off a rocky gravel road, a sharp right, just before the curve. Come inside. dollar drafts, play pool, darts, dance drunk or quietly Nude Photo Hunt. Blinking & Buzzing signs, drunks. I’d be the jukebox songs rarely changed. Peanuts in candy dishes, stories of unbelievable fishing, a bathroom legendary in filth. The scuffed bar, cigarette burns, smoke that hasn’t left since it was banned a decade ago. Somewhere to spend Thanksgiving eating a strange spread the bartender made with some of the locals all contributing odd items. Dark and beery, wear and tear earned by spilled beer, a knick of pool cue, a heartbreak here and there. Interior decor is important, but true dives are made by the clientele- hard lives, shameful nights... I am a church to lives with vices. My doors always open to those who need a little danger in their night, their lives.
Unsupervised I started to feel something. The Marlboro smell. The low wattage, the piano in the corner. Your skin tight jeans, a late quiet afternoon crush, bar dice, the scent of air freshener too ambitious in it’s quest to drown out the scent of fluorescent lust. The pop quiz glances, the lukewarm scotch advances, second guessing, the looks we exchange, two teenagers unsure of the answers we’re throwing out for a test we were too distracted to ever study seriously for. Heart racing, glancing down at the burnt matchsticks, a dish of ashes. I look up and keep trying to talk about us. I fall off piers in my head, the cold water wakes me up. I want this so much. In my heart, I can do everything right. In my head, I go back to the fact, you are an unfamiliar garden. I want to grab a small garden spade, dig in. Truth: I’ve dug up a lot of earth hoping for a garden only to be met by an infertile soil in life. Still, the butterflies know their desired effect. Those eyes seem more true than fictive. Soft, a new story wanting to be touched, read, imagined. A slow jam throbs, she leans on the bar, rubs her hand on my thigh. My teeth clench down hard on a cold piece of ice, and our smiles match like two latch key kids houses empty and afternoons free.
Oak Roads: Poetry and Musings 