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170th Weekly Poetry Contest honorable mention: That Night (Revised)

by stevieslaw

That Night
“I’m sure there are good people out there,”
he said, as he eyed the door.
“I’m just not one of them.”
He talked.
It was his way of calming down.

He was right
I knew.
And, you might like to blame
the war, the wine, the women
and shake your wise locks sadly.
But, I’d been there all along.
He was born bad.

That night, we were in a bar
we were in a bar
up near Times Square.
You know the place
or someplace like it.
They serve boilermakers and boiled dogs,
and no, there was not a soul in the place
you’d want to take home to meet your mother.

The bleeding over his eye
was no better,
and the hand he used
to hold a wad of bloody napkins
up to the gash
was starting to swell.
Every time the door opened, he’d jump
and now he had me doing it too.

When we were young
and faced with something to bear,
we’d summon a magic
to make us invisible.
We’d close our eyes
and count to ten.
It never worked, but it might have,
I closed my eyes.

170th Weekly Poetry Contest