to please my fingers and make them dance -or- a drink to please and make my fingers dance?

___________________________________________________________________________

The absence of punctuation really makes problematic what otherwise might have be a decent poem. There are a lot of extraneous repetitions  that add nothing to the poem. Generally more than two repetitions are the limit, it just becomes silly after that. In most instances there is no need for repetition at all and should be used with constraint. There needs to be a logical progression while things are happening or the reader becomes lost. There is one such break in a sequence: "as I brush the neck", it seems unreasonable that the reader will understand the neck referred to is the guitar neck, especially as the next "neck" in the chain is a man's neck. The sequence, like dominoes falling has already been set, so guitar neck must be defined or it causes a major disruption in the reading, if not consciously, then unconsciously.

Another problematic area is not making a distinction between "being blue" i.e., sad, and the "blues" the music. If correct grammar were used these would be defined as (without an article) "blueness" (sad) and then the music must have an article "The Blues". If the word "blue" is going to be used it cannot be used with an article as that makes no sense "The blue", unless one is talking about the sky, where the precedent has been set previously. To refer to "blue" it needs to be in context of I"m blue, I feel blue, it seems so blue, and so on, not just "The blue" as thought it were a noun/object like "The dog".
I think I have addressed most of this in the in-line above, but I wanted to give an explanation, not just appear to be re-writing your poem.

I do think the core of the poem is good, most of the problem is just a lack of clarity, primarily due to what I have already described. Unless there is an overwhelming and compelling need to abandon grammar and punctuation, then one should not as it is a system that has been hammered out over the course of hundreds of years to help make the writing more clear. To remove it, only serves to make the writing less clear and therefore more easily misunderstood. To do without either is not as one person said the other day, a style choice, at best it is a worn out and severely limiting affectation, along with such other things as center justify (except in the case of concrete poetry) and capitalizing the start of each line. Each and everyone have a two things in common. They are suppose to make the words on the page "look" more poetic, and two, they all create lack of clarity and make the piece more difficult to read (OK maybe that was three).

Best,

dale