[Newspoetry] Troubles in the Heartland: Bar Fight

[DL Emerick]

Dateline:  May 7, 2006. In the Heartland.

 

Sitting on a stool, last night, not a potty chair,

But one on which you can get potted, or repotted,

Just by ordering enough drink - hard stuff or ales,

The local talk around me drifted to the forbidden,

Into politics, discussions of which are banned,

For most bar tenders know such talk causes fights,

And, even when it doesn't, it's loud and annoying,

Disturbing the peace of the alcoholic haze,

The blaring and blasting music of the juke box,

Throbbing the passions of some kinds of love,

Almost always one that never could work out,

But defiant about it, defying the truth about love,

By talking about it, in physical and visceral ways,

Not in the subtle ways of those so distant from it,

That they must write poetry to escape its truths.

 

None the less, one of the dialogues near me

Went so far as to cross the forbidden line,

Enter into the twilight zone of other reality,

The one that dominates by force of arms,

In the rule of law, such as it is may ever be.

 

I pick up the conversation in mid-stream,

At the moment when it became insistent,

More audible than all the other talks,

Like the group that is chatting over beers,

About the pizza they ordered, how good it is,

The best damned pizza in the world,

Or the flaming words being fired back and forth,

Between some fellow hitting on this woman,

Apparently in the language of four-letter words,

For she loudly, now and then, objects to the words

He is using, saying she is going to clean his clock,

And he says, "just clean my cock is all I'm asking,

Lick it off" and she says "I'll cut it off

And shove it down your throat".

 

Meanwhile, the politics rises and floats up,

Sloshing its sprays on those us near it:

A thin guy says to a gal he's been leaning on,

"Look, damn it, I'm a registered Republican,

I'm a conservative, but Bush sucks,

He's a moron - the war in Iraq was stupid."

His putative date, a beefy looking broad, retorts

"How can you oppose our loyal troops in the field."

The guy chips back, "I'm a Vietnam vet,

I did two tours and it's not about the soldiers,

It's about the stupid President's dumb choices."

She chirps, "How can you be disloyal to soldiers,

When you were one - you're a disgrace to them,

You disgrace the uniform you used to wear."

 

The smell of blood in the air is scented;

A gal from the pizza-munchers is suddenly there,

Yelling at the bellicose gal, "Dumb bitch,

Don't be a moron like Bush, don't back him.

It's the decision to go to war that matters,

And it was just plain ass stupid."

The gal stands her ground, or sits her stool,

Blasting back, "What about 911, huh?

Should we just have rolled over and given up?"

Several voices chime in now,

For the foul-mouth couple fighters retire

>From their bantering sexually-charged talk,

Have come to the circle of this stinking mess,

And are saying, "Dumb, dumb, dumb bitch.

That was the Taliban in Afghanistan,

Not Hussein in Iraq - and we got them,

We cleaned their clocks." (no innuendo, here)

Though, really, I've never seen a clock cleaned.

 

By this time the noise in the bar is high,

And the bar-tender is yelling to quell it:

"No politics in the bar - no religion either."

And, if that weren't enough, she adds,

To the previously fighting sex-talking couple,

Whose pugnacity transferred to this talk,

"And if you two want to fight, do it privately,

Take it outside and get it over with.

I mean it, I will not tolerate a fight in here."

 

The riot order read, loud and clear,

The foggy clouds of war disperse,

The folks return to their forgotten brews,

Brooding, sullenly, you could tell on Bush,

How almost everyone there hated Bush,

Here in the red-neck heartland's local bar,

Where they almost all voted for him,

Once or twice and now would lynch him.

 

Someone throws some more money into music,

For the juke box had fallen into shocked silence,

As this swirling skirmish spun up,

Like a tornado or a dust devil,

Sucking up the soft twilit world of bar and beer,

Like a guy who has had one too many,

When one has been too much for many.

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