“Do I have a story for you!”
he announced, slumped at my bar,
his eyes like dusty relics, tired
and glassed over, grating with
regret. Beer foam sloshing, he
started recounting; the lies came
easy to him, truths coughed up
like bar peanuts, salted memories
shared in an uneven cadence.
His voice quivered, cracked like
the jukebox playing old country.
Lost love, wasted years, he strung
tales together, a necklace of mishaps,
cheap trysts, drunken confessions.
I poured him another, nodded in
the right places, my own heart
awake to the sameness of it,
the cruel repetition of sorrow.
All around, the regulars babbled,
their laughter echoing glass shards,
their tales in fragments, ground
into nightly rituals of loser’s luck.
He droned on, a sad preacher
without a pulpit, wishing for answers,
finding none. Cigarette smoke coiled,
the room grew thick with a collective
shared exhaustion.
In the end, stories just dissolve,
down the drain with spilt beer,
smeared across counter-tops, forever
left unanswered. I listened, caught
his final words in a net of boredom,
a bartender’s eternal gift, that quiet
understanding that maybe,
just maybe, we’re all making up
the same damn thing.
-
Author:
gray0328 (
Online) - Published: January 20th, 2025 05:30
- Category: Unclassified
- Views: 11
- Users favorite of this poem: Cheeky Missy
Online)
Comments2
Many great lines and metaphors in this poem of spilt drunken swill a deeper metaphor of communication of a meaningless existence.
Thanks Soren, I spent many nights telling my story to Barmaids. I'll have 5yrs sober in March..
Congratulations my friend
BRAVO, and congrats on being Sober 5 years
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