BARTALK
BS&M
(BLUE SMOKE & MIRRORS)
by
Michael Martel
CONTENTS
The Bartender: Bartalk
Tracy: I Could Have Danced All Night
The Senator: An Addict
Dianne: I Used To Be A Princess
Frank: Saturday Visitation
Margret: Luck Loves The Lazy
Name Unknown: A Presence Felt
Father Jack: When God Drove A Big Car
Jimmy: Memory With Lies
Sara: "Phasing Out"
Andy: A Reader And A Writer
Vince: Lounge Lizard
Love And Perversion intro with voices
Larry: Fetish
Maria: Gone
Nassar: By Night
Leslie: First Love
The Lovers: Heavy Weather
Jane: He Kept On Shooting
Jonathan: Playing With Love
Billy: Prodigal Son
Nancy: Violation
Russel: Affections And Prejudices
Mickey: Confession
Tracy: Questioning The Heart's Intentions
Johnny: The Countdown Begins At Thirty-five
Ruby Lee: Can You Inherit Tears?
The Bag Lady: Following Bread Crumbs
The Bartender: Bartalk
Some are refuges of sad apartments where walls must remain white
where a few crooked paintings hang because to put up more would cause trouble with the landlord.
Some sneak out of homes they have never quite fit in or perhaps fit in too tightly
away from pets and televisions and lovers and troubles brought home from the office.
To all this is their home away from tension and sorrow, all of them are bar regulars
here beneath the slow circling ceiling fans, elbows leaning on the bar while a glass sweats onto a soggy napkin
to have a drink but mostly to satisfy the hunger to be with other people.
As they sip or gulp down their style of alcohol and play with their straws and as time passes relax and lean back in their stools
many talk to those nearby while others have come for silent company.
I am the person they seek out from time to time urban mythology gives them the hope I
can offer more solace than the alcohol I give them because I care, I will listen.
I care and I listen patiently waiting for I have learned that regardless of outward appearances of slick or shy
if I listen well enough
long enough
each has a tale to tell that will touch me like that no other could give me.
Some come here to flee the tangle of our own problems and rummage through the rubble of those of others.
We are the bartenders and these are the tales that have affected my heart.
Tracy: I Could Have Danced All Night
She comes in to meet new men while diluting the loss of another with white wine, and when one is not to be found she settles for the bartender who never takes her home but listens to the sorrows she has to take home alone.
"Let me set the scene
an empty bed, mine of course
neon's tense dust glow
slashed by Venetian blinds
I never close
feel too closed in,
then I left my pillow
crushed, damp, behind
go to the kitchen for
a consolation of potato chips
and cold milk
I drink from the carton
back in my bed
fringed in last night's
cup cake wrappers
smelling of the night's sex games
that lover du jour
who closed the door so
quietly though knew
I was awake, waiting for
hesitation
might stay on
they never do
not for long enough.
Propped by three pillows
naked and Prussian blue
in that instable light from the t.v. tube
I wonder once again
how far
can I go into life before
the choice of day and time
of my own exit
becomes more than I can make.
If death
were but a long sleep
you can bet I would go
if you could guarantee me no dreams
I have dreamt too heavily
each day
faced reality each night
alone
or if there is a last judgment
can I appeal
an unfair sentence
will I reincarnate in the guise of
another's body to be suffocated
by yet another species
of loneliness than the one
I have at least made friends with,
will I be poisoned by another flavor
of despair?
Slashed wrists and sleeping pills
with eternal rest
dropping from the twelfth floor
but into what?
To find a manner of endurance
into another hour
too similar to the last
has become the task I am unable
to continue
well almost.
So I roll over on my self pity
to watch the t.v. as
Fred Astaire steps onto
the screen and is
rejected by one
then two
more potential partners
and I wish we two could sit in a bar
talk about our troubles.
Fred stands alone on the balcony with a gun
raised to his head
as Ginger appears
in equal melodrama
she contemplates a plunge from
the railing.
A measure of notes and life
becomes new and possible
as they "...Face The Music and Dance"
a silence of words
filled with violins
arms around the waist then dip
rise above the black Bakelite surface.
Fred has such style
Ginger this sensuous flow
and I without style, too many
partners who know the steps,
routines, too well to
feel spontaneous
when we dance.
I crawled across the wasteland of my bed
gave the set back that empty-headed stare.
Though Wilde once had
a despondent Dorian Gray
thank God for Chopin, I say
thank God
for Fred Astaire."
The Senator: An Addict
"In need of a fix
I wander out at night
into dismal streets
thick with dusty lavender shadows
hustling and spinning
with men and women
parted here and there by
street lights gushing thick yellow
sticking like honey to their bodies.
I head for alleyways
damp thin tunnels behind
night clubs and bars
where boys with chestnut skin
on the verge of perspiration
lean against a wall as little
avalanches of mortar sift out
of cracks between bricks.
Music scurries out of doorways
along cement until silence
gobbles it up.
On a window above
someone pulls up the blind, lets
stale white light fall down on us.
We retreat back into the shadows
hanging gray about us
like dirty laundry left out to collect soot
on a hot night.
The boy smiles at me
stained teeth his
tongue slids over
then slides his hands
inside my shirt to touch
warm, wet skin. We move
lips touching as dancers
deeper into the darkness
where the boy undoes his zipper
exposing the syringe.
Night becomes blood red as flash
of neon
leaps past us
finishing up our sticky business
parting
until another night's calling
questing
not for sex, saliva, skin and shadows
but for a stronger addiction.
I am mainlining love."
Dianne: I Used To Be A Princess
This bar is a transition point between work and home or
the apartment of a lover, between other bars suited to things other than quiet conversation. She comes in to drink up a little courage, dress a few wounds, disguise her soul, fill her intentions with deceptions before she goes out to a night club to requisition new phantoms to haunt her heart.
Dianne shook back her black hair with a few gray ones she had forgotten to pull out and told me of her ghosts as her ruby stained nails opened her purse and pulled out a mirror.
"Oh darling please hold this for me, the light in the
ladies room is out and I just can't wait for the busboy to
change it to get my make-up on and get out of here
not that I don't love you
but honey you know you don't love me like I want.
I still use Flamingo Pink lipstick
Ted always said it was the color he preferred
the color of our passion
well it wasn't the color of another bitch's lipstick
he just so carelessly left in his pocket
but why was I searching his clothes anyway
trying to find clues to his dreams as he slept with that
smile
that had just taken up permanent residence on his face?
If I had heart surgery they would probably find that smile
branded on my heart
that day he said `Bye kid!' like I wasn't throwing him out
`Bye kid!' I kept thinking no matter how much vodka
I drank that night.
