My Bar

***Not strictly poetry.. part of a series I did with personification. But a good piece nonetheless.

Turn the corner and you'll find my bar, where I sit, night after night. It's the type of place you go to when you're down and out and nothing is right, not love, money, or life. The same crowd shows up night and night again, dour faces marked with scars of anonymity, eyes darting back and forth hoping Mr. Boss doesn't spot you drinking your life away in a place like that. The working girls done bother here, because even as the men get souses they are loyal to their wives, children, dogs, and whatever else remains of their boxed-in domestic lives. Greedy psychologists could make a fortune off clients in this place, if the people here had any money left to burn. The walls seep life gone by, recriminations and self-pity making a strange, dark hue. If you look too closely at the mirrors, you can see the past reflections of manicured, computer-efficient hands nervously fingering a bottle of pills, or sometimes an unseen knife... invisible blood coats the floors, and even I have scars I am unable to hide. This is my bar.

Here I sit, night after night, but not by choice. The first owners put me here, stapled me in, made me a fixture in this place of dead spirits and sour souls. No one noticed, though, because they lost the business early on. They were good people; it was just they didn't have enough money. I saw their son here one night, looking at the walls, clients, and floor, wondering what happened. On his fourth drink he stopped wondering and started crying. The people that bought this place have money from all the wrong places- but hey, money's money, right? No one cared who sold what, or whom, to get it, so long as the booze kept flowing.

Like I said, people never noticed me. I was just there, something for beer and fears to be spilled on, rough boots scraping off my red, blistered skin. Neon lights gave me third degree burns of the heart. People have sat on me, heedless of my groans of discomfort, because all they knew was their own discomfort. I'm not new anymore. Now, I'm the type of booth you see in seedy bars, tufts of stuffing being pulled out, hairline cracks fading into the design. I observe who comes in, and at closing, I try to sleep. But how can I? Their problems become mine; bottled rage in vary flavors and potency seep into my pores.

I heard this place is being condemned. Now where will they go, the homosexuals hiding behind a facade of married bliss, the businessmen on the brink of bankruptcy, their wives with baby in one hand and divorce papers in the other? Where will these vagrants drift to, now that their refuge is about to be torn down? I rather look forward to the garbage pile I'll be thrown into. Rejected toys and alley cats could not be more tortured than the people I have met in this bar.

**Circa 2004**