Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Jordan Rowan Nov 2015
The sun sets on dripping blood
Shed for love
And brought out from a gun
Elizabeth is close to death
Drawing final breaths
She was so fine and so young

Pedro runs across the barroom floor
Bursting through the door
On his way to the border by the sea
His hand is still hot from rage
There's nothing left to save
All he can do is flee

Now that heaven can finally breathe
Resting on the sea
While Pedro hides away from law
Elizabeth wore Pedro's golden ring
Along a silver string
Yet she moaned among the farmer's straw

Pedro shed the lonely tears
Of a love lost in years
He made a promise that he kept
As he read aloud the vows she wrote
With the heart she broke
The sun set as he wept
K G  May 2017
Meraki
K G May 2017
The basin drains her polluted blood as wine envelopes morose
Every minute is a memory, onset of her blanketed comatose
Vying in a fog of icons and myths, words always fail them
From every misread evil that is disposed of improperly
From every neighbor or friend eternally mute again
From every gilded pattern that leaves a cuff for the eyes
From every fetching barroom, where all such nadir lies
KG
John F McCullagh Nov 2011
I stared, stupidly, at his head
and the pool of red he bled
from the brass rail down onto
the barroom floor.

Had it been a half an hour
He, so cocksure of his power,
had first set foot
inside the barroom door?

I'd been alone but for the Doc
a Presbyterian Scott
who just come from
a hard delivery.

Mom and child were doing well
but the Doctor looked like hell
so I sat him down
and gave the man some tea.

I 'm the Pub man's assistant
and my job that Winter's morning
was cleaning up the place
for this day's trade.

Had I been out in the snug
I'd have never met this lug
who is lying on the floor
fit for the grave.

I am Irish from Tyrone,
He was from Lancaster-shire.
To his thinking I was
a blight on English soil.

He was spoiling for a fight
which he started with a right
that sent me sprawling
on the barroom floor.

He said "Get off the floor,
and I'll treat you to some more."
"You stupid ****!"
His boon companion smiled.

I'm not one to shun a fight
when I'm firmly in the right
and these arms were toned
by years of quarrying stone.

Was it surprise I saw
when He learned I'm a southpaw.
Satisfying was the sound
of fist on chin.

As he commenced his trip to earth
It was the foot rail caught him first
He cracked his skull
and then he was no more.

His friend ran for the police
as his pulse and breathing ceased
Doc looked up at me and said
"This won't go well"

" Take my bicycle and flee
Off to Scotland , listen to me,
unless you fancy
dancing on the wind."

So I rode like one possessed
on the narrow winding roads
Early winter darkness
coming down.

After, I worked on dairy farms
and spent three years in the mines.
Eventually, the case grew cold
and went away.

I emigrated to the States
where they too have
their loves and hates
but the Irish are accepted in a way.
My father, a nineteen year old Irish immigrant, was attacked by a Xenophobic Englishman in a Lancaster pub where he was working.
I have told the tale as it has come down to me over the years, working in first person point of view.
When is the game over?
When the man dies?
When the first born is a girl?
At the end of the first meal without salt?
When the woman dies?
At sunset?
At the late time of night when the spirit ebbs?
When his one good joke is repeated too often?
When his son is killed by friendly fire?
When the potatoes are blighted?
At the end of high school football stardom?
When rejected by a prom date?
When destituted by frivolous litigation
Destituted by insufficient health insurance?

When caught cheating?
At cards?
In adultery?
In a resume?
By the IRS

When caught?
In a sting?
Ten most wanted?
Interpol?

When I finish my drink?
When I empty my wallet?
The music flowed as smoke rings littered the barroom ghosts for a second washed clean by the smell of stale beer and worn out lines.
It's here I'm home and here I'm most detached from it all I'm invisible only wanting to view and catch a buzz to chase the nights passing .

I sometimes question this existence wonder why the **** no direction suits me best .
I used to fight the urge now I simply have grown to tired to care .
And where odes another find themselves sitting next to me?

Maybe I'm to damaged maybe I'm just happy being alone .
I haven't found the answers cause I truly never gave a **** about the questions to begin with.

There's more reflection in a empty seldom clean bar glass than within my heart darlin  and my times all that matters to me now .
I have no options and the past is dead to me as the person who most hold to be the man I no longer can be .

There's always a fire burning  I just wash it clean to keep you away.

Maybe when I'm lost home seems the furthest place from my thoughts .
Like some left behind castaway I have simply went insane with time.

Underneath the lights reflection I stand the same fractured and wanting nothing more than a stiff drink and some old song to keep me company into this smoke cast fade .

Maybe home is anywhere I choose  it to be .
So try not to question the man who is but a stranger to even me.