Is vodka fermented tears?
Now my eyes with lots of mascara
Buddy, well you never met Buddy and I wish I hadn't
he liked lots of mascara
said it made me exotic, what do you think?
I waited night after night for him to come home
with all this stuff weighing down my eyes.
These creeps, but it was Daddy who loved his Princess
best
but he lied to me and it has taken me years to recover from
it `cause he told me he liked my hair like this and that
I was the most beautiful girl in the world, his Princess
and I believed him."
Frank: Saturday Visitation
On Saturday nights as the crowd begins to vanish in the smoke that fills the air, I know Frank will show up and sit with his perfect posture that holds in his middle aged spread until two many drinks have watered down his desire to look like the handsome young doctor he must once have been and he seems to be crushed like his half smoked cigarette butt in the ashtray he spins on the bar.
Frank leaned towards me as I wiped his ashes from the bar, his pupils swimming like drops of black oil in the water of his eyes, or with Frank I should say vodka, and asked me could he show me something.
"I had the electric blanket on for the first time this
morning, it's cold to sleep alone, but Saturdays
I don't just hang around in bed. I ran out and got a paper
and see, my finger is still black from going through the
movie times.
Disney, she's too old for that but I'm not taking her to an R
even though she wants to see some slumber party massacred by
special effects. My stomach just can't take it.
I shaved twice for her just like I'm going out for a
date but she's my best date of the week.
She's there waiting at the door
opens it before I can knock, springs into my arms
feels so fragile there so I don't hug her tight
I don't want to hurt her, but does she know how I love her?
School and friends and television
she tells me everything at once and I stand there like a
moron trying to remember it all, how could I forget
God if I tried I could probably remember everything she has
ever said.
My ex-wife is there.
What a word, sounds like I've crossed her from my life
when...
When she's too polite I can take it but sometimes she acts
too warm, too intimate and once again I feel awkward
like a fool again, ashamed of this situation our love
a love that was
has created.
But my girl seems to know and nothing gets rid of that
nagging depression better than when she slips her hand into
mine.
Am I still her father though when I'm not the one who
helps her with her math problems
the one who chases away the monsters that used to hide under
her bed
Am I still her father now when all I can seem to offer
is a new record player or tickets to an amusement park?
We ate burgers in the car to get to the movie in time
years of french fries stuck down the car seat.
We always sit up front cause we both like to get devoured by
the screen while we go through the jumbo tub of popcorn even
though we just ate.
At some point I looked around and saw all these fathers
with their kids and wondered are they divorced without
custody too
and what is it like for them, like it is for me, this day I
love and hate?
I took my girl shopping and realized the clothes in the
children's department no longer fit her, she needs a woman's
junior and it struck me while I waited outside the fitting
room that she will menstruate soon, maybe she already has and
I could be a grandfather if...
and I needed a drink.
We've tried those fancy places where I take a date but
pizza is what she really wants and always smiles as if
surprised when I can remember to order it just the way she
likes.
I sat sipping a flat beer and her making noises her
mother won't allow with her straw in her coke while we talked
about her lost dog
and she slipped and called her stepfather Daddy.
But am I still her father when there are no normal hours
between us? She doesn't even know what I'm like in the
morning, all cranky and unshaven. She was too young when we
were divorced to have memories I will never lose.
Am I still a father? I'm an amusement park open on
Saturdays, two weeks, if it can be arranged, in the summer.
The ride back is always too short though I try to hit
all the lights to stretch it out even though I know her
mother will be waiting, worried, angry, while her stepfather
is out in the kitchen again.
My girl, she is beginning to look so much like her
mother did back then
but she has my eyes and even if she never says good-bye and
wont' let me say it either
I am still her father, I'll always know that.
I brought in the drawing of her lost dog she gave me
cause I thought you might want to see it. And you can give
me another drink, make it a double."
Margret: Luck Loves The Lazy
There are always new faces and I greet them all the same but I do not approach them inquisitively. I have learned to wait for them to call out to me, to tell me what they have no one else to tell.
But Margret grabbed my sleeve as I put down her drink and I watched my own reflection in her dark glasses while she whispered to me.
"That's Frank Bell over there
oh I know him, I mean more than cocktail parties we see him
at
I mean know about him
his women
my husband talks to him almost every day and says Frank
always tells him about his women
his beautiful, young women
blondes, brunettes, redheads, that slid so willingly into the
warm bubbling water of his hot tub
into his bed with the cool satin sheets.
See I know all about him and the porno films he shows
those kinds of women on his VCR
a collection of over two hundred my husband says for every
kind of fun
the kind of fun I call perversion.
Oh I know Frank and I decided to come in tonight to see
him pick up a woman, see how he does it, how he persuades her
his hair isn't almost all gone, those bags under his eyes
aren't there, that he is young and slim and charming
I can't get close enough to listen to him, I don't want him
to see me, but have you heard him
is he charming, does he have a great line?
My husband won't tell me that, says he doesn't know
but I think he does.
Why does a husband cheat on his wife
I use the word cheat as though it were all a game
as if love could be gambled away and then shrugged off to
bad luck, poor judgment, and then begin another game.
What's luck got to do with love?
When you look and wait and search for a man who seems to want
to hold you with his arms and his heart for ever, and you
finally find him?
What's luck got to do with love when you try to be careful to
make sure he knows you care for him, that you are there when
things go bad at work and that promotion doesn't come or that
bookshelf he just built in the kid's room collapses.
Why talk of luck when you worked so hard to please him,
willed so hard that things go right and then who should you
blame when things fall apart
like a recipe you thought you followed so close
but just didn't work, didn't rise, wasn't edible after
all those great sounding ingredients.
So what has luck got to do with love?
What makes a man think you don't understand when you tell him
you do
makes him notice the wrinkles when you ignore his
and tell him please turn out the lights and
I'll do anything he wants.
What makes a man want another woman when he should see how
lucky he is to have one devoted to him with her heart and
body even if her heart is a bit sore from trying to love so
hard, her body showing sings of wear from giving it so
relentlessly.
But I've never been lucky and
luck has everything to do with love
and Frank is just so lucky to have so many women to love him
when I can't even keep one man."
Name Unknown: A Presence Felt
The dust that is scattered by the cloth merely circles in the air until I am gone and then settles back like the words that have been spoken in this bar. The shadows cross the room even when there is no one standing in front of the light but I am not alarmed. The place is haunted as are all places where people have left behind a bit of their laughter and their sobbing. This building was once a mansion, then a boarding house, and for many years now a place to gather and have drinks with friends, but it has always been occupied by people and their presence has entered the grain of the paneling on the walls so that you can almost see their faces, and in the creaking of the oak floor boards, if you listen closely, you can hear whispers when the bar is empty.
