Closing Time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGytDsqkQY8

Last drinks shouts the tender
drink em up
it's time to be out
I need to get home

so sip the last of your beer
slam down the last shots
head toward the outside
the chill of the night
fought off by the incoherence of
alcohols numb

the wisps of the smoke machine swirls
and clings like sad fog
to the crusted carpets
where booze and blood
bile and tears have stained my memories
with exquisite times and the haunted agony
of a thousand-thousand poets
preaching their words

the lingering scent of stale cigarette
and vanilla perfume cling to the cloth
in my clothes along with the
ghost of your lips on my ear
and the slight sting of a pinch on the ass

I’d rather stay in the allure of strobe lights
and barely clothed women dancing for the sheer joy
as if being pagan is the new black
and the night should be worshipped
but dawn is round the corner and
it's closing time

so drink em up ladies
find some one for a lift
as I head toward retirement
from scribbling my thoughts with dead-ant captioned
characters thumbed in a mad rush into a phone screen

and I know these ramblings are not
what the revellers want to hear
as they holler the shout outs to mates
and make plans for the next place

but me
I'm done
I smirk to try to stop the tears
because moving on hurts more
than the shards of glass
I had to pick from my head
or the broken ribs I breathed through

take me to the other side
where I no longer have
to usher out the throngs in thongs
and put up with those old jokes
worn in like favourite jeans
as we stood round shooting the shit
bonded in the potential of pain
shaking hands with those I had led and followed
the last drink’s a a little bit of bittersweet
as I forget how to speak fluent poet and poetess
I’m going to sign my name
off in the register

as you all pour out like
the last dregs tipped down the drain
by the staff as they start their after party

I'm outside and
the cold grips my last steps to the car
the door thuds shut
my ears ring a little with tinnitus
I can't look back
because it was
Poetry