12 Bar Blues

[todski28]

the tavvy, final closing time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGytDsqkQY8

Last drinks shouts the tender
drink em up lads
it's time to be out
for I need to get home
I've been taken home already
and I need to get back to her
not stay here

so sip the last of your beer
slam down the last shots
head toward the outside
the chill of the night
fought off by the incoherence of
alcohols numb

the wisps of the last smoke machine swirls
cling like sad fog
to the crusted carpets
where booze and blood
bile and tears have stained my memories
with exquisite times
the lingering scent of stale smoke
cigarette and vanilla perfume cling to the cloth
in my clothes along with the
ghost of your lips on my ear
and the slight sting of a pinch on the ass

the allure of strobe lights and barely clothed women
dancing for the sheer joy
as if being pagan is the new black
and the night should be worshipped
but dawn is just round the corner and
it's closing time

so drink em up ladies
find some one for a lift
as I head toward the retirement
in this semi charmed life, where I got hurt
but never stopped
and I can retire not on top,
but not on the bottom

and I know these ramblings are not
what you revellers want to hear
as you holler the shout outs to mates
and make plans for the next place
or the next week

but me
I'm done, I'm out
and I smirk to try to stop the tears
because moving on hurts more
than the shards of glass
I had to pick from my head
or the broken ribs I breathed through

so take me on the other side
where I no longer have
to usher out the throngs in thongs
and put up with the same old jokes
drunk down with coke
as we stood round shooting the shit
and our mouths
bonded in the potential of pain
shaking hands with those I had led and followed

you can't steal my sunshine
because I'm not in that deep anymore
but you may steal my smile a while
or turn its corner in a little bit of bitter
as I forget how to speak fluent drunkenese
the grove is still in my heart
but not in my hips or fists anymore

I need you guys to finish up and head out please
I'm done asking nice
I want to sign my name
off in the register

no more late night booty calls or shiny disco balls
I'm out
of here

as you guys pour out like
the last dregs tipped down the drain
by the tenders as they start their after party
which I ain't joining.

I'm out
the cold grips my last steps to the car
the door thuds shut
my ears ring a little with tinnitus
I can't look back
because it was

sexy
dangerous
violent and
beautiful
I sip my corona at home
and move on

 

[KatieJones]

It's called the red house which confuses
me since only the door is red.
Did proprietors feel red door was too transient
since it not only welcomes but bids goodbye.
These are my thoughts as the red door slams.

I am alone at a recently fabricated to look old
wooden table examining its carefully beaten
surface with all its calculated scratches
sitting atop my too high stool
while my fingers focus on catching the tears
sliding down the side of my frozen mug. Wondering
whether I am the table, the mug or the stool
and strangely I settle on the door
which is perpetually neither here nor there.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Hinano Cafe

Wading through the shavings
that infiltrate my pedalboard
the standby switch goes off
and I can feel the buzz
the gathering electrons
decibels waiting to be born

The bartenders scurry to and fro
they're hustling tips, and there's no rush
to quell that jukebox -- then they shut it down,
we take a breath and play.

There's a roar of sound
from this, our little corner of this dive,
Wedged between pool tables and the popcorn machine
We play some funk, the people come alive
They dance before our faces
(Jose Luis comes trudging in between
bearing a case of beer)
The blond girl and her giant boyfriend shriek with joy
when I turn up for solos
but the amazon with her pool cue is unmoved.

 

[KatieJones]

Modern Day Hermit Meets Irish Pub

I only come once a year so I never remember
if it swings in or out and announce my arrival
with an awkward bang on the worn doors
of The Toucan. They have moved well past rustic
and landed somewhere beyond tattered
but just before broken. That stumble is a soundtrack
for my reluctance to transition away from the safety
of the uncommitted sidewalk into a room lit only by a buzzing
neon sign that flashes off and on like a very tired bee
long since laid off from the hive. I have to wait
under the stare of the bartender and his three parishioners
who are one drink away from hitting their knees
while my pupils expand in the deliberate darkness.
I suspect it is designed to hide
both the faces of the regulars and the path they have worn
into the carpet. Past three tables of one
each one iced with empty glasses and eyeless glances
I walk to the back in search of a friend
whom I study with the same curiosity
as Jane Goodall watching her chimpanzees.
You are not a primate
but your need to be in a pack and your ease
with strangers makes you seem like a foreign species
to someone who loves to be alone and assumes
most people are serial killers. Around the corner
you sit comfortably chatting with the waitress
whom you magically call Sue
despite her lack of a name tag and who-the-fuck
-are-you-looking-at aura as she shows you pictures
of her kids. Neither of you has any idea
my one minute journey to the table
felt like pilgrimage made by someone who lost
their faith in the destination decades ago
and that I already long for the comfort
of my own company and the quiet of my cave.

