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

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

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.

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?

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

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.

******* ****.

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

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

Two girls deeply in love
But torn with jealousy over the man
The other slept with

A tall brunette in casual attire
And a smaller girl wild-eyed, black curls
In a college t-shirt

I offered them drinks in honor
Of their love on hiatus
And dreamed ever so boldly
To be caught for a moment
In the crossfire of their
Boundless desire

But the on again off again
Lapse of judgement made them
Unable to stay locked in that embrace
And I'm left with the ***** Cranberry
Who is unfortunately much less
Receptive to my advances
Showing me pictures of her boyfriend
Military and buff

While the Gin & Tonic departed
To recover her confidence after
Being scorned by the tall brunette
One too many times and forgot
All about the drink I promised to buy

Always coming back to gently spread
Her knees and wedge herself between
Her thighs only to be pushed back
Briskly to the barroom crowd
And the ***** Cranberry reminds
Me again of the sad situation that
Split them up in the first place

I leave for a cigarette and come back to
The same adorable scene and waited
For a beer until I heard one of the girls speak
"I think this man at the bar loves us."
I suggested innocently how disappointed
I would be if I didn't see them kiss
At least once that night

The Gin & Tonic pressed close against
The ***** Cranberry to deliver the sweetest
Kiss upon her cheek and I was moderately
Satisfied at that expression in spite of knowing
How it paled in comparison to the true passion
That burned in their loveliest of hearts

As I was leaving I asked,
After resigning myself to chasteness,
For a quick kiss on the cheek
To say goodbye and was met with
The same hesitation you wasted
On each other all night

But, oh, if you two loved yourselves
The way I loved you both that night
You wouldn't waste so much time
Because even though we are
On separate paths in life
We are really on the same path
And you two were so close to it
That night and I wanted nothing more
Than to journey down that road with you

So I kissed you both anyway
And I walked home alone
With a grin on my face
And hoped that you two
Wouldn't make the same mistake

parked like a limping jalopy on an amputee park bench.
watching young soft girls sell hard against the boulevard
so they can do smack out back with the white trash boys
who size me up.
hats crooked and backward like their mothers teeth and their own beliefs.
slouching and leaning in their stride like two drunken penguins
shuffling home from the ice bar, fighting over fish sticks--no real threat to any one but themselves.
their drawn out skinny arms with bad backs and barroom tattoos already turning blue.
this is our future--or part of it.
while a young couple breezes by both with their noses buried in iphones.
oblivious to anything outside their happy little bubble.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 19, 2015)

Sometimes called the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable at the time those events happened.

Today—no question what we would talk about:
L’entrée de Barry Manilow, or as the French say,
Faire son coming out, as if homosexualité

was Americain. You know, like the French
used to say making love in the English way
while the English were saying making love

in the French way. Meanwhile my own closet
of 33 rpms and fan-club letters and all those
barroom assertions. Is he? Isn’t he?

What is the nature of his love? So benevolent
to his fans, surprising them at the piano
of their houses, the spotlight of polite

amid rock and roll infamy. This hindsight
bias is tricky: "At the time." Since when?
Every moment to the now we speak of it.

The was that made the is to be: we will argue this
to our thrones. Like literary ironies of thigh master,
controversial poet of the bedroom farce,

Krissy Snow and her gentle flurry of confession.
Zaftig fans with their quinquagenarian chest pains.
Fantasy is always predictable. It never was.

They are screaming like Beatlemaniacs.
The happy hour question left for us now:
What is the nature of their love?

City limit space expands,
it's threaded through with veins--
grey-black dendritic strands
                                     span
                        across this moldy brain
of a city.
Our rotting nights spray hits around
           the places players play.
The impulses will whitewash all complaints
'til the glaring day.

I wanna spit-shine every storm drain,
stain the cracked sidewalks in white,
take this town to Sunday morning Mass,
though she was born for Friday nights.

