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C. J.’s

Robert Funderburk

Legacy of a “thug with a .38
In my face,” the buzzer’s harshness
Announces each white patron.

Eleven years ago there was
Forty cent bar whiskey and quarter beer
And company of a kind:

Harold, who filled empty glasses
And lives with temporal hope;
Whose smile turned back each threat

But one whose fluid filed his lungs
Hair combed with the grease of decades,
C. J. spoke on all subjects

Till deprived of larynx and life
And revealed no more of himself
Than initials above the door.

Uniformed victors of “Homecoming 1945”
Smiled down upon tears and flashes
Of a South Pacific beach, in eyes

That did not shut the night before
As a silent, desperate war continued to
Machine gun tapping of my coin on the tin bar.

His eyes found mine, his head slowly shaking.
I stopped.

Daily, the regulars find their seats,
Safe from sunlight’s oblique threat.
As something like night moves

Along the bar, each lifts
His liquid life,
Not quite alone.

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