"No one notices, touches, smiles to, curses at, breathes
on, is rude or polite to, even indifferent to me for that
would imply some recognition of my presence but no one
notices me
in my yellow dress as pale as sunlight, my hair as dark as
storm clouds, my eyes as cold as snow
No one calls to me, laughs with me, cries for me, holds onto
me, runs from my arms
no one hears me whisper (or was I crying?)
hears my sigh, scream, giggling, silence
No one is there caring, waiting, needing me but
the shadows that keep passing in front of my eyes so I cannot
see clearly,
but the silence that sucks away my words,
emptiness that crawls into my heart,
darkness that seems too familiar, too intimate for
comfort.
Passing between the tables and reaching out to tickle
the hair on the back of their necks,
placing my mouth on their's to draw in their breath,
even then
no one notices me and I wonder if once again I will have to
take the rope I purchased at the hardware store across the
street
and, when no one notices, go
up the stairs and test the posts in the banister until I find
a sturdy one, then tie my new rope onto it with the knots I
learned so long ago in Girl Scouts and make a loop that will
fit over my head, around my slender neck and slid my body
over the railing and let myself fall down into the stairwell
again, hoping that this time someone will notice me."
Father Jack: When God Drove A Big Car
Suburban Sundays begin with church services and then in the afternoon go on to barbaques or family dinners, but city Sundays begin late because of the sins commited the night before, begin late with the Sunday paper then continue on in a bar where friends meet for brunch.
But when Father Jack came in he did not eat. He sat at the bar drinking snifters of Courvosier and taking the kind of confession people waiting for a table are likely to give out. This Sunday however was slow and it was I who heard Father Jack's confession.
"When I was eight years old
God drove a big bottle green 1956 Pontiac Fire Chief
omniscient in the rear view mirror
as I teased my sister on the seat beside me as he drove us to
church
where he waited patiently outside sitting in that
chrome heavy automobile I could see glowing through
the stained glass windows
knowing that the church was vacant of any deity
less fictional than Santa Claus
who at least ate the cookies you left for him.
God carried us safely on the highway I was not even
allowed to cross
back to the security of our suburban heaven
surrounded by wonderous beings called adults wielding marvels
like gas powered lawn mowers, power tools, television and
telephones,
orders and protection
spanking and hugging
and my God knew just the way I like to be tucked into bed
was the one that I ran to and crawled in with
when dreams and darkness and the future
were too frightening.
When I was twelve years old
God's 1960 Pontiac caught fire
as he waited outside of St. Leo's for us to emerge
and we came to watch him throw gravel on it,
confused as to how to put it out, angry as to why it started,
but with no one to take his wrath out on but us.
It was not many Sunday's later that he spent the
afternoon hacking at the front hedge with his electric sheers
because he said it had obstructed his vision, as if it had
not been planted seven years before and just now stepped in
his way causing his new car to back into the neighbor's red
Ford as it came up our street.
After God finished washing and waxing the sleek black
1965 Pontiac one Sunday afternoon
he lay down to rest and found that antacid tablets
could not relieve the pain that he kept telling us
was only gas
until Mom called the ambulance even though he told her
it was all right
but he was wrong and it wasn't and though God died
at the hospital that day
I drove my fragile father home two weeks later
in the car I had polished again the day before
my new driver's license he had helped me earn
in my pocket.
And when the worshiping him was over
I found there was room for love.
I left behind the crumbling idols
of suburban life and came to the city
where church is just next door and the bus outside the door
and I don't need a car at all.
I found another God who drives a great big planet called
Earth through the universe He has created,
but as time passes with cruelty and starvation,
with disaster and the threat of global war
I wonder how long before this God I have devoted myself to
will no loner deserve my devotion,
but then will He deserve my love?"
Jimmy: Memory With Lies
Just as each drink we take enters our body's systems devised to stay alive and vital in this hostile world, so each thing that happens to us enters another just as vital system called the mind and soul and there it always leaves it's effect. Memory, forgetting, being able to recall events, is a manner our system has of surviving in a hostile world of emotions. Sometimes the proper light through the window, the precise amount of alcohol in our blood, the right person in front of us to listen brings back memories that we are never certain are the result of real events or the sifting through them by our imaginations.
On a rainy afternoon when an Irish Coffee was the best defense against depression, Jimmy sat at the bar stirring the whipped cream in his drink and speaking just loud enough for me to listen.
"I have vivid memories of those summers between the ages of five and eight my mother, my little sister, and I spent with my grandparents while my father was off on some mission for the Pentagon. All those summers except one, isn't that strange, the one just after my sixth birthday though I know we went that summer to Iowa again because in the family album there are pictures of us with my grandparents. The memories from that period seem diluted in confusion, a kind of queer anxiety and they slip from my grasp, while at the same time I feel as though if I could recall them clearly I might drown in them.
The sound of his breathing out of the dark caverns of his nostrils, or his near whistle like a tea kettle about ready to let off steam. Though there are only two others in the car this strange new uncle who has married my Aunt Jesse insists I sit so close beside him in his huge car with the sticky black vinyl seats I can feel his sweat soaked shirt damp on my arm. And the heat, the oozing liquid of his hand on my bare knees. Yes, my aunt and sister sit a great distance behind us in the back seat and I am alone in the front with, what was his name, I think it was Uncle Sy.
How many days later is it now? What was time then except a measure of impatience. Am I waiting for him to leave? The light is like creamy melted butter, the porcelain white and wet as the full moon I had watched cautiously pass by my window the night before. As I try to float my body in the water in the bathtub until my mother comes back Uncle Sy comes in to shave and insists on asking me questions about silly things I don't understand. I stop listening and try to slide as low in the water as I can without putting my head under. I am afraid to put my head under, that the water will rush in my nose and ears and fill up my head. With the shaving cream still drifted like snow against his ears his face is above me as he kneels beside the tub and picks up the pale green wash cloth. His hand, crawling with thick black hairs, holds the cloth in front of me and I watch it dripping into my bath water because I cannot turn and look at him because I know he is smiling as he says, `I love you so much I could eat you.' I don't remember anything else except I must have been frightened because I slid myself down in the tub until the water was over my head.