We're gonna trickle past addresses
                                                   now,
Electroshock through habit streets
these crosswalks sneer with snide expression.
Mildewed thoughts we'll hardly think.
A conversation you're repressing
I'm smoothing out my wrinkled brow
Another weekend's blurred out
blank confession
melts off the tips of tongues,
          I can taste it now.

Circulation space expands,
we're threaded through with veins--
this bio-asphalt plan
                           spans
              all through this molded frame
of a body.
But rotten thoughts, like ships aground,
                   teach sailors how to pray
when impulses have buried all complaints
'neath the foaming spray.

I wanna shade out every bruise now,
paint the dumpsters all in gold.
Missoula, listen: You're a lady.
I don't give a **** what you've been told.

A moldy brain dreams slattern makeup
for a prizefight town each night
so let's take up every artist's brush,
paint shadows on these barroom eyes.

We're gonna flow right through these boule-
                                                          ­          vards.
Electroshock through habit streets.
These dim lit yards and spoiled thoughts
are hyphens placed between each week.
A conversation you're repressing,
I'm smoothing out my wrinkled brow.
Our city's made-up face is running
off the tips of winter and I taste it now.

I watched my very own
Charles Bukowski
eat a tangerine outside of  
the arthouse  
where we were reading.

His name is not really Bukowski,
but he has told tales in the same  
vein as the Laureate of Drunkards
for longer than I have been alive.

I have listened to that same back alley
patois,
and barroom wisdom for long
enough that I feel a certain level  
of comfort in calling the old gizzard  
this municipality's own  
Charles Bukowski.

The grizzled old poet  
is telling wanton tales  
of love and honeydew.

He goes on and on,
recounting the times  
that he's drunk  
strong potato liquor
with Bengal tigers  
in the backseats  
of roaring taxis
on his way to parties  
hosted by zebras and  
gazelles.

We each light a cigarette,
pausing to smoke for a while.

Seeking to continue  
the conversation with  
my salty comrade,  
yet knowing my own  
stories cannot compete,
I surge onward nonetheless.

His interruptions jam my  
traffic before I can even make  
it onto the onramp of his  
particular, peculiar highway.

His mouth is already working,
though his tangerine consumed.

He's chewing his next story into
digestible, deliverable bits.

And, now he's chewing the rind.

His mouth,
his words,
his life,
and my own for all of it,
is full of  
zest.

*

-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2017

These slights only meet me
Like a stray kiss on the cheek
The kinds you dream of at 13,
Moments made to be stretched
And puttied minutes, days, years after
The best, the most incongruous and shameful,
The most despised,
The kind that curl your toes
And sour the stomach
At that introspective drunkenness
One foot grounded, one knee tingling numb
On the bar;
Oh, she came, oh she went
Those poetical revelations at the bar
Our best ideas on human suffering
Forgotten to write down,
Fuel for the manuscript, pressed
In dirt and blood, soul and spit
Another, another, whilst all others
Run for the rip tickets and defaming hope
Each lose a sneer and a cyclical hoping.
Never once, in love or lottery,
Do you suspect
Maybe lady luck is chasing other hands tonight
While you’re chasing those loses
And maybe, leave the lotto machine alone for a spell
Yeah,
That’ll teach it a thing or two.
But who hasn’t loved vice
Just a little too close?
Whispered a promise to appetite
Before lying down for good?
I loved her like everyone else,
And it’s still a single paystub dissolved
Without recourse or cause for revenge.
But she, vice, I can share with others
Being the only thing I’ve ever thought
Of stealing
Was a glance into that torn dress
Looking for a pattern
Or that wayward hand across my cheek.

When a barroom filled with laughter
can't lift your head, even momentarily,
from your sad, soggy plate of nachos-for-one...

When passing girls in narrow hallways
flash the fires of passion from their eyes into yours
simply to be smothered under a heavy, wet blanket stare;
a cumbersome quilt of all your yesterdays' shame...

When the supernal opportunity to live for another 24 hrs
is met with all the ambition and grace
of a house cat forced into a cold bath...

You are used up to this world.
You are lost to your purpose of being.
You are dropped to the dirt like
a flower whose spiked stem pricked the caressing fingers of it's holder.

