Laura Solomon
Closing Time in the Pub at the End of the Mind
We are the dregs. We are what’s left over when all the sane, the normal people, The people who instinctively know How to keep away the wolves, Have gone home to their wives, their lives, Their mortgages and their other illusions of safety.
We have no nets. Beer is our high wire; our tightrope.
Drink up please.
See that one there, at the end of the bar There’s a shadow that’s woven itself through all his days, All his could-have-beens that never were, There’s a darkness that’s woven itself Into the very fabric of his being There’s a hole where his soul should be And nothing could ever fill it. He defines the word ‘insatiable’. Don’t we all?
Drink up please.
We are what’s left over. Scraps of people, walking clichés, Ordinary statistics in an ordinary world, The others feed on our misfortune. It makes them feel better about their own lives, To see us drowning in each pint of beer.
Drink up please.
Greatness dribbles away. We let it leave. It exits via the gaps in between our fingers And we know better than to attempt To clutch at it as it departs. You might as well clasp at empty air.
Maybe if we’d made it to Finishing School We wouldn’t feel so unfinished. Unmade, incomplete.
Somebody just had his pacemaker fitted. Heart was beating irregular But now he’s back in time, two-four, And we’re all back under the table Which is where he drank us to.
Well, we would say, hurry up, But what is there anyway to hurry up for? Nothing but it’s fine.
It’s dark outside but in here there’s light.
The captain bailed overboard decades ago, But the ship sails blithely on. Are there icebergs? Is there ice?
Yes, we are the ones who forgot to think twice. I’ll only say this one more time.
Drink up please.
Who was it that turned water into wine? Well, I never saw him Don’t believe all that shit, That gliding across the surface of things.
We sink.
We’re ten truck pile-ups on high speed motorways We’re decades collapsing into days We’re full of everybody else’s ways We’re all the things that’ll never fit. We’re not really alive We just resemble it a little bit.
Drink up please.
We’re every book you never read We’re fucked in the heart and we’re fucked in the head We’re all the things that are left unsaid We may as well be the living dead O yea we’re doing fine.
We’re what’ll be left at the end of time We’re staccato rhythm and a corny rhyme. We’re all the things you’d never want to find.
Closing time in the pub at the end of the mind.
|
Laura Solomon |
Sentinel Poetry (Online) #50. January 2007 ISSN 1479-425X |
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POETRY & GRAPHICS...since December 2002 |
Editor-in-Chief: Amatoritsero Ede |
Frontpage - Past Issues - Submissions - Feedback - Magazine Home - Sentinel Poetry Movement |