For the Contest: Abandon
Sponsor: Constance La France
Written 20.05.2025
To live with abandon is to spend your soul as if the tab will never come, but it always does – by unknown
When abandon runs dry
He spent money with merry abandon,
Like laughter thrown into the wind.
Tossed akin to confetti in events of fleeting joy.
He kept no tabs, no ledger,
there was no tomorrow.
He moved through life
as a flame burns through paper.
Notes flew from his hands,
the way birds scatter startled by gunshots.
There was no guilt in his pockets.
He opened the tap and shouted the bar.
People called him legend and slapped his back,
till the wind changed and downturn came.
Then the centre of gravity shifted,
the barstools cooled,
the phones stilled,
silence frosted all the beer steins.
He found himself orbiting absence
nobody patted his shoulder,
nobody flipped a coin in his cup,
He had poured himself into the room,
and when the keg ran dry,
all the lychees vanished…
they all abandoned him.
He doesn’t speak of it now,
just nods and smiles with that tired kindness
you only learn after the last music notes.
Love you Joe
In the saloon a lone, haggard cowboy
Had more than double his fill, one last sip
An imagined past of unlawful joy
Recounting the times he shot from the hip
Barstools turn for a showdown, tables flip
Caught scheming. More than his pride will suffer
A double-dealing, lone cowboy bluffer.
Kind of Blue…
Slinking into a still hue of blues
Haunting trumpets dart in and out
Like taxi horns in freeloading traffic
And cling like silk onto full figured rifs
When winsome modal notes wear sleek cobalt
Where soulbeats throb from smoky bars
Blue moods of so what
Sway like humid lovers on rainy nights
To the clink of ice in shot glasses
And afterhours shades of whisky, sweat and old scotch -
Smooth as muted cool
Luxurious tracks of indigo distilled intimacy
Stretch without strict resolutions
Improv exhales unashamed sketches
Of empty barstools and empty arms
As modes of blue undress into serendipity
When newborn sounds wrap limbs around
Old scores of stale melodic staves
Steady bass lines underscore mellow beats
Unperturbed ruminating pulse,
Slow percussive murmurs
Like rhythmic subways of all blues slow walking
With mystic measures of ebb and neap attraction -
A perpetual kiss slides slow into a kind of blue.
We found them!!
They were in the alley next to the piled trash
outside the club.
We were probably so drunk last night;
we left them on the barstools.
We quickly put them on and hurried home.
She secured hers with Spanx,
Mine with tight-fitting Hanes.
We knew for certain we’d return that night
and “laugh our asses off” again.
Here I sit with, my mind, closing in...
On a memr’y, I’ve tried, to escape...
I drink everyday, try’n to turn the page
But it keeps on, getting replayed
She’s the reason the barstool’s still around
It’s like she put, my heart, into a lost and found
No one is looking, for a heart that’s torn out
She’s the reason the barstool’s still around
I know, I’m not, the first man...
To wonder, where love goes, when it dies...
When goodbye’s the last word, that you hear...
It’s too late, so why even try....
She’s the reason the barstool’s still around
It’s like she put, my heart, into a lost and found
No one is looking, for a heart that’s torn out
She’s the reason the barstool’s still around
I’ve drank my sorrows worth of whiskey
And the beer makes, this hollow chest feel fine...
I just wish she had thought things over
As I sit here fearing closing time
I drove me to drink
But I can’t make it home
I dial up her number
Then hang up the phone
If you wonder why most men
Precede women into the ground
Well she’s the reason the barstool’s still around
GIN MILLS
Battered pay phones
hung on the walls
their rings
harsh reminders.
They sat,
ageing men,
hunched
on barstools
brooding faces
glaring into
sullen evidence
of reflected disdain.
Younger men stood
milling about
regaling each other
with exaggerated misdeeds.
The old payphone’s ring
coldly calling those
who were never there.
There was no “top” shelf,
only hard whiskey
for softened men.
Bent backs,
gnarled hands,
empty eyes,
lost in a liquored
loneliness.
Draft beer,
pickled eggs,
Slim Jims,
that damn phone
forever ringing
as they watched
the seasons change
through the dirty window
of death’s waiting room.
John G. Lawless
©5/14/2017
Weary, I am weary of traveling life;
this suitcase, the home I carry like a shell -
barstools, my buddies; a typewriter, my wife.
I want to settle, forsake this hotel hell,
buy my last airline ticket and throw away
this suitcase, the home I carry like a shell.
This great war keeps me writing news to dismay,
soldiers' stories hard to portray; I want to
buy my last airline ticket and throw away
all the harsh reminders, hurry home to you,
let pink stained cigarettes kiss mine in the tray.
Soldiers stories, hard to portray, I have to
forget; with you build a lovers' hideaway,
return this lonely, golden earring you gave,
let pink stained cigarettes kiss mine in the tray.
I must return to shores where freedom's flags wave,
return this lonely golden earring you gave.
Weary I am weary of traveling life -
bar stools, my buddies; a typewriter, my wife.
Copyright, November 19, 2014
DUST LOVE
Awake at once and dismissing affection
Your adulation, my crush-delight
Idolatry, inclination, unfettered rapture
I’m wild for worship
Your light lashes move me, pull me in
Anticipation, key
Knots of wills and kiss me please
Omission of echoes, inhale the ocean breeze
Masked in bliss laced with vicious
Black steel with harsh hot thrills and the
Two barstools, waiting idly by
there is this bar i went to once up north
it is called les pugilist.
it is a canadian dive bar somewhere
in the western province of quebec.
the parking lot is filled with large trucks
wandering in like steel framed geese.
their drivers touch down awkwardly on
cracked vinyl barstools.
they eat truffles and curse!
water boarding themselves with pitchers
of labbat blue and listening to french versions
of willie nelsons pancho and lefty.
at times their vision blurs and the criss
cross patterns of thier matching flannels
enrage each other.
the only solice they have is a cigerrette
machine over by the window that does
not vend cigerrettes but tickets to heaven
each seperatly blessed by the pope.
The phone rings empty into the night.
Filling a void that brings strange comfort
to thoose around.
Rage eats away untill it bores a hole
straight through are hearts.
Whiskey cauterizes the wound.
Alone with fools we gather.
The bitter ones taking to there barstools.
the weak look to punish thoose happy
bastards.
Who dare to feel anything in the place of
emptyness.
She left so many years befor.
At least her mortal soul did.
I rememeber when it was when I still
dared to dream.
Long befor reallity was a friend.
Lovers lie.
Motions keep us living.
She spoke but the words were empty as her heart.
So as strangers we parted just as we met.
With a bitter taste I never did reply.
The phone rang it's last time.
I herd it echo farewell down the hall.
I had to go so I never unlocked the door.
i just left my emotions hanging like some
forgotten coat pushed back in
the closet.
Its been almost a year since that phone filled
the emptyness of my soul.
If only I had answered.