Hold no expectation of a familiar, loving hand
to reach down, relieved to pick you up
and reunite you with what you wish to be;
or to place you where you belong.
Look around,
The ground is littered with us unwanted things.

We've all seen that ***** pair of disregarded underwear,
miserably caked in rainwater mud,
laying on the side of a road or under a bridge somewhere.
Whose hand is reaching down for that?

But, I won't compare myself
to a ***'s forgotten underpants
and neither should you.

I'm sure the universe views us differently than that.
It will soon pick us up, wash us of all those grimy wrongs
and wear us out anew.
Yes, that has to be true.

I am the people and the neighborhoods,
the pretzel vendor and the bank president,
the silver spoon child and the child who hungers.

I am public forum and barroom debate,
an investigative reporter and his angry subject,
the jury's patient search for truth,
a silent vigil outside City Hall,
and I can hear, on this humid summer night,
the voice of history's resounding approval.

Well let me tell you bout' Amazing Grace
A Devil body and an Angel Face
When she kneels down on the barroom floor
She offers up forgiveness and a whole lot more

If it's redemption that you're trying to find
Her Absolution is one-of-a-kind
And I can attest that She can Blow Your Mind!
My Sweet Sweet Amazing Grace.

Her Patent Leathers are a sight to see
(If you look closely you'll know what I mean)
Her double pleated plaid skirt can knock you down
But then she'll raise you up boy
Without a doubt.

   She's such a Cutie
   A real Beauty but
    You wouldn't take her home to Mom...
   Daddy wouldn't mind it
    If you thought that you could find it
    To sneak him in the backseat and tag along...

So let me tell you bout' Amazing Grace
A Devil body and an Angel face
She'll let you baptize her all over her face
My Sweet Sweet Amazing Grace
(Gimme an AMEN!)
My Sweet Sweet Amazing Grace!

All along the broken trees and bridges
Loom the heavy sins of man
Opulence pinches her curvy ridges
Nighttime is the right time
For easy forms of forgiveness

Here horn players blow out as they pass
Shouting sorrows at the moon
High notes vibe loose as Mrs. Cass
Lays down her weary knees
Folds her hands and prays

Coyote madness moves in shadow
Assassin pin striped and grey
Barroom is closed with nowhere to go
Sidewalk is splitting right under you
Birds sit stained by a moon light blue

Screeching southern gospel with tell tale Bill
High grass weave in a hot Autumn night
Bottle empty of those ****** sleeping pills
Eyes heavy from work on the trail
But my hearts heavy lookin' for bail

Make your way to the end block
Shoes broken eyes hung like satin
Stop sign sadness with a broken down clock
Time strikes a maddened midnight
She said every things gonna' be alright

Keys in the lock n' I'm so beat but I'll keep
My shoes are caked in mud
Doors ajar n' my dead end job won't start
Now and then feels like the present and past
All moments in time we grow to resent

In the star struck night Ill be dancing alone
Her skirt twirls yellow and gold
Grass beneath me buried calm cool bones
Death don't seem so bad sometimes
Death tastes just like an old bordeaux wine

When the wind picks up and makes you squint
And your back is bent sideways
Your soul feels spent and no ones gives you a hint
Hold your eyes to the ocean for waves
Come and most certainly go

Over each minute flashes ride through
Planets are forever unaligned
Nod of rotations push stars far past Pluto
A mash of slop soup tectonics
Brimming on the edge of robotics

