Every day is not

[DieterM]

1

Three neon lights leer wanly,
a fourth blinks,
the one in the half-dark corner
behind the shabby bar,
the bartender leans there,
half-smoked Marlboro in his mouth,
half-smiled expression on his jaded unshaven face,
he’s wiping beer glasses dirty
with a chequered kitchen towel
that has been washed for the last time
some six hundred drunks ago,
there’s disaster looming
behind the greasy windows,
and doom’s day dark jazz blasting
through the sound system,
I’ve put on my favourite electric blue jeans,
applied gel to my hair,
dabbed some Kenzo behind my ears,
I smell like a perfumery unless you lean closer—
but no one does—,
close up I smell
of filterless French brown tobacco cigarettes
and Gordon’s Gin
and Sunday despair,
it has been a long long day
since I woke up and listened to Morrissey
whining that every day is like Sunday,
thank God he’s only exaggerating,
even if today feels
like one of those half-lived eternities of boredom,
but it’s a Sunday after all,
so I empty Gin Tonic after Gin Tonic,
smoke Gauloises and wait for Monday
to creep up from the morgue…

[DieterM]

2

my ex-classmate has been elected
Designer of the year,
my cousin is a renowned surgeon,
and I sit alone at my computer,
worn-out striped slippers on my feet,
listen to Sigur Rós singing “Varðeldur”,
swallow cheap sobs with glasses
of cheap red table wine,
type some listless lines,
hope for glory,
which has better things to do
than come my way

[Bar22do]

Your second brings to mind Drogo of The Tartar Steppe and his wait for a moment of glory. Your first aches for all the lonely...
Years and decades pass... A silent acceptance pervades both poems which only increases their poignancy.

Thanks for them.

Bar

[DieterM]

oh wow, thanks, Bar! Glad you liked them. Was listening to some Dark Jazz (hey, until then I didn't even know that Dark Jazz existed!), and that inspired those lines, together with memories of Sunday boredom in my younger days…

[DieterM]

3

that’s when my cocaine-addicted AD sniffles
that my layout is not Bauhaus enough,
when every step feels like
trudging slowly over wet sand,
when Armageddon really seems to be the only way out,
when people get snappy on Wednesday,
when streets are full of vicious lemurs,
everyone waiting for me to stumble and fall,
when my white new Nike sneakers are the only sunshine,
when it’s the Black-album and 1987 all over again,
when I know that back home my daily pill waits
in its plastic box to prolong my life,
and that it will send me to bed with a head-ache
and no hard-on

[DieterM]

4

and yet
I still have my smile,
three teeth missing,
but honest and easy;
as obsolete as it may seem,
I have my words, my voice;
I have my Nina Hagen-attitude,
which makes me yell “Screw it! I’ll do it!”
right into the faces
of all the pricks and schmucks and skivers;
I have my laugh;
I have the placid certainty
that where is s hit,
there’s been a scrumptious meal before,
and that glory remains
a water drop on a hob;
I have no money,
but I have me.