Bugs
What
still bugs me most, since you asked,
is the guys coming in here night after night
lining the bar to stare at my mirror, letting
their troubles
spill out over the top, watching them lie there,
paralyzed
like the bloated worms on the sidewalk after
rain,
writhing slow like a whore in some cheap strip
show,
lurid and dumb;
having to stand here night after night
staring down their private losses and nasty
little secrets
in their own reflections only to blink, and
lose
all of them thinking how cool they are
suffering so silent, and me there
watching them bleed.
and they slop beer on their little horrors,
talk about the game,
smoke cigarettes that plow up their throats
like a late January field,
till one of them, so goddam sick of his smell
of hollow, can’t take it anymore,
gets ready to scream a cataclysm to bring the
whole city down like the wrath of god,
such a cry it’d make the heroin junkies over
on the Boulevard
wake up and start to cry milk white tears of
unwholesome blood,
so true a sound the worthless fuck might actually
start to heal.
then he stands
drops his change, and walks through the door
so another son of a bitch can take his place
the worms following close on his heels.
bugs