Yevgeny Yevtushenko*


No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.
I am afraid.
            Today I am as old in years
as all the Jewish people.
Now I seem to be
                a Jew.
Here I plod through ancient Egypt.
Here I perish crucified, on the cross,
and to this day I bear the scars of nails.
I seem to be
            Dreyfus.
The Philistine
              is both informer and judge.
I am behind bars.
                Beset on every side.
Hounded,
       spat on,
              slandered.
Squealing, dainty ladies in flounced Brussels lace
stick their parasols into my face.
I seem to be then
                a young boy in Byelostok.
Blood runs, spilling over the floors.
The barroom rabble-rousers
give off a stench of ***** and onion.
A boot kicks me aside, helpless.
In vain I plead with these pogrom bullies.
While they jeer and shout,
                         "Beat the Yids. Save Russia!"
some grain-marketeer beats up my mother.
0 my Russian people!
                   I know
                         you
are international to the core.
But those with unclean hands
have often made a jingle of your purest name.
I know the goodness of my land.
How vile these anti-Semites-
                            without a qualm
they pompously called themselves
the Union of the Russian People!
I seem to be
            Anne Frank
transparent
           as a branch in April.
And I love.
          And have no need of phrases.
My need
       is that we gaze into each other.
How little we can see
                     or smell!
We are denied the leaves,
                         we are denied the sky.
Yet we can do so much --
                        tenderly
embrace each other in a darkened room.
They're coming here?
                    Be not afraid. Those are the booming
sounds of spring:
                 spring is coming here.
Come then to me.
               Quick, give me your lips.
Are they smashing down the door?
                                No, it's the ice breaking ...
The wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar.
The trees look ominous,
                      like judges.
Here all things scream silently,
                               and, baring my head,
slowly I feel myself
                    turning gray.
And I myself
            am one massive, soundless scream
above the thousand thousand buried here.
I am
     each old man
                 here shot dead.
I am
    every child
               here shot dead.
Nothing in me
             shall ever forget!
The "Internationale," let it
                            thunder
when the last anti-Semite on earth
is buried forever.
In my blood there is no Jewish blood.
In their callous rage, all anti-Semites
must hate me now as a Jew.
For that reason
                I am a true Russian!

Going back out,
that's what he fears most.
To resume his last
miserable drunk,
homeless, loveless, broke.
Scratching up money for a fifth
of whatever he's drinking
- ***** when he's semi-flush,
cheap wine when he's not.

Lacking the guile to beg or steal,
he washes dishes in a dive
for a meal and a bottle,
sweeps out bars for drinks,
knowing he can't hold a job
much longer than a day.
Scavenging cigarette butts
from barroom trash cans.
No place to get out of the cold
except for the missions
and flop houses.

And he hates the flop houses
with their toothless managers
spreading their ****-eating grins.
He dreads the city winter
as the cold seeps in and wraps
its tendrils around him,
and he fears seeing one more
sooty gray dawn with grizzled men
like himself mindlessly shuffling,
searching for the next drink.

He fears the back alleys,
fears he's destined
to live in their filth, huddled
in whatever hole or box he can find.
No longer caring for himself,
just craving alcohol.
That insatiable craving.
And it's the grayness he fears,
the empty, pallid expanse
of his remaining years
and losing people who
used to love him.

He's frightened of going out
and not coming back.
And he fears thoughts of suicide.
He has no answers to why he drinks,
why he gives in to the bottle.
His mind cannot or will not grasp
that final thought.
---

My Dad built a whoopee room in the basement of our house, that's what we called it back in the fifties, basically it was a free barroom; he worked tirelessly, tiled the floor, knotty-pined the walls, built a Formica-topped bar, with foot rail, and a pool table center stage.

At one end, he pasted and framed with the utmost care, a life-like mural, a bucolic scene of mountains, pines trees, some guy canoeing across a deep blue lake, right underneath an eight foot, padded bench to sit, toss a beer, gab Red Sox, Pats, Bruins, Celts.

The guy could make anything, fix anything in his neat as a pin workshop, totally in control, competent, a rack of tools, his innate ability to figure out, you name it, he’d fix it, in hands-on kingdom this man did it right, measured twice, cut once.

In the Mr. Fix-it realm my father welcomed me, drew me in, shared his man in the know ways, I fetched his tools a quick study daughter, I observed knew ahead of time, like an operating room nurse ready to assist the famous surgeon at his work.

But then without prior notice he’d grow silent, retreat, drink copious whiskey shots, get mean, angry, tried to outrun the never good enough farm boy he once was, this love starved kid would engulf my honest, hardworking, overly sensitive, insecure father, then we all suffered his childhood trauma all over again.

