He coughs through his cigarrette,
gasping for breath
to tell the bartender one
last anecdote;
to get that old familiar
rusty laugh and wipe of the cloth.

He peers into that glass mug
as if his soul had dissolved in it.
With a desperate gulp,
he downs it as if
trying to reclaim it
somehow or maybe
drown the achings of his heart
at the thought of his children
waiting for him.

The bartender watches,
knowing that look
that the old ones have
when their days draw
to the close,
when the last dregs of
life have been
drained from their bodies,
as surely as the
mugs are empty under the
hollow bodies come closing.

He knows their life stories
and how their wife
or their job or some other
hindrance kept them from
being truly happy.

The old man hacks,
and says to the bartender,
"I always knew this stuff
would be the end of.."
his words cut off as
his head drops onto the
mug rim,
supported there,
the red mark on his forehead
a testimony to his vice
when the ambulance finally
wails it's way to the bar.

Lindsey Milton 1997

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