Swallowing Fire

The room stinks of yesterday’s failures,  

ashtrays overflow like defeated cities.  

A bartender wipes the same spot again,  

the jukebox coughs out another bad tune.  

Toleration is not some saintly endeavor,  

it’s a cigarette burning too close.  

It’s the cheap scotch you drink,  

though it tastes like piss and regret.  

You learn to sit with the loudmouths,  

the suits who claim to know it all.  

Their voices chip away at your spine,  

but you smile, because what’s the point?  

Life is a long corner bar—  

old floors, sticky and indifferent.  

You tolerate the drunks, the liars,  

the dogs barking at empty streetlights,  

because the alternative is screaming  

until your throat bleeds dark juice.  

Toleration is bending, not breaking,  

knowing not every war’s worth the fight.