This is for those
Who wear a sleeve on their heart
Because its cold, needs warmth
and it likes the dark
And this is for the ones
with hands on their time
who need a little break
just to clear out their mind

It's funny how a women
can make your head spin
Just like the *****
we've been chasin'
A pretty smile
and a bashful look away
can make you feel
like everything's okay
Forget about pain
and every lost fist fight
her soft eyes
make this the perfect night
I can see her
drinking her ***
I can see me
falling in love
I can see her
sizing me up
I can see me
falling...

In love
in the bathroom hallway
You've got her up
between a rock wall and a hard place
You can see the pleasure
written on her face
and have to imagine
how her lips taste
Too drunk,
every sense has gone numb
Your fingers fumble
on the trigger of her loaded gun
when she asks,
"Do you wanna get outta here?"
You catch your breath
while she grabs one last beer

I fell in love
with the way things used to be
I always come close
but it never comes easy
You have to make love
before you fall into it
Or maybe it's a lie
thats been made up for the kids

All alone,
my mind's over analyzing
I reconnect
with the romantic inside me
I wonder if
this will ever mean anything
Is that my guilt
or my heartbeat racing?
It's probably best
to slow down our pace
Calm myself,
splash water over my face
I finally think
I'm starting to cool down
when someone starts
shooting all the lights out

I'm blacking out
in a barroom bathroom
Waking up
in a ballroom bedroom
The ceiling fan
is spinning softly
but maybe it's the bed,
or maybe it's just me

Well I guess
this is already going down
It's far too late
to try and turn back now
She can feel something's off
by the way I'm breathing
So she whispers
that she really needs me
Tomorrow this will mean
nothing to her
even as she guides
my hand up her skirt
I decide
to get this over with when
the darkness steals
the night away again...

The crowded streets seemed empty now, beneath the noon day heat,
as the devils and the invalids wait 'til dusk to meet.
Then the sunlight fades and the neon signs, attract the social crowd,
the silence dies and an echo's born as the deadly night grows loud.
A ***** blonde in a ***** coat, leans on a grey stone wall,
waiting to lead her regulars down a dark and dingy hall.
While a blind man steers his cane ahead to aid his weary feet,
he gropes his way to a barstool  where he and bottle meet.
The piercing sound of a siren is muffled by angry tongues,
as an old drunk falls in an alleyway clutching his heaving lungs.
The sight of the city from the fifteenth floor turns the heart to a giant pump,
as a ****** high in every way prepares for his final jump.
Dance hall girls line the stage and kick their legs in time,
as the prestige men in business suits order gin and lime.
An aging man with glass in hand finds friendship in the night
bringing back his childhood through the shouts of a barroom fight.
The pain goes on 'til the lights go out and the wolves all head for home
for those who have no place to rest the sidewalk is there to roam.

A Terran, a Musician, and a Human walk into a bar and begin to converse in their unique animated fashions.  The Terran told colorful, heavily gestured stories of just how vast, vivid, and desolate, the world can be with adventurous direction and a little bit of luck.  The Musician listened intently and shared personal records of revolving themes and repetitive transcendence.  For Musician, it is simply a twist of perspective.  Then followed a volley of indiscriminate compliments between Human and Terran as Musician earned a few donations of an open microphone on this Friday afternoon.  When Musician returned with concerns of quality and substance, the enlightened friends had both agreed that the rehearsal was finely tuned, impeccable, even.  
     Shy and humming, Human was slightly disconcerting to their boisterous Terran and had to ask about those interests and talents that had not been discussed yet.  Human's eyes froze in small expansion though Musician concurred, compliments are fine but withholding one's self is an insult and a crime to all three beings in such a warmed gathering.  Human began with a facile face, then addled, as if a place to start had muddied underneath solid progressive counterparts.  At last, resolve returned with a solution to try at the open microphone first, mayhaps that would clear the meek performer's mind.  The invoked spirit of clarity overflowed beyond the stage as a silver silence engulfed the barroom.  Human's history was bursting of sky sharing resonant respiration once the song was sung from a place more real than truth.

