A Prayer for the Old, Mendicant Wretch

She’s sat here for a hundred years, here, at this bar. Before it was even built, before the old jukebox was even installed, she was here winking at Johns, and Jims, and asking their story. Asking them to buy her a round. Since before time began, she’s been here. Many men have known her love,

Sensations of Copulation

sex is happening beside me, inside my mind a couple sit, myself beside her like an impromptu menage she rubs her dress straight on the surface of her long legs with pointed hands and painted nails she laughs with her partner carelessly tossing her hair behind her which brushes my shoulder and she excuses herself

A Jazz Quartet Life

I hear a tight jazz quartet smacking out lead-bottomed bass tinkling a shaker, with a half-open hi-hat some soft-fingered ivory tickling peppered with a gritty groan and cigarette smoke I sit, and listen, and I think to myself: why can’t life be just like that? -BSB

Just a Bukowski Tonight

let’s cut through it I’m just a man, nothing more and the way you did your eyes tonight is sexy the shape of your face reminds me of a girl I used to know someone who used me not her fault, I deserved it she was sexy too so is your face I can’t tell

State of the World Address from the Bottom Left-hand Corner

the black-jack dealer laments over a hi-ball: “It’s depressing. All day I see people lose their money. I’m contributing. I’m part of it. I’m losing along with them.” –BSB

Hummingbirds

It just didn’t make sense. Not yet at least. Questions buzzed his skull like hummingbirds on a vengeful tear, and he had not the answers with which to sate them. Perhaps if he drank enough, they would come. Perhaps if he sat at the bar long enough, the world would simply move on. Perhaps, he

The wandering lover’s final, lingering hope

look for her with self-imposed singularity set yourself, like a ball on the tee destined for impact air, hover, and fall the fall is disappointment emptiness, doubt, and pain avoid the fall accept she’s gone

Devil’s Elbow

The night I saw her at The Devil’s Elbow the tramp in the square’s twilight terrors split the night’s soft toddle of music from Chambar. It was the kind of bar, I thought as I trundled past, where you were supposed to meet someone like her. And it was one of those nights, too. A night

Jack, or was it Jake?

I. Jack. Or Jake. I don’t exactly know for sure, ’cause everybody used to call the cat one or the other. One night old Paul’d be in and see the skinny cat hangin’ out in his usual spot at the end of the counter. He’d holler, “How you been, Jake?” And cat would nod and

Seven

When morning creeps, across the floor toes drag And make a mockery of ev’ry step The mirrored glass reflects two eyes that sag And raises doubts as to how well they slept Those liquored drinks that trickled smoothly down Bar-tenders fed with ev’ry dollar spent The raucous rush that swept them across town Confusion as