Techno beat
Ecstasy
Negligible happiness

Mind free
Curves
Circles within a frame

Crashing
Bashing stools
Ranch and fries

Appearance
Corn starched face
Blank expression

Back to Jack
Melted ice
Painful decadence

Guns for fun
No escape
Blazing fire
A bath and body
Of blood

Hear her scream
Watch him fall
Drink in hand
Cigarettes
Smoke residue

Text help
Hit the locked door
Break glass
Trapped inside
Free from life

I'm so disco
shining ball
electric dance-floor
sweaty skin crawl

no one listens to the devil at the bar
dancing alone
making love to a cigar
"who let him in?"
  ask voices afar

I'm so disco
it's not hard!
sell your soul
give in to what's wrong

the songs are cruel
but the people are worse
they dub you disco
make you curse

when blue lights turn us dizzy
***** coats the throat
there's an evil deep inside
that brings me to my knees
every time

"help me! help me!"
I scream with sore lungs
crashing to the floor with a thud like a gun
"I'm so disco!"
but no one hears
they're so disco
the dance goes on

It's sort of funny in the saddest way.
To find pieces of myself in a man that was never really a part of my life at all.
I wish I knew you well enough to have memories other than playing trivia at a table by the bar watching you stay well past last call.
Fighting with your wife over who would drive home.
Spending every other weekend you had with me staring at the bottom of empty bottles.
And slurring "I love you's" like I might believe them.
Isn't it all I ever wanted?
To be loved by you?
And does anything ever really change?
Can people really change?
You were sober for 5 years after you almost lost your life.
But now I keep waking up to drunk text messages.
Parallel to your drunken confessions in the middle of the night while six year old me tried to comfort you.
Biting my tongue and staring at the cieling fan so I wouldn't cry.
I don't have to hide the tears anymore because you're in another city and I won't ever tell you how bad you hurt me.
But Dad I keep letting men hurt me who tell me they love me at 2 am and I wish I didn't feel like it's because of you.

Ford has a new tag line
That bothers me way more than it should
They say, “We don’t just raise the bar, we are the bar.”
But to raise the bar is to go over it
So why would being the bar be any better?
They set the standard for people to go over?
Did they not put any thought into it?
Have I not put enough thought into it?
Am I putting too much thought into it?
Ford hasn’t just put me in a k-hole, I am a k-hole

you were on your break when i walked into the bar
scrolling on your phone
to fill the void of boredom;
i presume.
didn't figure out your name by the time i left
does it even matter?

what does matter
is what i noticed about you
in that short amount of time:
a cold aura that surrounded you
a neatly trimmed beard to hide your acne scars
and a shy, yet assertive look that you shot my way a couple times
it was nice seeing you
till next time

It's a Thursday evening
and over par for the course I'm sitting
in a sandtrap.
The lie is bad,
I'm  buried next to a watering hole
in the wall.
I can't get out.
The half truth is I'm a drunk
a sea of sorrows.
Even the dolphins, I shed no mercy.
The real truth is I'm ***
anchored to a barstool,
barnacles from the dead sea
hanging on the four legs.
If this bar stool ever came to life
the voice would bubble to the surface,
get me to dry dock.
How fortuitous the wind in my sails,
finding every sandtrap
and waving at the mothballs.
Blind to letting the barnacles take it's course.
Corrosion creeping up on me, like its
relative.
Who cares about the long lost voice
or the red ants at his picnic.
Or if Uncle lost his strokes he never had.
Did someone say shipwreck?
I order another double,
with fire in my eyes,
adding another burn to my stomach.
I look at the bartenderess
and my eyes don't lie.
She's my type.
My head tilts this way and that.
I see people starring back at me.
If only they knew how the ball bounces.

Logan Robertson

12/21/2018