In the middle of their movie each arrives
Smiling in this gutter, still the stars
Of broad moments in their narrow lives.
They tell of other people, other bars,
Other husbands, lovers, friends, and wives,
Re-writing both their pleasures and their scars;
How one thing given up another strives
To get; how what one shines another tars
With one of the varieties of hate.
But here the villain is a dead-end job
Or marriage, or failing kids; it would be great
If Yankees, Nazis, drug lords, or The Blob  
Were why we’re lost, or losing, or alone –
But here the tales and failures are our own.

*****

Marcus Bales writes: “The bar culture was a mystery to me. For much of the western developed world, though, it seems central to the human experience. The only reason I went to bars for a long time was to see a performer, and then only for that. The genes for enjoying intoxication and for enjoying the taste of alcohol seem to have missed me. I’d have a soft drink, enjoy the show, and go home. I thought bars were noisy theaters full of fairly rude people who were missing the point of the entertainment. Yeah, well. 

“As usual in these sorts of tales, it was a woman who showed me I had mistaken the whole thing. 

“When I met Linda ‘going out’ for me meant a poetry reading. Linda’s idea of a good time was a fried baloney sandwich and a few glasses of wine at a bar. After a couple poetry readings we went to bars. And while everyone at a poetry reading has a story, they are there to tell those stories, often in the kind of detail, physical, mental, and emotional, that can be pretty harrowing. A  poetry reading is more like therapy than a lot of therapy. 

“The stars of the show, the featured readers, do not, for the most part, mix with the common folk of the open mic. Most of the time the feature readers come late, perform, and leave, giving no one a chance to chat with them or get to know them. There is a distinct class system, and if the performer is known more than locally, those exalted folks prefer to be kept separate from the audience, deigning to meet only a selection of the organizer’s favored few friends in a private room beforehand. You can judge your status in the local hierarchy by whether you are never, sometimes, or often invited to be in that room. 

“In bars, though, you can talk to anyone and everyone, if you’re willing. Well, middle-class bars, anyway. Dive bars are a whole other phenomenon. But in middle-class bars people talk to the people around them, and listen to one another, and drink. And talk some more. And drink. The point is the social drinking, the freeing-up, the letting-down. And for a collector of stories it’s a gold mine. 

“I still have a soft drink, but if you tip well you can get it served to look like it’s alcoholic. And you can remember what people said, afterwards.”

Not much is known about Marcus Bales, except he lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, and his work has not appeared in Poetry or The New Yorker. His latest book is 51 Poems (which includes ‘This Bar’); reviews and information at http://tinyurl.com/jo8ek3r

Photo: “Down Drinking at the Bar” by swanksalot is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.