 

[darkmaas]

::

The funny thing about a bar,
is not the sodden clown
two stools down
and counting.

It's not about the drink
or the lateness of the hour

There's a web
of loves and strangers
that stretches back in time
hale fellows
sultry nubiles
and maybe the odd fish.

This bar is nigh thirteen
spins about the sun
- charmed my dearest -
someone bake a cake.

We were younger then.

::

 

[KatieJones]

Dear Jack Ass-tor

The panorama from Jack’s patio spans
cathedral spires and domes to the lake
dotted with sails that look like paper
adornments for one of the great drinks.
I hear laughter on this cement perch
long held by pigeons
and only recently inhabited with flocks
of people and the odd plastic owl
to ensure the cooing is restricted
to partners drunk enough to see
perfection in the flawed faces
and shaded eyes across their tables.

Today Wolfe’s turbines are turning
but I won’t be up there to see
them twirl in time with all the summer
skirts and sun-kissed hair
because despite its unparalleled views
all I can hear is Mr. Astor’s ugly claim,
“Our patios are like national parks.
Huge and filled with cougars,”
and that grounds me. Literally.

He may think his line is funny
and maybe in the naiveté of youth
I might have shrugged it off
but now it makes me want
to chop down his money tree
and ask him how he can fuel
a prejudice that will slap
his own daughters in the face
because those casual comments
allow morons to mock people
for the blood of life, seal glass
ceilings, make sex-slaves
and characterise theft of dignity
and the right to choose to say
yes or no as twenty minutes of action.

So no. I won’t drink to that
and I’m bossy enough to say-
neither should you.

 

[Piscator]

Make mine C&W

Liberty’s free

Liberty’s free with her smiles
as she sashays down the aisles
Lord knows she must walk miles
specially on the slow days

She’s so easy on the eyes
midst these posers and their lies
always takes me by surprise
to find she's still here

Just a butterfly in the wind
never quite sure where she's been
can't go back and start again
though she'd sometimes like to

Like that Monarch soaring high
someday she’ll touch the sky
l just shake my head and sigh
and have another beer

Back home, she's had a row
With her new for always beau
too fast or else too slow
both leave her lonely

Till another comes around
to her dazzling smile bound
but his feet stay on the ground
and she flies solo

Just a butterfly in the wind
never quite sure where she's been
can't go back and start again
though she'd sometimes like to

Like that Monarch soaring high
someday she’ll touch the sky
l just shake my head and sigh
and have another beer

She asks if I like her dress
and I always answer yes
but like most here I guess
I'd rather see her naked

Even when she dances close
there's distance like a ghost
we raise glasses high and toast
another time and year

Just a butterfly in the wind
never quite sure where she's been
can't go back and start again
though she'd sometimes like to

Like that Monarch soaring high
someday she’ll touch the sky
l just shake my head and sigh
and have another beer

 

[todski28]

Whiskey Fixes Everythin

Bar doors crack open
the way stale beer nuts crunch
beneath your teeth
as if dreams had fled
their unwholesome drinking buddies
and melted to the seals trying to escape

a fluro light flickers
the static buzz
the way your brain wires after
the first couple
where senses dial themselves to 11
and whiskey feels like your soul
glowing warm in the centre of your chest
just to the right of your heart

the grime and grit
go down like a cheap prostitute
one that swallows for the right dollar
tells you
she loves you with
the dead eyes of a shark
her hand on your wallet

yeah, this is where you drink
to bury the thousand miles
of sadness that scatter your past
as you killed of every ounce of potential
on the way to nihilism

marched it up hill toward
a machine gun nest
in just its underware
expecting something to survive

whiskey is the only one who does
he walks up that hill
in his slow trudging way
you pray he takes one to the head
but
he always fucking makes it
so you raise a round to him

and it’s 11:15 am
A quarter of a way
between half way to no when
I sidle up and order the crappiest beer
trying to warm
my bones
fill my belly with the melancholy
only barflys understand

barmaid pulls the tap
and amber gold
wets the glass in a cascade of foam
ambrosia
Man I can convince myself
of some poetic shit when the shakes
start up

I notice her staring at the
fake wood veneer
the type you can wipe forever
but the tacky surface never lifts
as if it’s feeding on the subtle
ache of memories gone freight train

there is sadness in her
that catches my breath
in all the beauty of my own madness
she echoes a resonance
of
seen too much
felt too much
beaten despair with the fractured sense
of a her own self loathing
trying to drown everything
in the distorted lens
that concaves the bottom of a glass
she is not classically beautiful
but she is my kind of beautiful

the broken haunted kind
where she wares the hurt of forever
as a shroud to protect the last remnants
of her gorgeous dreams
the ones she whispered to her lover
before he devoured her senses and left
her shell shocked
enough to drink the dregs of life
from the bitterness of an ashtray
the smoke around her
she look like a deity
promising salvation

I could love her
till she destroyed me
but I’m damned enough
so I order
my whiskey
hug it from the inside
dream of picket fences
on fire
turn my back to the tears
to her humanity
and try to swallow my own

 

[Piscator]

Gimme some dat twelve bar blues
bucket of beer, some other booze
sluice you from my mind.

