Drinking

Mark Coleman

Working my way past the funeral. Drunk in the local coffee house, building castles out of creamers that could never be. Smoking joints in the parking lot, bitching about women who sighed before giving us the time of day. Rolled their eyes at a suicide that was yet to be actuated. Didn’t know that he was Jewish, till they all gathered, and threw their clods.

A closed door junk addiction. Sealed the deal in locked bathrooms with blacks. Tarred up veins, and scheming eyes in Hal revulsion. Mailbox baseball fatalities, and porn collages forced into towel racks. Rotten smiles. Crack yellow, and scentless. Sneaking into the graveyard with tears in our eyes, and spades in our hearts. Trying to shower in the fucking sprinklers. Desperate, hot whiskey breath. Bed-less woman on my arm, and a crook in my back.

Broken hearted, but not quite broke. Know of a bar where the keeps listen to all your hard luck stories. And man, their ears are big. Slouched and half-gone, with nothing in my pocket, but a moral compass, matches, and a pack of chewed-up dime store cigs.

Something, trying real hard to pass as human, approaches. And you feel bad, so the drink is on you. The kick quota for the dog hasn’t been met. But Hell, you went out to forget about those things. And the Statue of Liberty ain’t but an absinthe jump away from a Paris café. Where they don’t care who or what you’re drinking to.