Dives
By: Heath ዟ
Tags: Poetry, Bars, Whiskey, Prose Poem, Music

Image Credit: Mine

A smoky room and old rock and roll,

the friendly scent of whiskey hangs in the air.

The room breathes a lazy tune in time with a loose bassoon and the scratch of old vinyl, deep and warm. The old upright bass jumps thumping through the 12 bar blues as a beautiful Latina dances alone under low greasy lights, pulse quickened the brass.

The record switches to a smooth old tune. She sits to kiss her cigarette leaving red lipstick rings, a barely seen sheen of glimmering sweat on her chest

as she rests.

The music plays on like it’s 1959.

Everyone who looks my way sees just fifteen feet between me and a whiskey neat. Moving through the faceless crowd I am a slight moment of acknowledgment as they move aside, forgotten, to fade back into my chair.

The Latina dances on unaware,

a red bow in her hair.

I swim among the beautiful youth — stolen, broken, ruined, lied to, patronized, a generation of entitled idiots inheriting a shiny empty box,

too content with sleazy ease and the guiding bleat — vacant iPhone junkies

looking for a facebook fix.

Instant isn’t appreciated.

It’s demanded.

The DJ spins forgotten jewels like tiny sparkles in a sea of gray, dead voices

more full of life than half the people tapping their feet, but a smoke and a lowball fakes a certain cloying camaraderie for a little while.

Back to 21st-century indifference

in just a few hours.

My glass is empty but for Jameson’s ghost and a sense of possibility, but sunk in the dim corner I am loathe to break my shallow meditation between the music, the pen, and the smoky sweet air.

I wonder if Ginsberg would have — could have — written “Howl” if there had been a big screen hanging over the bar, a flashing plasma distraction, even while muted:

Newsflash — a mother kills her children, then walks free. A teenager kills his parents, then throws a party while their still-warm bodies bleed deep into their bedroom carpet…

but I can look away and put my mind at ease.

My glass is full again, and for all my woes

I still have all ten toes.

On with the show. A drop rolls off my nose — it’s hot here in old San Antone.

I’m not alone in a sweating crowd full of beer-foam smiles and cigarette breath. I wipe my face and lean back.

It’s easy here, black, white, brown — it’s all rock and roll and a lime in your glass,

for a little class,

sip or shoot and you shake your ass

because it’s stupid and pointless, cathartic and cleansing,

for a few hours —

It's almost more than I can bear.

There’s a blue-eyed beauty next to me and she’s wondering what I’m writing. Suddenly I’m nervous,

but she’s got nice lips.

I hand her a poem I just wrote. She nods her head and moves on.

It’s just as well. If she doesn’t get that she’d only break my heart.

Still, I smell her in the air as she passes, sugar and vanilla through the smoke.

It would have been nice to get my poem back, but I can’t find it in me to be concerned while I sink into the sofa to the sound of Merle Haggard and watch an older couple dancing.

He’s got a grimy baseball cap but his smile is bright.

She’s twenty years past beautiful, but she’s a beauty tonight.

The light in their faces have me smiling

if only for the space of a song.