"my theory on going to bars" - Joe Milford
take twenty dollars worth of quarters
go to a place with at least two payphones
and one jukebox
you go in weighed down and loud
wear pants twice your size, at least
don’t adjust your belt and drink a pitcher
of Newcastle, you won’t have many quarters
left, but, on the jukebox play the Pretenders,
Social Distortion, the Clash, and get rid
of your twenty dollar lodestone
it is a dollar for a game of pool
or for a bowl of popcorn and you make two
calls you shouldn’t have and then
you are weaseled, bamboozled, or muscled out
then you slink home lithely, weightlessly
under the buzzing of an Iowa sky, steeples,
the skyline, the street guitarists, the closed
and locked-down bratwurst carts, and the train
is crossing the road two blocks
from your front door
as you watch it roar
and roar inside
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