The Low City Bar (Poetry) By Lou Toad

Telecommunication

A trans-literal

Disambiguation

A translation

From train station

To fornication

Under stars

lit by the scars

you won at the low city bar

In a scrap

with some sorry sap

who cut you good

the blood came instantly

and kept coming too

the juice that produced you

  that you never knew 

could be so beautiful

like gold in a silkscreen sky

it hypnotized you red

as it dripped onto the dirty barroom floor.

A brawl

in which you scrawled

altering the ending

to declare yourself the winner

and in many ways you were

it gave you glowing scars 

and something to write

and it felt right

to keep drinking that night

so the sordid story goes on

a bleached reach for the center

of your imbalance

a charismatic and tragic accident

of natures darling boy

who escorted you across Satan's seven rooms

to a new prince of high noon projected on the moon

and in you astro-cinephile eyes

you cried

for the guns to carry more backstory

in there chambers

filled with strangers

who relieved themselves in urinals shining like glass

while you ate your last gasp 

as the fight ended at the sight of

credits rolling

then it was time

to smoke another dime

with Khmer cats

that react to spazzed out reflections 

written on old brown grocery bags

singed at each end by joint embers

and underground mags

with small circulation

but big ideas

Realized inside

and let out to play

it's a sun shinin' day

that repeals the first sleepy steps of summer

another whiskey sour

at the low city bar

scraps of 50 year old newspaper stories

yellowed with sorry age and the irrelevance of gruesome years

signal me a frost giants daughter

i'll write a one act on the subject

of her slaughter at Odin's hands

due to increased demands for her circus meat body

to be ground into burger for another vegetable free meal.

somnambulists steal

my waking nightmares

and I claim they hassle me 

like a true gentleman

because I know its only a fucking dream.

this reality

so calm

so carefree

so relentless

in its insistence

that I write another line

hippie punks on fire

with coagulated eyes

greasepaint smearing

the heat from there faces

and replacing it with cold vengeance

talked up like a fighting fish

restricted by wire fence 

and wedding bells

from selling its shoes

useless to a fish but essential to a man

the elongated strips of withering beauty

fall with no grace

from the body of the beloved

when she renders herself obsolete

thus complete in the mirror vision of a storm

indignant world just beyond the reach of our sex crazed eyes.

-Lou Toad 2011

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