Order this writing in the book the Chamber (the 2016 poetry, flash fiction, prose & artwork anthology)		get the 420 page poem, flash fiction & prose collection / anthology as a 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

enjoy this writing from Paul Bellerive in the free 2019 chapbook: Tales Told to Friends (click on the front cover image or the title text to download the free PDF file)				You can also order this as a 2019 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the book cover to order Tales Told to Friends as a book at any time!

Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology The Flickering Light the Down in the Dirt Jan.-June 2019 issues & chapbooks collection book (learn about this book, and order from Amazon online)		get the 366 page Jan.-June 2019 Down in the Dirt issue & chapbooks 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

At Danny Hannigan’s Old Times Tavern

Paul Bellerive

He fixed me in my unsteady chair,
His restless, black eyes boring through darkness,
Boring through dense, unhealthy air,
Thick with blue cigar smoke and smoldering curses
Crisscrossing above the overheated bar.

“I got my head broke in this goddamn place,”
He said, “thirty-three or so years ago...
These two linebackers, drunk as fuckin’ skunks,
Hauled my ass into the parkin’ lot
An’ bust a two-by-four across my nose.”

He raised a frothless mug of beer
To thick lips and smiled whitely,
“Here’s to them,” he said and drained the glass,
Pounding the vessel on the scarred tabletop,
“Here’s to them two dead motha-fuckas.”

To them indeed, to all of them,
To fantasies and frauds who loomed large
To an eighteen-year-old seeking confirmation,
Seeking the merest hint of direction
Amidst the chaos of common rites of passage.

“Thirty-three years,” he sighed to the dark,
“And too goddamn old for any more wars...”
“Ever think,” he hissed into the empty mug,
“That there ain’t any more to it than this,
No more than beer, and spit, and smoke in your eyes?”

* * *

Warm southern air filtered in with darkness,
Sneaking, with insects, through the insubstantial screens,
Lulling the damp bay with night’s narcotic
Dispensed on soft, on oh-so-gentle breezes,
And the roar, dissembled, became a murmur
Emanating from shadowed corners of the barracks
Where the disparate, ever-watchful tribes
Sat near, drawing comfort from familiar forms.

Smokey Robinson, rapid-fire Spanish,
Raspy whines in praise of drug-free Oklahomans,
The languages of the different tribes
Mixing, becoming an incoherent hodge-podge,
An anthem signaling the rise of the moon
Above the shadow fingers of the Georgia pines
Fencing in the fort, fencing in the tribes
Hearing different languages for the first time.

Our rest was broken by volleys of curses,
Shouting, banging, demanding that we scurry out,
Herding us like skittish cattle to latrines,
To a ragged formation in coal-scented air,
To breakfast spooned like slop on plastic trays
Carried nervously to tense tables, inhaled
As quickly as we could move it to mouth
Beneath the unblinking stares of snarling sergeants.

It was all new – the barracks, the brawling,
The brothers chanting an unfamiliar lyric
With knifeblade meanings lurking in the sounds,
Something vital there more than the sum of parts,
High notes that danced just above my hearing,
Beyond my experience and understanding
Circumscribed by a New Hampshire childhood
Suburb-white and inattentive to wider worlds.

Those first few weeks were made of loneliness
That gnawed like a ravenous, impatient rat
At my intangible anatomy
Every minute my mind was free to wander;
The books and poems can never get that right,
Will never quite capture the metamorphosis
Of savage longing into physical pain
For which there is no diagnosis, no treatment.

Isolation bred malignant mistrust:
Slights, real and imagined, lurked beneath every word,
Lurked in bold glances and averted eyes,
In boisterous groups oozing exclusivity,
And in unexplainable silences
When I turned a corner or entered the bay;
Barracks mates were transformed to enemies,
The unspoken irony as real as shadows.

That humid blend of constant resentment,
Of fear, and of loneliness amidst so many
Wore out my bravado and my courage
That had seemed so boundless in the safety of home,
In the company of accepting friends
So willing to overlook common shortcomings,
So willing to turn blind eyes and deaf ears
To intimations that I was less than I seemed.

And in the new, debilitating maelstrom
At dusk on the stairs of a deserted barracks,
He reached black fingers to his breast pocket
And tapping a tune on the pack, made offering
So unexpected that I took it up
Although I didn’t smoke, took the proferred Kool
And tried to ease the smoke into my lungs
Without revealing my shock or virginity.

* * *

He waved the harried waitress to us
Ordering more drinks in case
Closing time snuck up unexpectedly;
“It ain’t all bad,” he said,
“Not near as bad as then, not near as bad.”

Perhaps, I thought, perhaps not near as bad,
But I had not been there to see his head crack,
Had not been there to dissuade the bastards
Or to call for help from the oblivious drunks
Who crawled in nightly to forget about everything else.

Perhaps I could have helped, perhaps not,
Even that was a long, long time ago,
A time grudgingly fading into nightmare memory,
A time best left behind and buried
With relics of our undistinguished past.

“Have one,” I offered sliding the pack
Across the wet table toward drumming fingers;
“Hazardous to your health,” I cautioned him
Chuckling at the drunks in the dark recesses
And at the tribes still chattering in the dusky barracks.

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