It is night and a dog is barking, no, just growling, maybe about to bark but that can't be because I know that no one who lives near my grandparents in this little town has a dog. I must have been awake when I heard the creaking of tight leather shoes across the floor of the parlor on the other side of the door where I slept in the quest room downstairs. This was the first summer I was allowed to sleep alone downstairs while everyone else slept upstairs. I was a big boy now. Light slid like a puddle of urine under the door and across the floor until it stopped at the side of my bed. I am too frightened to move and pull the covers over my head when the door swings soundlessly open and I stare at the dark figure of a man against the light. At first I think it is my dad because when he comes home late he always comes in my room to kiss me good-night, but then I hear that breathing, that whistling, and I know it is Uncle Sy. He must know I was awake because he says something I cannot hear as he closes the door. The moon is just moving to my window and I can see him, his chest all dark like there is a hole in it. I can't remember, can't remember what happened next. Was he there long, or was it just after he entered the room that I heard more footsteps in the parlor and knew it was my Aunt Jesse, no one else in the family was silly enough to wear high heeled shoes while staying in a rural town like Grandma lived in.
Uncle Sy stands in the doorway again with it open and I hear him say, `I just had to say good-bye to the little tike, he really will miss me you know.' The door closes as I hear my mother's voice. She is arguing with my aunt who keeps saying they have to leave. `Keep your voice down,' I hear mom say, `You'll wake mother.' There are some more whispers like static on the radio, then I hear the big front door open and close. I remember hearing the engine of that big old car starting up and then I must have hidden in sleep.
I woke just as the blue of morning had begun to bleed red. I lay there and felt good in this house, the way it smelled, like the lilac bush outside the window, Grandma's sweet perfume, Grandpa's tobacco, even the smell of Grandma's chocolate chip cookies clung to the wall paper. But when I rolled over there was this sour smell and I knew it reminded me of Uncle Sy. I jumped out of bed. I had to make sure his car was gone and he hadn't come back while I was sleeping. I couldn't see the front yard out of my window so went into the parlor. There, in my grandpa's chair, sat my mother in her night gown.
`Did they leave?' I asked my mother as I climbed into her lap.
`Yes,' she told me sounding very sad, `But I don't want Grandma to know they had to leave in the middle of the night because it will upset her. I'm going to tell a little lie and I want you to help me. I'm going to say they got a call early this morning and were sorry but they had to be in Des Moines by noon so had to leave. Will you help me?'
I nodded I would but I didn't really understand because my mother had always told me never to lie just like George Washington.
It must have been late in the afternoon because I can remember how the light came in the window and settled on the piano keys and made them shine in the afternoons. I can remember what happened next now very clearly, like I said the light, and the way the house was so still because my grandparents had gone off to the store and my mother was sitting in the parlor rocking my sister to sleep. I was supposed to be taking a nap but instead was trying to figure out why the wallpaper looked more like faces then roses. I heard a car drive up to the house, then two car doors opening. I had to know if it was him coming back. I jumped out of the big bed and skidded across the floor into the parlor as my mother was going out the front door. I caught the screen door before it closed and went out in the yard where there were two men looking real hot in their gray suits. It seemed real strange to see men in suits like my dad wore to work way out here so I went up right behind my mother and held on to her dress to watch as they showed her a photo.
They were asking about my Aunt Jesse and my Uncle Sy like they were looking for them. My mother said they had left the day before and would they mind not coming back again because she didn't want my grandmother to know that these men were looking for them.
`Do you know where they were going?' one of the men said taking a notebook out of his pocket.
`Nope, they didn't say, Jesse never says where we can get in touch with her, didn't even tell us when she married this new husband,' mother said sounding all sad again.
Then my memory suddenly broke loose from something that had been holding onto it and I heard Uncle Sy whispering into my ear the night before, `I'm sure going to miss you, you sweat thing. Guess I'll have to buy you something nice tomorrow when we get to Minneapolis and send it to you.'
`Minneapolis, that's where Uncle Sy said they were going,' I screamed out. I thought the men were going to laugh at me but one of them just mumbled that they should have thought of that and then patted me on the head.
Uncle Sy, he was in those pictures I saw when I was visiting my parents over Easter. I asked my mother what ever happened to him. I just felt this need to know where he was, to keep away from wherever that was. She didn't know, my Aunt Jesse and he had been in trouble with the law over a car or something and she divorced him and married another husband, this one a Bible salesman. Uncle Sy, there is something about him that I'll always be frightened of even though I'm a grown man, something that you wouldn't think I would ever forget but I just don't understand why I can't remember why he scared me so."
Sara: "Phasing Out"
"`Phasing Out',
mother's words, not mine
for what she does
with life,
washing it from her clothes
cleaning it from the high corners
of the rooms.
Phasing Out
she says again
as the words fade
with the beating of blood in my ears
a distance to her pupils
open wide enough to
hold eternity
portals
through which I will
one day
step
as she plans her arthritic steps
now to the edge of the abyss
I turn away from
Mother
I can't be left behind
words that know no voice
and I listen as her words
dig her way out of life
shovelful
by shovelful
I cannot help her with this chore.
Before the mahogany and glass
cabinet of her china
she planned inheritance
of each goblet and plate
asks would I like to take
this crystal platter now
I would get so much more use
of it
than she
these, the spoils of her life
to be assembled
in the lives of her children.
Sitting down to a holiday meal
me age thirty but suddenly seven
teasing my sister as though
she were not a grown woman
father scolded, but now with laughter
mother urged
no longer demands
we eat more potatoes, more...
the hands that passed the dish
spotted with age
hands that reached down
to tie
the hood of my new winter coat
the winter
the snow drifted
all the way up
to the roof
hands
white as snow
warm as the cups of hot chocolate
she had waiting for us inside
hands spotted with the residue
of years
quickly gone
into age
about my father's eyes
cobweb that time gather
about my eyes
but never old enough
to accept
`Phasing Out'."
Andy: A Reader And A Writer
Like light bouncing off the surface of still water, Andy's eyes gave off the reflection of things, not those seen in the world around, but seen only while looking in his eyes and letting those images rest on yours. Every person that he sat next to found that, instead of staring into their drink, or across the room at a swirl of smoke when he talked, they took the normally embarrassing pose of looking him straight in the eye.
"I find myself the victim of moments
I could only describe, since I was a child,
as magic
when the present clamps securely on the past
like the glass lid of an old aquamarine Mason jar
container of atmospheres I could only find
in special books, The Wind In The Willows, The Little Prince,
ones I read in my sleep
in lives lived in other times
where sunsets were acknowledged as
the fall of angels or
descent of dragons.
Then the weather was the internal
made visible and my mind did not search
for meaning in a profusion of symbols but smiled,
nodded, accepted.
Time is brown with the memory
of a golden era past.
I fit best between the covers of a
well-bound book where I savor
the odor of the hide, the parchment, the
wilted rose pressed between the palms of my hands.
