Happy Hour Revisited

Like the promise of rain in drought
you perch on a barstool and smirk
in rainbows of special effects.

Baseball slogs away on TV.
The bartender keeps refilling you
with splashes of molten gold.

I want to be more decorous,
more ornamental in my habits,
less like a scrap of metal

rusting in the weeds. You’d laugh
if I told you that the starlight
and urban lamplight have entwined

in cuddles that infect us all.
You’d dismiss my terror of meat
and even the word “meat” when

uttered by the diner waitress
whose statuesque hairdo you admire.
I can’t drink serious liquor

anymore, can only sip tonic
and nibble snacks while men shaped
like wine vats pine for the kisses

you depleted forty years ago.
So we will terminate in sparks
and spangles, fizzing and spitting

in the gusty midnight streets.
You look forward to ascending,
while I expect to pool in slick

of ichor, leaving one messy clue.
The bartender’s crocodile outlook
almost busses your own. I tilt

from my perch and clop to the men’s room
where in a moment of disbursement
I can pretend I’m myself alone.

 

Written by William Doreski.

 

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