Cheers
Brandon Nov 2012
Work is boring, I'd 
Rather be home sleeping in
A nice comfy bed 

Work is boring, I'd 
Rather be smoking a joint
And watching TV

Work is boring, I'd 
Rather be drinking a beer
And drunk barroom brawls

Work is boring, I'd 
Rather be out surfing the
Gnarly ocean waves

Work is boring, I'd 
Rather stick my arm in a 
Blender; cause some fun

Work is boring, I'd 
Rather be out banging some
Coked up prostitutes 

Work is boring, I'd
Rather dig my brain out thru my
My ears with a fork

Work is boring, you 
Can tell because I'm writing
Too many haikus
Ellis Reyes Nov 2015
There he is
the loudest guy in the bar
Boasting about clandestine OPS
and battles he’d ‘prefer not to remember’,
But he does,
because he has an audience

There he was in Ramadi, Korengal,
Tikrit, Kandahar, pinned down by dozens,
no hundreds, of enemy fighters.
His best mate, was hit by shrapnel or an enemy round.
He screams for Doc
But no help comes
The barroom hero
applies a compression bandage,
but the blood continues to flow through his fingers
Minutes pass, his buddy worsens.
Doc arrives, finally.
The buddy is stabilized and loaded onto a stretcher
He’ll be on the first bird out

The battle hardened warrior continues his tale,
regaling his table with airstrikes, CQB, and
taking the battle to the enemy.

Someone asks, “What unit were you in?”
He replies proudly, “The Second Ranger Battalion.”

You set your own beer down and spin from your chair.
You make your way from your table to his.
You place a silver coin upon it,
“Second Ranger Battalion,” you say,
“Coin Check.”

The color drains from his face
Fear in his eyes and an ‘Oh ****’ expression on his face,
He stammers something about being ‘attached’
and having orders for Ranger School once.

Your icy glare tells him that he’d better
**** and **** before he is no longer able to do either.

He throws a $20 onto the table and finds his way to the door.

******* ****.
I woke up feeling morning pain
Another barroom brawl
I didn't make my bed last night
I slept out in the hall

I made it to the correct floor
I just couldn't find my keys
I can't keep living life like this
Can someone help me please?

I'm sick of empty promises
Every bottle seems to be
An enigma in a riddle
And they all keep calling me
I'm sick of empty promises
And of bottles holding dreams
My life's an Escher painting,
So, it seems

Different bars, the same result
I always wake up ******
Sunday Morning Sunshine hurts
and I'm always here alone

I am tired of the drinking
Of the searching, of the fight
But, I end up every morning
Still feeling like last night

I'm sick of empty promises
Every bottle seems to be
An enigma in a riddle
And they all keep calling me
I'm sick of empty promises
And of bottles holding dreams
My life's an Escher painting,
So, it seems

I wake up in dark back alleys
And if I make it home at all
I end up in the stairway
Sleeping, curled up in a ball

I'm not looking for redemption
Just a way to stop the sounds
Of the bottled empty promises
Before I'm in the ground

I'm sick of empty promises
Every bottle seems to be
An enigma in a riddle
And they all keep calling me
I'm sick of empty promises
And of bottles holding dreams
My life's an Escher painting,
So, it seems
Poetoftheway Aug 2015
she posts her credentials
privately, to just you,
in the din of a currently popular
university barroom

and you dressed in your
pick up best,
plumes of all male grinning,
reeking in thinking -
oh yeah!
va va voom,
lucky

laughs and liquor,
cheap 3.2 Ohio beers on tap,
come super highway fast via
as my finger flick be wagging
to an attentive bartender
who recognizes,
a new venture worth
his investing in a newly forming
gene pool of the
collegial world of what you children
can google as
The Sixities

you see, she says,
she is minor famous,
had two minutes in a movie
called Woodstock,
instantly recalled distinctively,
which you honor with
a dozen roses rising of
very cool
and a few daisies of
wow

so young,
she's hitch hiking thru life,
karma, ying and yang, Sagittarius and  
Hesse's Siddharta,
a little ****** break out back,
our lives have intersected in
Cleveland in 1969,
and there is no question unanswered,
your bed, is her bed,
this night

you puzzle yourself,
memory recycler,
why in 2015,
you celebrate a one stand,
a single strand
excavated from
the meta data of your brain
tonight,
from among a hundred lifetimes previous

Why Woodstock Woman Wonder
and you do,
why, wonder,
have you stayed with me so long,
that your face is indelible tattooed,
easy extracted from ancient cells
risen by this
dawn's early light?


are you pining old man,
are you dying old man,
trying to write it all down
before the insurance company
grumpily has to pay up?

this carefree woman, no,
young forever girl,
looking up to you
asking where can she crash tonight,
answered in a single guttural
exclamation sensation,

with me babe,
with me baby

fifty years later,
crashing you,
crashing with you,
with roses and daisies that never died

wonder where she is today,
a grandmother multiple,
or sleeping gone from an overdose
of stuff you occasionally fooled around with,
or are you spending another night
in your tripping life,
with another
one night man

no answers given,
but it is, it was,
a single dot on the trail of dots and dashes,
the existential Camus moments of
of two ordinaries that intersected,
however briefly,
and you wonder,
not why, but if,

Woodstock Woman,
do you remember me?

I need you to,
I want you to,
explain better
why we are crashing together
one more time*

~~~
August 20, 2015
5:32am
nyc

— The End —