A train will rumble like the distance that wants
me to be it's familiar, whispers,
You can go
you can come
you have life
a plot with a beginning, middle, end
a purpose, a passage, a meaning.
So I read voluminously
searching out those fragile wings of magic
an archeologist among words
hoping to find a temple rumored of
in my childhood
and I took to be true.
At night I sleep between starched sheets
between the pages of a book
sleep on the sound of the train into
the distance of dreams kept from consciousness
there to find myself dusted by the enchantment
that is lost when I wake and all that is left
is dust spinning
in the intrusion of sunlight
so I go to my desk and write
for the reason we all read
to find a beginning, a middle, an end with a meaning
in our lives."
Vince: Lounge Lizard
"All my moonbeams are neon,
all my best lines stolen from the love songs I sing
in that lounge at the Ramada Inn while the
cash register at the bar sets my rhythm
that's where I met Melissa
held her eyes from the stage
contracted my heart around hers
till she abandoned me for some languid song
in another lounge, cross town.
That's where I met Her last night
noticing she was listening to my songs
while the other's just listened to their own sighs,
so I pressed my lips to the microphone and sang for her,
slicking back my hair with my palm.
When the set is over I go to her
hands in my satin pockets
she nods carefully, so not to muss her bleached hair,
holds a toasted almond tightly,
smiles with cream on her upper lip,
and I slip my best lines into her ear and out
comes her best lines for me,
and suddenly I am wondering to myself if I could really find
love behind this craving.
When the lovin was done, no,
when the sex was done
and she had hidden from me in sleep,
I snuck out of the motel room that I keep
for just such occasions and headed home
`cause I always sleep best by myself.
My well phrased lines that tether me to the lives of others
now spoken
expelled enough breath to
leave me weightless, drowsy
and sleep sucked the stars from heaven.
I woke after three this afternoon
a rush of spring
through the cracked window
across my naked body as I lay there
and I could almost see her stealing
in and out, between my thoughts
with an urgency that
makes me want to cry
me of sentimental lyrics and contrived emotion
has found real love
it was there in the night with her
so I jumped from the bed
and searched through matchbooks and
cocktail napkins
hoping I had written down her phone number
`cause all I have left of her is a first name
Dianne,
but then Goddesses never have last names."
Love And Perversion
They speak to their bartender of the weather, of taxes, of politics, and of sports, but more than any one thing they talk of love, something so individual and unique it sometimes appears strange and even frightening.
Voices
"Love is the subtlest form of jealousy for what we cannot find in ourselves we seek to acquire by the strength
of our love."
"Love's greatest enemy is our fantasy lover, the one
that the person we might love will never live up too. So me
I find love in the palm of my hand, beating like my heart."
"I've always loved my chimeras more that the reality of
my lovers."
"The greatest danger is love for think how vulnerable we are, to what lengths we will go for it."
"Where are my waking wet dreams?"
"Love is the only wisdom worth acquiring. It's the only wisdom every I. Q. has the chance to comprehend."
"Sex without love is like sleep without dreams, and I'm a dreamer."
"Love is confusing."
"Love is a bitch."
"Love is just damn weird."
"I like love despite everything that tells me to stay clear of it."
Larry: Fetish
"Wearing the softest kid gloves
I touched the softest kid
I will ever
never touch
in bed
not for sleep
when my hands are bare
for I love to feel the texture
of dreams
crushing down upon me
but for foreplay
to cover my calloused hands
and heart
with tender, yielding animal skin
for animal acts
sensation of the inside of gloves
I wear
gloves to bed
but not for sleep."
Maria: Gone
"Knowing that the moments
that gave his life
breath
have now been few,
an eternal tension remains
upon my lips to have spoken
his name
and my soul has, in startled cry
gasped
unable to release
the terrible pressure
those few moments have
left with me.
I am undone by a sure yet
trembling kiss
of night and sorrow."
Nassar: By Night
"Not between sheer sheets
of electric lamp light
nor within a neon web
pulse of candle flicker is too impatient
sunlight too revealing
but within the shadows
I find my pleasure
wrapping darkness around desire
where a drop of sweat,
or tears
or blood
are all the same to me."
Leslie: First Love
"A distance of sadness
comes of late, how strange.
Though moon rise crystal
in presence clear
this feeling remains
as night lies below the day.
Though much is gained
much is lost
and he who brings such
wonder to my soul
destroys the past.
For once I am upon a time
I have never known before."
The Lovers: Heavy Weather
"In light sour as old milk curdling with clouds,
in silence that chokes
bird cry and insect mating signal,
in the still after exhalation
before the need for inhalation,
in a decadent world gone over ripe
where tomato skins burst secretly
and ooze like venereal sores
soil succumbs to dark odors
worms crawl through the carcass
of the earth and out her pores
in this rotting beast
we become animals
finding the conventions of
this decaying society
irrelevant
discovering the subtle wasting away
of our senses, once sweet, grown bitter
wallowing in the comfort
of flesh
the rise and fall of the temperature
of our blood
tossing and turning in each other's arms
as though disturbed by dreams
floating on our body fluids
sinking below the weight
of summer weather
wondering if love
will finally go sour."
Jane: He Kept On Shooting
Jane is a regular but only coupled with her husband Ben who was even more of a regular because of Patty and Carol and the others who drank sweet drinks with names like Pink Lady and Sloe Comfortable Screw. He played target practice with her heart for four years shooting a bulls-eye each time without aim. Jane was left with wounds never let to heal into scars she might wear like medals from their battlefield, their bed.
Then one night after not having seen her or her "other half" for weeks she came in with a smile on her face like a crack in porcelain.
"I need a drink, a new heart,
mine is a sloppy heart like an unkept garden filled with
weeds
an unmade bed
cluttered with love and other untidy emotions like guilt and
shame and that's the villain, my heart
not him, Ben who would stab at me when we made love
and then cry I was suffocating him
and go off with his gun to the police shooting range
or so I thought
now I know he was finding breathing room with another woman
I know because they were there at the funeral and didn't cry
the tears friends cry
they cried my tears.
Who will punish me for loving that man
the indulgence of my heart
my mess of a heart?
I hope God is kind to Ben because he was a mindless
sinner, but why should He be kind to me
when I should have had the smarts to clean up my heart
and toss Ben out long ago.
Oh we can survive the sins of others
but seldom recover from our own."
Jonathan: Playing With Love
The old oak piano with the worn ivories sits in the corner of the bar, a picturesque antique to most of the customers but to Jonathan a necessary extension of the personality he wishes to be known by. But all those in the bar now have heard him play before and have already asked him where he learned, so he decides to tell me the story though I have heard it again and again.