Changes happen quickly
That’s what happens when you have a fickle heart
Oh to be human
Oh to feel –
But wait, aren’t those the same?

A complete paradigm shift
Like an earthquake of the mind
Leaves wreckage in scattered memories,
Beautiful trinkets lost in the rubble of broken homes.

What a metaphor for the heart!

Can you dare to believe that someone will heal you?
How could you put that weight on someone’s shoulders?
Your pain is yours to bear
Despite sweetened words and rosy promises.

You can’t fix anyone from the inside out either.
Eyes only see the surface,
Only see the façade, unintentional or otherwise.
Truth does not exist for you to see.

Truth. What is truth in love?
Is there truth in love?
Or is love a woven contradiction of hopes and fears,
Bent on the naïve wishes of teenage girls longing to be adored by boys with bright blue eyes and midnight hair?

Does the heart have a shape?
Curves and straight edges?
I think it’s a gooey blob that drips across the barroom floor
And if you’re not careful to clean up the mess you leave behind
You leave yourself behind.

Funny how that works. Ironic perhaps, but definitely cynical.

And if you don’t clean up like your mother always told you to,
Then it’s really your fault if you ask me.
Shouldn’t you know better by now?
After years of hearing what’s good for you and what isn’t
Why do you still have to be so stupidly stubborn?

You’re wrong, just face it.
Your heart is a useless lump that pumps hot red blasts through your body
That splashes pink across your face and lips
And catch his eye.

But don’t say I never told you, no don’t you dare say I never told you
That this silly little love story would end,
That it wasn’t even a love story to begin with.
Hell, it wasn’t even a story -
Just a ****** poem written in a lost-in-the-rubble diary that’s falling apart.

Yeah, I told you so.

Through the blue smoke
I see your eyes burning a blaze
And I feel my heart jump
As I negotiate the roadhouse maze
This isn’t just any piece of ***
Any idiot can chase that
But what I’m chasing now
Is a hurricane across the flat.
You’ve had your share of pain
I can only see those brown eyes burning
I can’t take my eyes off the three dots
By your eye that has got my soul turning
Your finger curls at your blonde brown hair
The ringlets fall thick on your shoulders
And every time you pucker your lips
I always feel my nerves smoulder.
I see you tapping away to the evening beat
The long hot Tequila nights before us
The world is playing at our feet.
I see you draw up on a cigarette
The smoke encircles my heart
Now sitting in the barroom five years on
I wish we had taken it back to the start.
I wish we had started again
On that Tequila night
Can I just ask you somethin’, mon amie-
Can you see the light?

I’m just a man looking for a woman and a therapist

One to fix me, one to love me, in any order

And you, you’re just a lovely, sweet, spoiled

Left by a father, whose death ruined you

It burns like a wildfire, ebbing in all directions

Our duo resembles a bear and a bear trap

While the poacher of souls trains his stare on us

Chewing tobacco with a tear in his shirt

With a wife somewhere, with all her chords in the proper sockets

Bored, dumping her love down the sink with the extra beans

Running the water we’ve come to share like barroom jokes.

And back to you and me, it was only a month; and I loved you

You never knew, because stitches never love a wound

They fall away frivolously, and anonymous

Much like us, now, with alarms of harder times burning in our ears

Yet the sound never fades, it sticks around like the old friends

The ones who helped you before you were famous, or infamous

I cast my words away like children cast stones over dark waters on a summer's sunset soon faded.
Torn between a direction none with many promises of hope but surely chaos in hand with devil's grip.
One is never good enough and twelve is but a taste of a speeding train soon to derail.

My message is a as murky as the  air that swirls in his barroom of empty ness I call my existence.
Tortured genius and drunken buffoon often share drinks of a sandy nature in an oasis of torment.
Beaten in thought and charred in reason I'm seldom at home in this crowd.

Stones that skip often no matter the distance sink into the dark waters
of empty ness.

