Long Barstools Poems

One day—
The sea will be my backyard
Every morning, standing upon the deck
Of the one called Going Numb
A “Greatest Dad” mug in one hand
My last vice burning orange in the other

I will watch the sun rise...

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On the anvil that’s the dorp
The noon-day sun beats down.
So between twelve and two
Life in the place is suspended.
Doors to the stores are ‘toe’
And in their dusty windows cheap 
Mannequins sleep with open eyes.

The air...

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The steamy Havana night air became heavy through the broken-up streets of the old city where ancient Detroit monsters were on display like dinosaurs from some prehistoric era, forgotten, given up to the boundaries of...

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I sang the words of

Joni
Mitchell

and pretended to own barstools as my sweaters lost color, I scribbled words on napkins and
slid drinks underneath them, I pretended to be...

him.


“Buy me something, something I can wear around my...

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They say that time is supposed to be the best healer
But she just stopped loving me today
The jukebox is torture for this now lonely man
With every old sad song it plays

The bartender keeps serving me...

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Upon well-worn barstools, tales two codgers tell,
Deep in drink, their stories swell.
Reflecting how the eons have flown,
Strengths once had, now overthrown.

"Ah, beauties chased, both bright and keen,
Yet in our brews, our sighs unseen,"
One muses, his...

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In the After Hour, afterlife, away from
borough and a woman. I bellied barstools 
for balance, contemplating the ensuing draft;
Rumpkin, to be exact. The taste of nutmeg
calling forward a wayward heart, swimming
like Lochte, trying hard, to...

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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,...

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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 poet

When abandon runs dry

He spent money...

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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...

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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 
...

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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...

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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...

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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”...

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