"I could have been a concert pianist, that's what my
teacher had planned for me, could have been well known, yep,
if I'd followed through on her plans for contests and
recitals.
I could have been in love (I think that's what you'd
have to call it though I'm not like that), but it was with my
first piano teacher, Mr. Hill, because he could play Chopin
and Chopin is just another word for love and I just loved the
Polynaise Opus fifty-three. I found this recording of it in
my parents house. Yep, no one ever knew for sure why. My
parents seemed to have given up on music when I was born so
moved the big old record player into my bedroom to get it out
of the way and that's where I would play that record again
and again.
I could have been doing something evil and nasty behind
my locked door when I listened to Chopin my parents must have
thought cause they would knock on the door and yell at me to
come out, which of course I wouldn't. But they were pissed
because one day I found that record broken and in the trash
so I fooled them and got them to let me take piano lessons so
I could play that Chopin piece that was on the record so they
heard it anyway in time.
The first day of class I asked Mr. Hill would he play
the Polynaise Opus fifty-three, and he must have been a
little startled, I mean I was only seven then, but he did
anyway and that was how I came to love Mr. Hill.
I could have died for him when after our first piano
recital at school he took us all into one of the rehearsal
rooms and there was this beautiful grand piano an opera star
he had played a tour for had given him when he had gotten
drafted. All black and golden and angels. On that marvelous
instrument that was too big to keep in his apartment he
played my Chopin piece and before everyone dedicated it to
me. See why I loved him?
I could have died when he moved away and I got this new
teacher who was all metronome and arched hands and no
passion, I mean cold. I stayed with her though because I
needed to learn that Chopin piece and it took years before I
could play it at a recital where I got all carried away and
played it through twice and would have a third but my teacher
stopped me. All those notes like heartbeats and tears that
she stopped so I stopped the lessons. Why go on and become a
professional when I could play all I needed to play?
I could have still been married if the music had lasted.
Ladies fall in love with you when you play those notes but
you can't play all the time and all you are left with is
clumsy words and the relationship falls apart. What good is
love with a woman anyway if it can't ever be as passionate as
the music of Chopin? Would you like to hear me play that
Polynaise again?"
Billy: Prodigal Son
"Kneeling before any deity
that would claim me
I filled my hands, blue with the cold,
shaking with secrets,
full of the soil from the grave
and stuffed it into my mouth,
enough to choke the sorrow
from my throat
for mother told me,
if I had read her arthritic handwriting correctly
that father was there in the grave
dissolving his wisdom into the earth
as once he tried to
instill his morals in his son
while holding back his love
until now when I knew
it was there
he had given it up finally
to the clumps of dirt
I tried to swallow."
Nancy: Violation
A bar is a place on which to lean your elbows, cover your face and look at the ice dissolving into your drink along with the tears that are so easy to cry here where no one questions your reasons, no one expects any shame, only comfort in their company even if it is wordless, even if with words, it does not matter how ineffective the words may be. The tears of sorrow and circumstance are questions no human can answer, but meant for God, and He is silent.
These were the tears that Nancy cried at the bar late
one night.
"Why did he have two guns
when one gun, one bullet
was enough to force me
into oblivion's coffin?
Why was I unafraid
as he drove me in this electric blue Dodge van
license plates smeared with mud
into the bowels of darkness
down by that slimy river
squirming through that excrement of beer cans and soda
bottles?
What happened to the guns
penetrated into my parched dreams
as his anger attempted to enter me
his sweat collecting pools
in my pores
stinging under my eyelids clamped shut so
tight I could see the stars
his saliva tasting like terror on my lips
as I shivered on the steel bed
he ground me against?
The stench of that stagnate water and him
were like a chloroform and
I listened carefully to the
contented croaking of frogs
a very distant siren
creaking of his worn shock absorbers
lust struggling from his throat
my heart ceasing to beat.
Where was fear
as I tumbled through the headlights and alleyways
and finally found my car
God drove me home
and that's where fear was
diluted in tears
dripping from my insides all night
on the john as I tried to sweat him from my soul
until dry of him?
And when it was all over, the night, the nightmares, the
fear, why was there nothing left of myself?"
Russel: Affections And Prejudices
He had been an institution around Washington as much as the bean soup at the Senate dinning room for the fifty-two years that he tended the bar at the Democratic Club until he was retired at the age of seventy-two. Over those years he collected amazing tales of political wheeling and dealing that only the intimate in Washington government circles knew about. But that was not Russel's most interesting story to me. It was the one he began one night as we were closing and continued over the next couple of months.
"She calls me gramps. Kind a ole fashioned, but that's my girl Beth. Oh she wouldn't like to hear me call her my girl, she's not my daughter, haven't got one I know of at least, she only lives in my apartment building, and prefers to be called a woman though she's not quite... I don't mean `cause she is only twenty, but, well, she lives with this other woman named Leslie and they are what are called Lesbians, female homos. You know I don't know if I believe male ones really exist. I heard they do and even met some guys who were a bit, you know, but I can't understand what a man would really want to do with a man. Now two women I can understand a bit better `cause I sure like to do it with a woman, they're so soft and all, but a man!
Beth and Leslie sort a adopted me maybe `cause they needed someone around, just up and moving here from Iowa where they said they felt strange being Lesbians. I guess they don't allow them out there or something though I can't imagine why, they are so nice and it's not like they hurt anyone. I take care of them, help them out when they need someone to show them how to get around the red tape at the telephone company and get their bill straightened out or fix up an aerial for the radio. I won't let Beth walk alone home from work here after she gets off so I come to meet her. A girl, I mean woman, could get hurt in this neighborhood, it's not what it used to be."
"Male homos, well I guess they exist all right. See that waiter over there, Tommy, the tall masculine looking one, well you would never know it. He just moved in my building and I met him in the hallway. I asked him if he might like some old Playboy magazines, oh I'm not too old to look at them, just throwing out the old ones. He just comes out, not even whispering, and says sorry but he's gay. That's the new word they use for it. Then he said he only buys Playgirl. Imagine that, a guy right out and buying that. They're becoming so open now, not like the old days when you heard people whisper about it but never really knew they existed. Guess they don't want us to forget they exist now.
I won't forget you can bet on that. My boy, well he's a man of thirty-six now, came out to visit me yesterday, no, not visit, really sit down and relax visit like friendly. We haven't spoken to each other in five years since his mother died and he got mad at me and moved to Frisco. Well he didn't really have any ties here anymore. For some reason his marriage to his high school sweat heart, real fine girl name Linda, ended in divorce. I've heard tales about the kind of men live in Frisco and I guess I was right.