Wake up late with an achin head
bleary eyes and feelin half dead
none of you to find.

 

[todski28]

She shimmers in the bottom of my glass
an effigy splashed in kerosene
ready and willing to burn it all to the ground
waiting for a spark to ignite her gorgeous
pale skin under the dull flicker of fluorescence
her curves superimpose on my sanity
a black and white print that screams
sex and sophistication

knuckles ache as whiskey
snap kicks me in the fractured ribs
insides are smouldering
the warm-numb floats up
dulls the sharp spike in my side
and I find myself lost
in the intent of her stare

her eyes glitter a pale blue
the kind that hypnotize a man into selling his soul
a poker game for the sucker
because he's only holding a pair
and she's got a full-house from a stacked deck

I can't quite remember what kind of dangerous
she wanted but she glided over as if her feet were
ethereal and she was tightrope walking on gossamer strings
of spider web

she dragged the chair on the timber floor
the grinding sound loud
even amidst the din
of an underwhelming dive
then sat staring at my black eye
as if it were a Rembrandt
as if the thought of all that violence
right at her fingertips could
assuage the throb dancing between her legs
and give rise to the damp patch growing at the centre
of her desire

I smell desperation on her
as if she has doused herself in gasoline
the tremor of her hand
as she lights a cigarette gives her away
in this place of blood and dark sordid tales
I assume she's just another dame
that didn't know what was good for her

she licks her lips
a red that reminds you of ripe fruit
willing and ready to be plucked
urging you to sink your teeth in
to feel every sweet nectar flood your tongue
her voice glides silk smooth with a slight huskiness
that makes the hairs on my arms stand on end
she orders sex on the beach
unsure if she meant from me or
a drink from the bar keep

I nod in appreciation
and think sordid thoughts
of hair between my fingers
of hot wet things beguiling me
wonder if her wrists are maps
to the cosmos or simply
a place to hang onto
so I can bury the aches of these
dark nights into a place that feels more
than desolation and cries to god

she places a room number on the bar in front of me
the clack of heels as she takes her drink
and leaves me to pay for it...

 

[todski28]

there's my dignity
curled around the flail of my own disregard
for the addicts credo

that I want what I want
and I'm willing to set us all on fire to get it
a pretty arsonist
with a penchant for 100%proof and
playing with matches

shuffle steps stagger and slide
out into the morose evening

a drizzle of hunger
spewed onto the pavement
a multicoloured
multi faceted gem
glistening rainbows in the grease
of my lack of self control

and I turn the lock
I turn the lock
I turn the lock
till the tumbler clicks enough times to
satisfy the fact that I'm
living under a bridge
and drank the rent money again

hope that when the sky clears I can touch the moon
I used to pretend I was anywhere than here
but I know
a secret
they never see the left coming
my foot on the roaring pedal
is no way to flee myself
despite leaving pieces of me strewn in the alleyway
a garish bunting of my failures
always used to end at the bottom of a bottle

now they're here
in words that fall from my fingers
in metaphors
streaming water that cascades
down my cheeks
the ache in my blood
my bones
and I serve them up with no garnish
no adornments
raw and uncooked

so maybe just maybe
we can sink this shot together and burn
into the night
howling at the pretty moon
finding a dignity
in cursive letters

 

[UnderYourSpell]

there's my dignity
curled around the flail of my own disregard
for the addicts credo

that I want what I want
and I'm willing to set us all on fire to get it
a pretty arsonist
with a penchant for 100%proof and
playing with matches

shuffle steps stagger and slide
out into the morose evening

a drizzle of hunger
spewed onto the pavement
a multicoloured
multi faceted gem
glistening rainbows in the grease
of my lack of self control

and I turn the lock
I turn the lock
I turn the lock
till the tumbler clicks enough times to
satisfy the fact that I'm
living under a bridge
and drank the rent money again

hope that when the sky clears I can touch the moon
I used to pretend I was anywhere than here
but I know
a secret
they never see the left coming
my foot on the roaring pedal
is no way to flee myself
despite leaving pieces of me strewn in the alleyway
a garish bunting of my failures
always used to end at the bottom of a bottle

now they're here
in words that fall from my fingers
in metaphors
streaming water that cascades
down my cheeks
the ache in my blood
my bones
and I serve them up with no garnish
no adornments
raw and uncooked

so maybe just maybe
we can sink this shot together and burn
into the night
howling at the pretty moon
finding a dignity
in cursive letters

I was beginning to wonder where you were!!

