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JAM Jan 2020
The bar.
New personas,
Rare from near to afar.
Tangling in the smoldering lights,
With haste.
Grey Dec 2019
If the bar is low,
maybe I won't disappoint
you with my failures...
12/27/19
Shawn Awagu Dec 2019
Normally this isn’t the way it goes, but this time I’ll do differently
And so I ask who are you? What is your name?
Do you like running? I do as long as I can breathe

I dream of a day where I can run freely in silent poplar forests without my lungs weighing me down

What is your favorite kind of music? Do you like pop, rock, or hip-hop?
Is your soul kneaded and worked by tender hands like Jazz? Swing?

I may not look the part, but I love classical music; there’s something about listening to Chopin’s Nocturnes that makes me feel as if I am right there with him, sitting in the pews of an abandoned church whose dead parishioners long ago grew bored of contemplating their sins. I feel as if I am gently sipping his breath like one would coffee that’s still a bit too hot, savoring the stories he weaves out of thin piano strings that taste like moonlight
It is a flavor that seldom is tiresome
I wish I could cook some for you

If you could go anywhere, anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Would you roll into an airport with your luggage in New York? Tokyo?
Would you brave the crushing heat of Cairo for a glimpse of Giza?

I would go anywhere, anywhere you’d like, as long as we come home
I’ll open the door and immediately turn on the space heater—I can sense you hate being cold
While the tea is warming on the stove, we’ll talk about your favorite artist’s best album
Listening until we’re interrupted by the shrill shriek of a teapot needing attention
And that night I will dream that my footsteps will never be lonely

I’m terribly sorry, who are you and what is your name?
I do not know; you are there and I am in here; my mouth is so dry it hurts

Neither coffee nor alcohol can spur me to action
There is nothing I can drink
I can imagine, but I will never ask
I already have, so many times
A letter from the past
Gabriel Dec 2019
Why latch on a lover
who couldn't even shed a tear for you?

Does your pillow know
How you cried for her in a bar
Only to go home
with a drowning heart

For you held the beer bottle
More than her hand
You chugged it down
Hoping it will be emptier
Than you ever can
Steve Page Dec 2019
Pub poetry is a form of performance poetry consisting of the shouted word which has developed in UK urban pubs, dating back to the 1940s and 50s. Words are typically yelled over ambient haphazard rhythms which are not especially chosen for the piece of poetry, rather the poetry is performed over the generic sound of empty bottles and part filled glasses and live samples of patron conversation that will be familiar to those frequenting hostelries around the UK.

Sometimes the audience will employ call and response devices to distract the poet, such as calls of "W##k-er!', with the traditional response of "F##k-You!" before the pub poet continues with his yelled out verse, often read from the beer stained back of an overdue envelope.

The pub poet usually appears on a chair or table, surrounded by immediate family or work mates cheering him on.

Invariably inebriated, the pub poet may not appear to make any sense to the uninitiated - but once you too have availed yourself of your 4th or 5th pint, the words become clearer and easier to appreciate.

No musicality is built into pub poems and pub poets generally perform without backing music, delivering chanted speech with pronounced modulation, broken-rhythmic accentuation and dramatic, though random, stylization of gestures, often resulting in the pub poet losing balance and sustaining a head injury thereby losing consciousness and bringing the evening's entertainment to a premature, but often welcome, end.

It is often noted that many pub poets are remarkably shy and retiring when sober.
Based on 'dub poet' wiki entry.  I simply took another look through a different lens.
Jeff Lewis Sep 2019
Ordering a drink.
      I really need that empty glass.  

The lights are slow.   The pace
                        is dim.    The room
         has a sense of non about it.
A piano man plays
                    tuneless  songs.        
Dancers…
                               …don’t.
                    
                   And couples    stare    
            slowly
     past each other.
I kept trying to tag a positive end on this poem, and every time I did it told me to F' off and get back to work
James Rowley Jul 2019
Visiting once more brought the smells all back,
Stout, mixed with cigar smoke, maybe.
I guess it still lingers; Damp had crept  into the only wall left
Burrowing its way in, nesting in the crevices.
It must have been 6, maybe 7 years to the day
When I got a beer from Seamus at the bar
And watched Jack, Billy and Sean down Guinness
With all the finesse of  blind dogs.
What dogs they were though, the furious three;
Piercingly loud they screeched
At every dart that narrowly escaped the clutches of the bulls eye
And nestled itself in the matted padding of the run-down walls.
Even on its last legs, Carlton Vale still kicked with its escaping life;
Now it is clear that desire to fight
Went away the moment the bulldozer touched that first wall, and
All that is left is Billy’s lucky dart
Defending its resting place in the centre of my memories.
Feedback would be appreciated :)
neth jones Jul 2019


Been drinkin’ The Devil

but ****** run dry

I’ve drunk to his memory

and thirst after his family


I attended the funeral

pretended to cry

approached the open bar

and began to pry my luck

Bartender was most generous

Said he once was the Devils’ mascot

he poured me something unfamiliar

I awoke

scratching the inside of the casket


                         - i think I’m gonna be sick
Spelling has been corrected and minor alterations made, where the obvious intent and what was written deviated.
Madison Greene Jul 2019
He smelled like a bar I was too young to get into and marlboro lights
just for a while, I wanted to live something new
to wake up to pancakes in the morning and kisses on the cheek
instead of with my heart broken from the night before and a sinking feeling in my stomach
I hated you for the things you chose over me and the love you never gave
I hated you because a daughter should never have to beg her father for a relationship
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