At lunch after I picked him up at the airport he just announced he was gay, while I was trying to relax and feel comfortable with him and eat. Then he says that. Well why? I mean when he said that I realized I had known all along but just hadn't thought about it. So what was I to say, sorry, sorry `cause I caused it? That's shit! Or he had caused it? Well he went through too much hell deciding to leave Linda so I can't believe he chose this, not with the way people talk about homos, so I just said, so what?
He must of thought it sounded like I didn't care but I just didn't want to make it a big deal and we started arguing, this power struggle we used to go through and went right back into again even though I don't think either of us wanted it. But we couldn't help it, we have just done it for too long. Next thing I know he either got on the return flight `cause I told him to or he wanted to. I don't know. Went back to all those homos, I mean gays, and I don't know when I'll hear from him again. He may blame me for everything."
"Haven't seen me much lately have you? Well I've had a sick boy on my hands but I guess everyone here knew Tommy was real bad off for awhile. You'd think his parents would have come out to take care of him but their flower shop back in Beulah is more important to them and with that fever the doctor said he shouldn't fly. He didn't have any insurance yet to go to the hospital so someone had to take care of him. I finally got his fever down, that shit the doctor gave him wasn't what did it, it was the sponge baths I kept giving him cooling him off. And that strong chicken broth Beth made helped too.
With the fever it hurt his eyes to watch T.V. so I read to him some of these old Mickey Spillane mysteries I still have and he really liked those. Now he's sitting up and reading one on his own. Tonight for dinner I'm fixing us a roast, not like I expect him to eat much yet, but I'm inviting over Beth and Leslie. I think he could use a little company beside me, we've been in that room of his now for weeks. So this afternoon I thought I'd come in and see you. Can't stay away from a bar for too long after all."
Weeks later, after Tommy had started back to work, he came in early one day to ask for the night off and to talk to Beth who had moved with Leslie to a new apartment for the same rent but in a safer part of the city the week before.
"In that room with the cracked plaster and the ripped shades pulled down, me all crazy with fever, frightened `cause I was so sick, Russel would just sit by the bed so when I woke up I would know someone was there to take care of me. We didn't say a lot but I felt real close to him.
Then I got better and started going to work and after work going out and I hardly ever stopped by his door to see what he was doing or to borrow a mystery like I meant to do. Until today when this awful smell was coming from his apartment and I knew what it was though I took a hammer and broke off the door knob to get in like it was a life and death emergency. He was there alone in that lonely room and I hope he died in his sleep because then maybe he was dreaming of people he loves and so wasn't alone. I called the police and they asked me if there was anybody who they should call but I didn't know of anybody, do you?"
Mickey: Confession
"I have to tell you straight out I'm an addict, and it's
my Grandma's fault.
Now she may look sweet and harmless but it's her that got me
in this mess, her that got me addicted.
It started years ago when she went in the hospital, first day
of her life she was sick only she wasn't just sick, she was
real bad off and in a lot of pain and no one could figure out
why, and you have to do something for pain.
My mom calls me and tells me Grandma is getting real
depressed, and who can blame her, I mean on all the doctor
shows they know what is wrong and can tell you what little
pill to take for it, and Grandma is becoming withdrawn.
I thought it might just be she didn't want to talk to my
mother which can be a pain in itself sometimes, so I went to
see Grandma.
She lay there all still and didn't seem to be listening when
I tried to tell her about my daughter, or the dog, or the
latest cereal, or her other favorite subjects.
Then I noticed it was three and time for her favorite show,
General Hospital which she had watched from the day they
opened the doors to all those horny doctors and nurses, but I
knew she was real bad off `cause she didn't even want me to
turn it on. That bad.
So I went home and adjusted my schedule around so that every
afternoon for a week I watched General Hospital.
That Friday night I went into see Grandma who was still on
their mystery case list and tried the usual subjects. No
good. But then I mentioned the names of Luke and
Laura, two of the more notorious characters on her soap, and
she perked right up, couldn't resist asking me what they were
up to.
Couple days later word came that they had figured out that a
sack packed full of stones had formed on my Grandma's gall
bladder and the x-rays hadn't picked it up. I suspected they
just wanted to keep her a bit longer and add a new chapel to
the wing they were building on the hospital.
In no time Grandma was fine, but as for me, well I had been
turned into an addict.
Which is why I'm talking my lunch hour so late and why I
would really appreciate it if I could get my fix and you
could turn on the set to channel seven so I can find out if
Luke and Laura are all right."
Tracy: Questioning The Heart's Intentions
Tending bar for years in the same place, you see the same faces again and again. From time to time someone will come in who no longer looks like the person whose problems you have listened to over the years. Something about their smile is different. Their eyes are anxious to tell you a new tale they have learned to tell.
"One day
not much different from another
externally at least
it suddenly occurred to me to wonder
what is a lover?
Is he or she made of flesh that warms
to the touch
the lick
someone who can speak softly,
barely a breath in your ear
who folds comfort around you
fills you with all kinds of emotions
drains you of your fears
drives you away from madness that loneliness inspires
leads you down into your soul between
forgotten illusions of times when
you were without the power of poetry
to smooth your senses against sleep?
A lover is but the mirage
that rises from the desert of your existence
an image at whom we throw the darts
of desire
a capsule containing all our wishes and
hidden dreams that we hope
to rent open with our lust
devour like a tranquillizer for our dread
of loneliness
metabolize into our flesh which becomes damp
with thoughts of sex
lips quickly licked with expectation
arms with the nerves communicating want
along their live wires to tense muscles
waiting to cling to the fantasy, the security,
the fulfillment of dreams we have dared
not let ourselves remember
when we wake with the slap of morning
stinging on our face.
There are tears that are now warm
as a mother's milk on my cheek
there are words that are like children playing
without the watch of adults.
A lover
not another person
but ourselves in our deepest moments with ourselves
when the vessel we have chosen
to carry all this is but a
will-o'-the-wisp
in comparison with
the person we have found in ourselves
when we find a lover."
Johnny: The Countdown Begins At Thirty-Five
Some toast to life, some toast to health, others to good will, to success, to many things, but some can only lift their glasses and toast to the good times, to the past.
"We sang in the streets when I was nineteen
while cops we called pigs watched with clubs in their hands,
we sang in lobbies of Federal buildings before they
dragged us out,
we sang while lying on mattresses on the floor in our
own little commune,
we sang with Jim, and Janis, and Jimi
while part of the crowd, a generation
when it was not that I had grand dreams
but they had me
the way a lover I loved so desperately
never loved me quite enough and I was had in more ways than
one
the lover my life rotated around
spun out of my galaxy like a comet
whose tail fires scorched my life
and the singing of the spheres was over.