We are moments shared in logic of other's shattered in fragments.
No attempt seems to clam my efforts only drown my hope.
It's written upon the page will you ask or simply ignore ramblings in
a staged tragedy. I seldom seem real.

Stones were once part of boulders aborted by mountains.
So after the fall what is left but fragments?
Maybe I'll pull it together if only for a moment.

I'm slipping in sanity and drowning in the depth of a hollow existence mocked by my own words
like a prisoner left too long within the hole.
I shout only for my voice's comfort.

To long I've rambled I've begun to sink.
A sunset's embrace is but a epitaph of envy in a gravediggers diary and I am but a blank page.

~~~
Tis a gladness found in sadness
mostly pleasure
wince of pain
From an odor round the barroom
none the boys could e'er explain
Like a billowed line of washin'
after gentle fallen rain
Tis the wail of spring befallin'
on a barfly
oh ... the shame
~
Lo
there's homework
I'm the tender
to a list of things that broke
Ere the boss be sharing surely
words no poet ever spoke
Lazy good for nothing ******
paint the fence and fix the gate
You want a pint ... you must be kidding
Plow the forty ... 'fore it's late
~
Down the misty path of memories
thoughts of Kelsey's brew appears
In a vision almost godly
round a table rests my peers
And no memory tarries longer
forceful
clearer
sweeter
stronger
than ol' Kelsey pouring liquor at the bar
I sheds a tear
~
Summer sadness tans bare shoulders
to replace the winter's shun
And the kids each day
they greet me ... Morning Dad
YOUR IT ... then run
Lord
I never knew that Heaven
'twas the place beyond my wall
Till I heard my children laugh
while toasting mallows in the fall
~
Though breath of Heaven
washed the aftertaste
of Kelsey's from my life
And forever I'll be holding ... dear
new memories
with my wife
I am angered at the sign
that hangs atop ol' Kelsey's door
. . . NO BARFLIES . . .
. . . CASH RESPECTED . . .
~
Sure
His wife now runs the bar
~~~

Gonzo

Is often called a barroom poet slash outlaw .
Who's work has been featured in some mags that clearly do not care about good taste or morals .

When not living as a total recluse drinking his liver silly and watching ****, He often enjoys long drives by himself picking up hookers but enough bout his ex wife.


His short stories usually revolve around some demented ******* much like himself .

He currently resides in hell or as others call it North Carolina .
Where him and his dog share drinks and take turns being the designated drunk driver .


His work will probably give you a contact high or at least the clap.

Enjoy .

And stay crazy .

Gonzo

You say you can't write a line?

let me take you under my wing

Let me teach you how to rhyme

no it is not a crime,you'll shine

and in time

you'll compose lines and lines

long enough to knit a scarf with

it'll trail behind you as a monument to your greatness

clothes not really your taste kid?

don't worry cause thats not all you can make

shiiiiit

we can make it into your favorite

steaks on plates or halls of fame

its so close you can taste it

so just be patient

as we break down your hesitation

while we direct you to the angle you will soon be facing

a college cultural center

a crowded barroom basement

anywhere which you can make a statement

it doesn't matter if its abrasive

normally regarded tasteless

as long as its something that you created

i don't know how long it will take kid

for time does not measure greatness

however i will say this

if you keep working on your craft

it will transform into a spaceship

to be honest it will be a while before i build my own

but that don't mean we can't hone our words strong enough to cut the fuel with

so say you can't make poetry again

for i am determined to show you that you can

Bukowski penned drunken, *****, barroom poetry,
verse as rough as his leathery face, a visage chapped by hard living.

The idolized poet of the lost, the forgotten and misbegotten,
the drunkards, the damaged and the denizens of skid row,

recounted in an interview how he went to The Playwright bar
in Los Angeles, drinking there at least four or five times.

They eventually eighty-sixed him, kicked him to the curb
when he demanded to know if anyone there was a playwright,

accused them of false advertising, raised a veritable ruckus.
It was just another dive. Maybe he was being a little dramatic.