 

[todski28]

I was beginning to wonder where you were!!

5 kids and running a business is making my time ridiculously scarce it’s soccer season for my boys and my daughter and I are boxing together twice a week they want me to fight by the end of the year and my daughter is a fucking rockstar with gloves on, she swings with the best boys in the gym, I keep trying to tell her it will al change when they hit about 15-17 but for now she’s damn good leaves little time for writing and critiquing and even being here

The one worrying me the most is still Greenmountaineer

 

[UnderYourSpell]

5 kids and running a business is making my time ridiculously scarce it’s soccer season for my boys and my daughter and I are boxing together twice a week they want me to fight by the end of the year and my daughter is a fucking rockstar with gloves on, she swings with the best boys in the gym, I keep trying to tell her it will al change when they hit about 15-17 but for now she’s damn good leaves little time for writing and critiquing and even being here

The one worrying me the most is still Greenmountaineer

Yes I know, very worrying GuiltyPleasure seems to be gone as well but she wasn't so much a regular as she used to be.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Yes I know, very worrying GuiltyPleasure seems to be gone as well but she wasn't so much a regular as she used to be.

I just dropped in for the 1st time in months. How are you doing?

 

[AlwaysHungry]

I just dropped in for the 1st time in months. How are you doing?

Me too. Same question.

 

[Angeline]

<bump>


because this thread makes me happy

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

I just went back and took the boozy pub-crawl. What a ride.

 

[Angeline]

I just went back and took the boozy pub-crawl. What a ride.

Yep. Lots of great reading here.

 

[Piscator]

I came to PFD well after this thread but hail from the same epoch and will throw out this homage to my Calgary local.


The Highlander

That year, they lowered the age to 18.
I was a big lad, and never asked for ID
although lad was a word we would only
use in a bar whose logo was a man
with bagpipes in a kilt.

Some schoolmates had a band
we followed and when they played
there it was like a high school reunion
without the nerds (present company excepted).
A mix of late 60’s/70’s country rock covers
Sweetheart of the Rodeo era Byrds,
New Riders of the Purple Sage
but sometimes Paul would throw
in a banjo raga just for fun.

They drew some hot chicks,
I never did get lucky there,
but did get to third base once
taking a young coed home after
our sociology prof held the last
class of the term there.

But mostly it was just beer and pot
with friends, old and new friends
slurred lyrics and ridiculous arguments,
Steve would always play devil’s
advocate just to piss me off.

On Wednesdays we played pick-up
hockey at a local arena and the first
to the bar wold order the table covered
with beer glasses to beat last call.

Those days draft was served in
10 oz glasses filled to the line.
We stocked our student hovels
with those glasses and our
overcoat pockets would clink as we
shambled home after a top up visit.

 

[Tzara]

The Highlander

That year, they lowered the age to 18.

Good poem, Piscator. At least, it resonated with me, not in all the details (pick-up hockey? um, no) but in the general spirit.

And, oh yeah. The Sweetheart of the Rodeo Byrds.

I know, I know, that's McGuinn singing. But he's doing his best to sound like Gram.

RIP, Gram Parsons.

 

[AmericanTrash]

I came to PFD well after this thread but hail from the same epoch but will throw out this homage to my Calgary local.


The Highlander

without the nerds (present company excepted).

Love that

 

[todski28]

The Victory Hotel

Every shattered tossed aside lover
fucking hates poetry
and the bottom of this glass seems to want to determine my future

everything in this pub is slick
lacquered timber, as Doug the tender wanders around polishing it all
until it reflects the ocean in a cadre of light particles
that cause the patrons to squint
as if they're all perpetually puzzled
by the sheen
the gloss
and now I've hit the sixth beer down
the pen on the bar makes me raise my lip in a sneer
at all the falsehoods presented by this
accommodating tool of fucking poetry
and if I was less civilised I'd have hawked and spat on the floor

a clack from the pool table rattles the room
big's is declared and the game is on
but it's just window dressing now

because in those lines of rhyme and prose
I felt like I mattered
striding through the halls as you crumpled into my arms
as if your touch made me whole
and as our lips pressed together
it was a draw on a cigarette after being strung out for days
the way the flavour kick started the neurons and the jittering stopped
and the head spins were delicious

Dave waves a hello to Jimmy and they fist bump
then collapse into a hug hands thumping each others backs
the raucous laughter disguises my whimper of pain

because I'm that deer with C.W.D
my collarbones clank as I raise my hand
to try and drown the common sense
that I should simply run away before
my body stops responding
before I fail to muster the energy for anything…

your eyes fold me into another bout of
self recrimination as each breath I become less than
the stool I'm perched on
and you glow like the bar in polish and splendour

I bid you sit in my lap
and hand me a pen
so I can squint at the page
stain it with beer
and wait to be inspired