15/30: Bartending Poem 538 or Eight O'Clock O'Neill Shutdown

You won’t win an argument with Kelly.

Damn your intentions,

Hang your execution,

Garrot your rhetoric,

Flay your dialogue.

She’ll take your drink offer,

One for her husband too,

And you’ll wave your point

About like a broken finger

As she, right, wrong,

Or just stubborn,

Shake-heads you out of the room.

You came to the bar ready for some

Hot-tongued neighborhood mingle,

Some bar-slapping laughs

And throat clearing gesticulations

As the lights dim, and the shots

Get stiffer, and the families get

Self conscious, and the music's

all songs of fucking or fighting,

You do not have to leave

With anyone, but at least

Would like to prove yourself right.

But you

Won’t

Win

An argument

With Kelly.

David, maybe, but not Kelly,

She has defeated crosswords smarter

Than you and riven sudoku more complex.

Pick your dialogues wisely, and know that

Once she’s gone, the new set takes their place
And you should probably be going too.

10/30: Other Types of Light Fixtures or Interior Design As Blank Slate For Disappointment

Coat hooks
Foot rails
Bench backs

(important for convenience
and productivity and urgency
and calm)

the efficacy of sweaters
the efficacy of casual tennis
shoes for efficacy in the puddles
constantly thwarting slacks

(transitioning from greeting
to networking to flirting)

hanging lamps
barely
sway

(indie business casual
ties optional, rare,
no overriding aesthetic
excepting default cleanliness)

Exposed pipes
Exposed brick
Buffed, sanded,
Knots in the wood.

(everyone is writing up
proposals in their handshakes,
hoping the next check that comes
their way is
blank)

A Man In a Light Brown Coat is Coming Back For Me

*

Do you remember those 5 am mornings? No coke, no parties, no one else, even, just the wind down, the heartbeat slowing after a barshift, making sure you don't forget to polish straws or whatnot. This, someday, will be the opening sentence(s) to my largely autobiographical novel. It will be a terrible novel, full of dudes having sex with girls and then feeling bad about it and girls who fall in love with guys who are clearly horrible for them, as they aren't the protagonist, and perhaps a move to a "new city" and then someone will kill someone just to keep the action rising, and perhaps then an asian drug cartel will get involved, but don't worry, one of the girls -- or maybe best friends-- of the protagonist is also asian so this particular plot development is not, in fact, racist.

like i said, this is going to be one fucking stinker of a novel, and as such will probably be well loved on literary blogs, for it's plot development, like when I-- I mean "the protagonist"-- drinks ten dark beers one night because he can't get to sleep, dammit, then vomits at church.

it's a statement about religion, baby. I just gotta be me.

*always sort of wished that in the last chorus of this song, it didn't go back to the melodic part, but they just yelled and broke stuff.
LIKE HEARTS.
No. Sorry.

Someone Else's Countdown

It was a day we didn't have a host, so each of us took turns, rushing toward the front, our nearly-paper Denny's uniforms crinkling with starch, gleaming with the grease in the air. I had a ponytail then, so people sometimes thought I was as old as I am now. A man in light denim and a white fisherman's beard ordered something fish-based to go. That had never been our specialty. He sat in the oval by the windows looking out to a gas station and a parking lot. The cook forgot something and he nodded, saying it was for his wife, so we'd better redo it. He waited, payed, tipped well, mentioned that his wife really liked this Denny's and this dish was her favorite. I nodded and said Well I hope she gets better, I said, so you can both come in and sit down. Oh, he said, and leaned on his cain. She's not getting better.