The Pub

The Pub

Just a nip won’t hurt..
Pour me a scotch
Ripped my knee open on the way to the bar
on sagging cyclone fence.

Eden- the moon and the branches
and the apple orchard where,
a peaceful and contented innocence,
effortlessly reaped the fruits of the Earth.

Feel what a soft rain can do
to the shout of shadows inside me.
I bleed Neruda poems, whole epochs
of love, sorrow, joy, peace, and insecurity.

Whiskey is the Treasury Secretary doling out
confidence inside the pub. It, like cash,
is made of shadow and soul and lives
darkly as the dollar. Capitol to the Lonely.

So I call out to Flannigan and he
calls out to Dutch, who calls out to
Ruthie behind the bar, to sew my leg together
who looks at me with those eyes,

green as the emerald hills of Mull in Scotland,
eyes that remind, “I’ve told you ole dog
not to venture certain boundaries.” I stare deep as
with the look of dog who’s just heard food poured in it’s bowl, as she
stitches my maimed leg.

The place filled with the ‘dregs of society,’
had the cleanliness of a room no on ever sat in,
the loneliness of a room kept up
to show something, a beautiful unhappiness.

The unspoiled jungle of interruption, vulgarity,
ripe with chanting mouths, that actually,
if you listened, opened like
elaborate petals filled with poetry.