Pour

I wish I wasn’t serious about wanting this
and that the place I find myself was something
more for me, but I can’t see the light from where I am.
A knife is like another working hand that builds
by taking on what’s surging in our sights,
and every night there is a slice of something simple.
Her dress moves with the wind like it is animated
by the look across her face, and she is worried
about my walking because I staggered on the steps
to where we are. Another lonely bar where people
barricade the doors from all the memories of nights
spent all alone. I want to go but she insists we take our time
as all the clocks start turning back to where it all began
and the dart boards look like crooked crying eyes.
I want to see through the disguise and finally realize
all the broken bottle shards across the patio
look like nothing you could see without an accident
or a show of something wrong with us, behind our every pour.
I think I’ll take some of that says the group of matching
uniforms at the corner of the room hoarding a table
cut with names of the irregulars and others passing through.
They were referring to a baseball bat signed by a member of the
big leagues that has never once returned to where he came from.
How could you just have some of that exactly, asks a waitress
who is slacking at her duties to smoke a cigarette that she rolled
with just her nails. Like this, replies the short bald one of the group
as he takes the token off the wall and whales against the jukebox
that had done nothing but play classics through the night.
The beating breaks the bat in two. I’ll leave the fat half
here for you, he says before he vanished out of sight.