Dum dum

The sitting duck squad
are perched with
Their bottles of doctor honk,
all in their right hands
Except for Guy,
he holds with his left.

I’m parked at the end of the line
Whistling back bourbon,
they wont give me vermouth
Anymore.
Not after last time.

They will make
a tremendous effort
to remind me often,
that they’d never seen a man
As drunk as I was.

I’ll take every little victory
that I can get.

I don’t know, deer antler? Hibiscus?

It’s a black night,
the stars are camouflaged
the the falling white snow,
birthed from the dark,
hitting the windshield,
Then wiped away.

Traveling along
The middle of somewhere,
Back in the someday.
I wouldn’t know the area,
Even If I saw it again.

inside a warm vehicle.
Almost reaching hot.
Although, the afterthought,
It was always about
The temperature outside,
A sharp arctic wind.

The place, the destination of travel
Held no importance
I don’t believe it was anything special.

It was talk
Clean was the tremendous light
That streamed upwards and onwards
It went on that way
For years and years.
It was talk.

And I guess I made it there,
On that black night, then and ago.
A memory of a safe place,
A cold boy in the snow.

Clean Slates

As he opens the door,
A single door stuck in the bottom
Of a brick wall;
he holds his breath.
He anticipates the burst of
warm air that escapes into this winter night.
He has been here before.

And it’s dead in here tonight.
less people than the
regular crowd.
The regular crowd
that is usually around.
He knows this
because he has been here before.

It’s a straight walk,
only a few steps
until he’s at the long counter of the bar. He pulls out the chair and takes a seat.
The song that is playing is
one that
he has only heard
a few times before,
it’s not as loud as usual,
because tonight is slow.

And she sees him
from behind the bar,
he knows that she saw him
but he waits patiently and only looks forward,
behind the rows of bottles,
there’s a few lights that glow.

As she walks over,
she asks him what he wants
a drink,
But she reaches down
before he answers
and opens up a bottle of beer
that he has ordered here before.

He takes the bottle from where she sat it down in front of him,
he drains a quarter of it with just one tilt back.
She has already walked away,before the bottle is down again.

the song he heard
when he first came in, it ends.
and the room is silent,
No one says a word.

Not a word,
until the speakers
perched in the rafters
break the silence.
a song that he’s more familiar with begins to play over the stereo
and the two guys at the other end
begin to speak to each other again.

Bells are ringing,
or more of a clinking.
It’s notes that are chiming,
as she is behind the bar emptying a tray of clean high ball glasses back onto the shelf where they belong.

She leaves one glass out on the bar.
And she fills it full of whiskey.
He knows what’s next
Because she has done this before.

She sets the glass down in front of her,
Between the two of them
and rests her elbows on the bar.

He waits.

She picks the glass up and takes a swallow.
Her face twists over like she just licked a doorknob,
She puts it back down, closer to him.
He takes the glass and knocks it back, finishes the drink.
He reaches for his half-finished beer and washes it down.
His eyes water as he wants to let out a sick burp.
And he sees her eyes through his own.
And there is no concern, but there is interest.

“I’m so sorry.” He says to her.

Her face lightens
and a smile begins to form.
But he didn’t like her tone
when she replied,

“You’ve said that before”.

Whatever, forever

Today looks pretty good.
I’m going to try
to make it look better.
And I hope that you can take
a small step with me,
We will go amazing lengths;
making small steps
Around the white line,
And when we get there
we can really control time.

Lets go chase the tail lights
of the ice cream truck
or take our bikes out…
Coast down a hill.

We will leave through our bedroom windows
every other night,

Meet me by the cemetery
But don’t go inside.

Take a small step with me,
We can touch back in time,
Because,
Whatever we did,
We never wasted our lives.

The Boys

The Boys have to grow up,
So that they can decide on
when they’ve had enough.

They can give up on their gods.

The Boys,
They must become the legends
That they tell of
in their own tales.

The boys will wise up to
What’s been going on
around them.

Over their heads
And under the nose.

Don’t settle as
The antagonist
In your own story.