The Men Who Stay Late

Barroom Hymn for the Dissolving Self

The men who stay late where the water is black don’t look for a gate and they don’t look back.

They are cooling the skin of a day gone to rust, letting the salt air settle the dust.

There’s a mercy in dimness: a chemical grace: where no one remembers the lines on your face.

The barman is steady.

He knows what you claim.

He holds the glass ready.

He forgets the real name.

And that is the alliance: the logic: the love: a holy defiance of what’s written above.

For no one here audits the ghost or the debt.

You are simply the silence not broken just yet.

Then a song from the box starts to hammer the bone.

It picks all the locks of the secrets you own.

Not because it is weeping or seeking a friend, but because it is keeping the score at the end.

And you grip the cold vessel: the wet, heavy glass: the ghost and the wrestle of shadows that pass.

You run every metric.

You count every scar.

The logic is electric.

The master you are.

For the tide has its timing: its automated rise: a rhythmic, white climbing before the day dies.

The water is ancient.

The water is true.

And for a moment: the water is you.

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