I was thirty-five and the countdown had begun
abandoned by dreams as I lost my footing
could no longer sing
as the future slid out from under me.
At thirty-five you eat when you are depressed
not because you have the stoned-out munchies
so I went to the grocery store
where I started humming to myself
while others hummed along
to the song "We Shall Over Come"
that played over the Musac speakers
music I would have sung to die by
now music to spend money by."
Ruby Lee: Can You Inherit Tears?
"Just not my style, just not like me, so didn't drink a drop at all, no just not my style, until it became mine, until I met him.
Coming to me through the cigarette smoke shinning all orange and green from neon beer signs floating against the walls, his jaw line sharp as a knife shadowed by blood stains, looking me straight in the eye and just coming out and saying `I want to have sex,' and of course I know he means me `cause what else was I put on this earth for, but him, he says it so nice, so polite, like an angel, and adds, `Sorry to be so blunt mam, but I just don't have enough time left to be any other way.'
But that slow way he had moving his lanky body between the tables makes me think he really ain't in no hurry, not like some, so I stands up and runs these hands that I keep so smoothed and creamed down over my deep blue satin dress so it fits oh just so nice over my hips, then says, `Come on honey, show you a good time, come on honey follow me,' as he watches with steel blue eyes kinda lazy and half closed like an old moon hanging in the sky, no, with those pale lips smiling, like he was having some dream he would never tell about.
So he follows me upstairs where I keep this room with a bed and an old lamp with a red plastic shade, and in that light thick as blood I recognize that screw of the mouth, that angle of the eyes, and don't even have to ask but know real sure that this here boy's father comes to me when he says things at home are just too crazy, the big guy who slaps me and talks real rough, but always begins to cry when he is on top of me doing his business and all I know to do is go on pretending to moan and close my eyes so he can have some privacy.
This boy here is so light and slow, each movement dissolving into the next as he removes his clothes and folds them carefully at the foot of my bed as I wait there naked and wondering. `I wish you loved me,' he says standing there, and `cause I'm nervous I laugh and say, `I wish you loved me,' but stop laughing when he whispers, `I might,' and I know he isn't lying.
The smell of a boy, all fresh and warm like God just pulled him from the oven, like baked bread or cookies, that smell that needs no cologne or after shave, that wonderful smell that starts me to thinking of a boy long time ago as we lay on the couch in the front room while my mamma was at work, that smell I tried to melt into like butter when I buried my nose on his neck, and I'm thinkin of that boy who is in God's hands now, of the way we loved into exhaustion and dreamless sleep and I hear `I love you' suspended on the damp air, and first I think it is the boy's words, but then I realize it is me, and he answers me with those same magic words, and it's all different, not just money and dirty sheets, it is love and God I feel him inside me and I am loving him. His head rests on my breasts and I feel hot liquid running down over them. For a moment I think it is sweat, but I know it is tears.
After he has come, after he has risen and dressed as I lie on my bed listening to the traffic below us, to the music in the bar, to the beating of my heart, real fast and remembering what it was like to beat so fast, he says, kinda sad, `So that's it?'
`Yeah,' I answer wondering what he wanted. I suddenly feel embarrassed so pull on my dress.
`Oh you see I just thought there would be more,' he says.
`More what?' I want to know.
`Just more,' he says so softly I can hardly hear him as he takes a twenty from his wallet and lays it on the foot of the bed.
I turn to pick it up and when I look back to tell him maybe this one is on me, he is headed out the door. I notice that this gym bag he had carried in was by the bed still so I pick it up and go to the door and yell to him that he has forgotten something.
`Maybe I have,' was all he says so I hand him the bag thinking Jesus this thing is heavy, and then he walks down the hall.
I stand there a minute deciding something, I'm not sure what, then go after him, but he is already down the stairs and heading into the men's room. Then real quick I hear one shot from a gun and even before this old guy comes running out of the john yelling about the kid who just shot himself, I know that the boy is dead.
So what else was there to do then, what else was there. So I go over to the bar and ask for a drink `cause suddenly drinking became my style."
The Bag Lady: Following Bread Crumbs
Her age is undeterminate, her poverty apparent, her past a mystery to most who see her come in with her old wool coat the only thing to keep her warm, her life stuffed into an old shopping bag from one of the more fashionable department stores. But I welcome her because though she complains continually, it is only mumbled under her breath as was the story of how she came to decide to live her life on the streets. There was no one to go home to anymore.
"Bartender slip me a drink,
something warm, something to ease my aches and pains,
something to make me forget,
slip me a drink so no one will know, bourbon in coffee
it's cold out there, wet to chill you to the bone
and at my age they are brittle enough already
broken often enough by the gangs of what look like kids
but sure enough are the Devil running free
`cause God gave up on this world long before
I gave up on him.
Slip me some crusts of bread, stale as you like
it's not for me but the pigeons that are there
waiting for me in the park
make the best pets you bet ya
better than dogs leaving their mess in the grass,
bad enough in the winter but try stepping in some
in those open toed shoes like I used to wear.
If I had my druthers I'd outlaw dogs with their sewer
breath as their tongues hang out,
their tails wagging waiting for you to love them
jumping all over you when you come home at night
like you was the only person in the world
just `casue you feed them.
If I had my druthers they wouldn't be begging
for a nibble of your canned stew as you sit
trying to eat in peace in front of the tv set
or wake you from a good sleep barking
at some creep rattling your door knob
then falling asleep up against your legs
so they get all warm and sweaty.
If I had my druthers wouldn't be no kids either
which would end the human race
which would be a joke on the Devil
leaving him with no play things
and God, doubt He'd notice the absence
especially little kids,
following you around all the time, hanging onto you dress,
making you little plaques with their hand print on it in
school which always breaks when you try to hang it up in some
corner of the apartment you want to cheer up,
they crawl in bed with you just like a dog does
only they smell much better
kind of sweet and lazy
sucking her thumb even if she was seven.
No God don't care about kids otherwise he wouldn't
let them age with disease and die on you.
There aught to be a law that says your kid isn't allowed to
die before her mother even if she never knew that bastard,
her father.
If I had my druthers wouldn't be no dogs either `cause all you
do is get to love them like they was your kid
and then they only live long enough to
break your heart.
But I ain't got my druthers so
I'll spend my love throwing bread crumbs to the pigeons
in the park `cause I didn't bring them into the world
and they didn't follow me home one day,
but they are there waiting for me and that's
the only thing I can depend on
so slip me that drink bartender,
and don't forget the bread."