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Cricket, We Hardly Knew Ye

I sit at the bar, this one last time,
Watch barkeeps pull their last draws;
Remembering bands, bad and sublime,
And the coma-inducing brawls.

Oh, drunkards of Cricket, whither we?
What saloon shall be the sequent
To where we fight sobriety?
What dive shall we now frequent?

To Cricket our memories will roam,
Though our livers she did ravage.
Much more than a dive, she was a home
To boozehound, sot, and savage.

Cricket, oh Cricket, you odorous beast,
Angel, demon, lover, bastard ye!
Now that your liquor flow has ceased
The Hill’s a lonelier place to be.
—Harpo Agnew

The Zen Lunatics Conquer The World

I had a dream
that an army of Zen lunatics
went door to door
injecting people
with the elixir of life,
and hatred and intolerance
were thrown into a giant toilet
and flushed away forever.

Then I awoke
to an angry man
waving a towel:
“What did I tell you about
falling asleep at the bar?
Go home, already!”
—Ralph Aquila

 

Ode to My Malty Mistress

Her pungent, peat-smoked pulchritude
Her thick, phenolic kiss
Her 86-proof mind massages
Consummate our tryst

Her salty, sea-soaked succulence
Her raiment: black, white, green
Provides a gnostic respite from my
Clan MacGregorious routine

She sings like Sheena Easton
Topless under Scottish rains
She swims like Esther Williams
Through my alcoholic veins

She rocks my Amadeus with
Gorgeous Gaelic glee
I spell my mistress L-A-P-H-R-O-A-I-G
—Matt Gordon

 

In Vino Veritas

 I believe in the burn of scotch
Swimming down my throat.
I believe in the conversations of a beer
Like in losing balance.
I believe in drinking buddies that won’t leave
Like in oblivious threesomes.
I believe in saying the alphabet backwards
Without making any mistakes.

I believe in twin bartenders
And in the comforting music of ice cubes
Like in the absurd volume of my voice.

I believe in ghosts made of smoke
Like in their eloquent laughter.

I believe in my clothes that fall stained with my dignity
Like in smothering between blankets and shots of bourbon.

I believe in forgetting names and faces
And in the fake kindness of strangers.

I believe in nights that never come back
And mornings that stay forever.
—Fabiola Velasco

 

Destiny Resides in the Minutiae

Apparently meaningless
is the meandering of the ant
across the patio of the bar
where I drink my beer
and smoke my cigars.

Apparently meaningless
are the convulsions of the lizard
that clings to the grill
on the patio of the bar
where I drink my beer
and smoke my cigars.

Apparently meaningless
is the chatter of the squirrel
that is perched on a post
of the fence which surrounds
the patio of the bar
where I drink my beer
and smoke my cigars.

Apparently meaningless
is the smile on the face
of the desperate woman
who sits under the canopy
at the other end
of the patio of the bar
where I drink my beer
and smoke my cigars.

Apparently.
—Ralph Aquila

 

In the Bar
All our faces in the mirror behind the bottles,
it’s hard to tell whether it’s just age warping
the mirror or the beer and rail whiskey that
blurs our reflected images. We’ve been here
most of the night, mid-week, no real excuse
other than that we’ve got no place better
to be than here, no better company than
the man to either side at whom we direct
an occasional grunt or grumble and who
answers in the same abbreviated style.
Somebody burps, and someone else chuckles,
low, almost like shuffling feet across the floor,
and that’s about as much humor as we get
all night. Most of the time we keep our eyes
from staring back red-rimmed at ourselves,
minding our business and tending our beers.
—Allen Hoey

 

Sunday Lost Wallet Drinking Blues
Drinking room temperature gin
contemplating my lost wallet
and cold beers in hot bars,
cold beers, my lost wallet
and the change left in my pocket,
enough for a pack
as I smoke my last cigarette,
another sip of gin
drag my cigarette
and try to forget the cold beers
I now cannot afford.
—Ian U. Girdley

 

An Acrostic Farewell
Crazy nights of gin and pool
Replete with mad indulgers
Imbibing until horizontal
Crying old rummies in the corner
Knife wielding cowards putting the boot in
Epitome of dive bars
Torrid, half forgotten romances
Oblivious to the outside world
Nights of skull splittingly loud music
Therapeutic binging
Hurling cheap beer and scotch
Existential booze-soaked angst
Half blind, drooling mutants
Irksome amateurs spilling drinks
Lovely hard-edged barmaids
Last fucking night
—Seamus Dundee

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