"Come drink with us, Christopher.
Come down to the bar.
To the Blue Goose on Main Street
where the gin falls like rain.
Come drink a martini
a Manhattan or fizz.
Come chug Irish Car Bombs
until you get sick."
That was his friend on a cell phone
shouting over the uproar, the music,
the cacophonic melange.
Thus went Christopher, son of Harry,
son of Martha, son of Maine
into the black winter evening
for shots with the gang.
On his walk to the Blue Goose
saw young Christopher a bum
who begged a stray quarter
for a story in a song.
Sang the bum of a love lost
to whiskey nights in Sin City
and a tragic affair
with a slick bodybuilder
oiled within an ounce of torches,
great bonfire torches
made of men and their ambitions
to be so strong and so loved and so bigger than all.
Sang the bum of a knife fight
with a Mexican gang
in the summer when Loredo
was a warzone in back rooms,
parking lots and dumps,
when Old Chester the dachshund
shuffled loose his extension cord leash
like Fenrir at world's end.
A dollar in quarters was Christopher's toll,
a price he paid gladly to linger and stall.
There were tequila shots waiting,
Coronas and limes.
There were fearful crowns of porcelain
and piss-sticky floors.
And there was magic.
At the Blue Goose the juke spooled
a loom of hard rock.
Its tapestry a pantheon,
its gods spandex-frocked.
Among the wailing guitars and cheesy synth calls
came young Christopher to mingle,
to awaken, to imbibe.
Billiard balls cracked like eggs made of shale
and cocaine in the bathrooms made pretty girls pale.
The night nearly over, the night just beginning,
the bloodshed, the tearshed, the bladders, the sperm.
Christopher kissed a bourbon
and shared his first drink with none.
"Don't hide from us, Christopher!
Don't forget we're your friends!
We've bought a pitcher of Miller
and can't drink 'til you sit
and align with us.
A constellation soused,
a bright, shining rust
of squandered youth and yadda yadda yadda,
you wanna get plastered or what?"
Three pints in libation
to no particular god
and Christopher's eyes were wide, swimming
to the end of the bar.
There was a lark with her midriff a banner,
a tramp-stamp emblazoned
above her hip-hugging pants.
She sipped on a Cosmo, then amaretto and Coke.
Her hair was like a fox in Spring,
her lips like cushions of crimson.
"Aphrodite be kind
although you never are.
Smile down on a soul too scared to walk
your roads without drinking.
Give my credit card legs
that it may run extra leagues.
Give my tongue godly grace
lest it fall and undo me.
Grant me this moment and I will be your slave,
in service 'til death at your altar and lave."
Christopher finished his prayer
and downed his last drop.
He rose from the table and all wished him good luck.
Like a sea serpent he weaved
through the revelers and drunks.
Like a heron he glided to the beer taps and beyond.
He ducked under a trucker with a willow tree beard
and he threatened a day trader
who stank of Red Bull, Hugo Boss and fear.
With wings on his intentions and the sun oh-so-close,
Christopher plummeted into despair and remorse.
The fox found a raven, the cushions found twins.
A black-haired waitress was Christopher's end.
She put her arms around his quarry,
kissed her forehead, kissed her neck.
She whispered the poems of Sappho without moving her lips.
Christopher died then in his heart and his pants.
He found no solace in bourbon,
no ease in nacho chips.
At 1:00 A.M. a creature appeared at his side.
She had hair like a mouse just come in from the rain,
two lips like cat's whiskers, thin and near-gray,
a blouse once full-white now faded and stained,
and a voice like cold coffee, heavy with grains.
Christopher leaned on her sympathy
and then on her shoulder.
With last call on the horizon he held back a tear.
To do what he now must, he'd need one last beer.
