Portrait Of An Old Bar
By Anonymous
In a Forgotten Neighborhood
Oh, down at the bar the boys
are playing, singing around the
bar, on stools, chairs by tables
they sit here and there
did you hear what I whispered?
I merely whispered
here and there the boys sit, like
pinned dogs in a cage locked
as dead as dead is possible
to exist and exist there still.
I said, a poet once lived there
I saw him singing and dying,
around the bar, on stools.
Across the room, a pool table
made from corpse’s, once there
their ghosts exist there still
as dead as dead is possible.
Did you hear what I said?
I merely meant
how glad I am not to be there
I’d be singing my songs with them
and bragging and singing and lies.
And I know now, and knew then,
it was my soul, lost in the booze,
my cage door opened, unlocked,
my drunken face, stopped singing