But maybe at the jagged edge, you need a little fire in your blood,
a willingness to throw down over matters of little consequence.

"They're ******. All of them." Bill said. Pounding his right fist on the bar top before sloppily grabbing his tumbler of whiskey, spilling small but significant amounts onto the wooden top, and bringing it to his lips and gulping it down in one swallow.

"More." He shouted at the old man behind the bar who begrudgingly obliged and poured another four fingers width into the glass.

Bill pulled another fifty out of the pocket of his ***** white button-up and slid it onto the bar top where it rested momentarily in the droplets of whiskey before the bartender picked it up and placed it in the register next to the other four fifty dollar bills that the man had already spent. Though the drinks were only twenty a piece Bill made no move for change so the bartender ignored his growing belligerence and continued to pour.

"They can't all be ******."
The man sitting next to Bill piped in.

"Yes they can." Bill ranted back. "Every last ******* one of them. They speak in lies and loose words. Turn everything around so they're the victim. **** em. ******. All of em." Bill downed his drinks but before he could shout for another the bartender was already pouring a drink for him.

Bill laid down another fifty and drank some from the tumbler.

"Maybe it's the ones you meet." Bill's neighboring barmate pitched in again attempting to offer some wisdom.

"I've met them all. I've worked with them all. I've ****** and been ****** by them all. They all want an Apple but ignore the tree the Apple grew from. Always in some sort of silly competition." Bill answered back.

He finished off his drink but asked the bartender for a soda water instead of another whiskey. The bartender filled another tumbler up from the spray nozzle and put it in front of Bill and said no charge.

Bill laid a fifty on the counter. "From all the ******" he said.

He stood up barely able to stand until he balanced himself by using the stool and once he gathered himself he walked towards the back of the room where the restrooms were.

Bill stumbled in and rested himself at the sink taking a look at the reflection in the mirror. His wire-rimmed glasses were smudged and hung slanted on his lean dorky face and his short cropped hair was a mess. It had been a few days since he last shaved and the admiration of a five o'clock shadow had began to make an appearance on his cheeks and upper lip. The suit he had been wearing looked like it had been through a war itself, all tattered and torn and crusted with stains.

He removed his glasses and attempted to clean them in the sink before drying them off with the untucked tail of his shirt. He put them on. It wasn't much better. Next he straightened out his hair the best he could, struggling to keep his much despised cowlick in place.

He unzipped his pants and pulled his **** out and went about relieving himself in the sink all the while staring at himself in the mirror. When he was done he shook twice before putting it away and zipping back up.

Bill went to wash his hands but looked at the sink and realized it had been clogged and now laid full of his *****. He chuckled and shrugged his shoulders and walked out of the bathroom.

His soda water was still on the counter and he started to drink it as the bar's front door opened allowing fresh sunlight to assault it's way in. A tall model-beautiful girl stood in the doorway wearing a suit that showed as much skin as possible. She scanned the room until her eyes laid at the disheveled Bill at the bar.

"Mr Gates" she announced, "the car is ready if you'd like to leave sir."

Bill ordered a whiskey with soda and left another fifty on the bar. His barmate said he understood now why Bill had said they're all ****** after seeing how the woman at the door was dressed. He was laughing as if he had made some grand joke.

Bill stood up off of his stool, knocked back his whiskey and soda, straightened his glasses once more, and threw a strong right hook towards the other man, sending him flying off of his bar stool and on to the hardwood floor. He laid sprawled out, conscious but not moving.

Bill shook his fist. It had been a long time since he had hit anyway.

He walked over to the downed man and told him to never disrespect a woman again.

"But you called them all ******." He replied.

"No you little ignorant man, I was calling everyone in the world of business a *****. There is no loyalty and the only thing that matters is profit."

Bill helped the man back up off the floor and back onto his stool. He laid out a hundred dollar bill on the counter and told the bartender that whatever the man wanted to make sure he got it. Mr Gates straightened himself up again and walked towards the door and after looking around the dingy barroom one last time walked out into the sunlight where a limo was awaiting him.