Blues from Bar
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
Due north from the manicured office complexes on Kansas City Road is a finger nail-bitten drinking establishment called Bar. Not The Bar or Bar North. Just Bar. And I love it for that. Inside, the walls are covered with wood paneling. The tile, the pool table and the dart board are what you might find in your neighbor’s basement. In the summer, you can sit out on a wooden deck that looks like it was crafted on a long working Saturday by a weekend handyman, probably the owner – or the owner and his best friend. Someone who owes him a favor. You can sit at the wrought iron tables and look over the edge at a blue brick auto repair shop or the trains that drag past just gaining there steam, pulling long cars tagged by grafittists. And the engineers go by watching for pretty women and maybe to tug on the whistle if you acknowlege them. I’ve seen it happen. This seems a strange place to write poetry, but it’s as good as any. Better probably.
BLUES FROM BAR
I hadn’t planned on it.
An open night
with no plans
that happened to be payday,
so I took what money was left
from the week before,
just a few singles,
and sank them into wheat.
I invested in grain and hops.
I bought it cold
and took the bottle from a waitresses’ hand,
the lemon already deep-throated
through the glass,
floating among the pulp.
I wasn’t drinking for a drunk.
I had my feet on the bar stool
on the shoddy deck
- a no-name
at a no-name bar
watching trains go by.
They were blasted with dirt and vandalism
- hieroglyphics with the same arched letters
as beer labels.
I held the long neck up to the engine
hoping to hear the whistle,
but no sounds came
except the metal wheels squealing.
On the same air the whisltes came
cigarette smoke floated in.
A couple guys stood on the edge
of the deck,
behind me, by the front door.
I’d taken them for painters,
but they could have been carpenters.
They could have built this sorry deck.
I felt for them.
I hadn’t planned on any of this.
I sat in the shade of the building’s side.
I looked up the streets that
led off from the main road,
past the bar and into the neighborhoods
and wondered how many weekend handymen
were already at work on Friday afternoon.
