The Beer Poet

e-mail: thebeerpoet@yahoo.com

So when I get home and someone asks me . . . "What’s
the A.T. like? Do you think that I would like it?"
(My answer)
Well if you like being hungry all the time and you don’t mind being
soaked when its raining or being soaked with sweat when its not
raining, and you enjoy having crotch rot and jock itch and battered
feet black and blue until you walk like you have broken feet and
you’re hip with the idea of being completely filthy and you like the
smell of your own stench and body odor, and you like the smell of
other peoples shit and urine. Do you enjoy beating your ankles and
knees daily? Are you thrilled by being eaten alive by mosquitoes,
black flies, and ticks, or do you find bee stings and rattlesnakes
just simply enthralling? Then you might be ready to face the fourteen
days of nothing but rain and the shelters with mice that eat the
earplugs right out of your ears so you can hear the dumb-ass
weekender snore even louder. Do you love carrying a ton of weight on
your back until your hips are deformed and raw and your backbone
feels like a chainsaw blade burnt into the muscles between your
shoulders? Then you might consider the temporary life of nothing but
oatmeal and noodles day after day, after day, after day, after day,
while being surrounded by eccentric weirdoes who can talk about
nothing but miles, miles, miles, miles, miles, miles, miles. Do you
enjoy the simplicity of counting each step as it feels like jolt
after jolt of electricity into the soles of your feet? And if you
really like being looked at like you are some escaped convict,
maniac, transient by all the 'clean people' then you might not mind
wearing clothes that are so filthy and caked with dirt and mud that
your socks and shorts can not only stand by themselves but actually
move. Do you like to watch the skin of your feet peel off like a
daily shedding snake? Are you thrilled by the sight of your own blood
and mucus? And do you like to freeze one day then burn up the next or
enjoy falling face first into briars? If you don’t like sleep or rest
of any kind then you might not mind the seventy percent markup of
your twelve-thousandth can of tuna at some rip-off convenient store
that is a six-mile walk down a busy street from the trail. Are you
just tickled pink by finding out that you just walked two miles down
the wrong trail or in the wrong direction? Would you enjoy climbing
up to overlook after overlook to have a wonderful view of nothing but
the cloud that you’re standing in? If you are addicted to poison ivy
and any other unknown rashes, you might like to enjoy excruciating
pain in body parts that you never knew you had. Maybe you like to be
lied to by maps and bullshit signs and markers, or enjoy being
attacked by 'problem' bears, or maybe you like falling on sharp rocks
while struggling across loose ankle busters. Would you find that
chaffing is a wonderful way of reminding yourself that you still have
balls even though they fell like they are only attached by a single
string of torn skin, or you find that sucking gnats into your lungs
is simply a good 'gag' or find that a million spider webs across your
face is simply a neat invisible mask to you? If you love and enjoy
worrying whether the water you are drinking is going to make you shit
goose diarrhea all over yourself? Or if you really, really, really
worship the idea of having time to do nothing but walk over the worst
terrain in America then, YES!, I do say that you will really enjoy
the Appalachian Trail.
-The Beer Poet

An old desire came back into my world for a few days.
She wanted a night of enjoyment so I bought it and found that it cost a hell of a lot more than I had intended to pay. She left her memory in my custody and I couldn't abandon it though I tried and tried. So there I was . . . she satisfied my body but left an aching in my mind. I found that the mind can hurt a hell of a lot more than the body could ever imagine. This started tearing at me like the memories that you just can't bring forth in the mind. She was stuck in my mind but just out of reach. And these visions burned me. Those words she never said echoed through lonely tears that refuse to be dammed. Cause I've been damned by her touch, by her tender skin that was never meant for me. Damned by a battle that I lost before I knew about the war. All this happened before I knew she would be so far from mine . . . so far gone . . . so lost. Now I'm lost within her misery and she doesn't care. The theory was that I would forget . . . that it would be a line straight to pleasure that turned into a cycle of painful need . . . knowing that, and knowing her, it was an ailment that would never be healed. It hurt me son of a bitch it hurt me and left me sinking in the quicksand of her concrete heart. She stood above me before and called me into this trap leaving only sadness to drown in. With no forgiveness for me to buy . . . and no way to escape so I drown in the love that will never be. Her novocaine body numbed me and I left my heart and mind without defense from her blond hair blues.

Here I sit. Dusty from the road but the offshore wind blows cold outside of this Baltimore Holiday Inn barroom. The November sky fades through the wall of windows as twilight and darkness creep in. Right on time, the horizon rises to hide that daytime ball of blaze and glory. I’ve always felt closer to the moon. (Philosophically . . . and literally I guess.) I trap myself at nighttime with all the stories played out on some whitewashed brown barroom stage. My role is a simple one right now, as I hide in the corner in the shadows down by the industrial ice machine, way back at the yonder end of a deserted bar. An empty Budweiser bottle stares back at me from my distant seclusion, yet my half full bottle of Coors quietly takes my side. The only other motion is the scarce barmaid darting in and out, not bringing my beer fast enough. But she’s nice. She is an African American and she is a knockout. I know it, but she knows it, even the beer bottles know it. She has a tattoo of the word “snake” on her neck and she’s ten feet tall and bullet proof. A real specimen. Ten years ago I would have tried conversation with her. Ten years ago it wouldn’t have worked. I wasn’t nearly as cool, calm, collected and/or handsome. I would have made an ass out of myself. She’d feel uncomfortable, then I’d get uncomfortable. Then we would break off conversation with, “I had to ask,” and “I’m flattered, really, it’s just . . .” Then I would get really drunk. Now I skip all the drama and just get drunk, gaining age in a fast forward motion. Burning the candles at both ends then I break them in half and light the middle. Working too hard and playing too hard, in dire need to change the routine. But the night falls on me. The darkness revives me and the twinkles in the eyes, the gleam of the bottles captivate my mind. The wide open nights when you down gin and tonics while watching people dancing and you laugh until your ribs hurt, the nights when you meet with a couple friends and brush off the day with a few cold ones and a baseball game on the tele, the beautiful nights you make beautiful love to a beautiful woman, the rainy November, Baltimore nights hidden in the corner (down by the ice machine) in the shadows just reflecting life.
I have always felt closer to the moon. It rises and falls differently than the sun. The moon is more random, romantic, inspiring, and most of all haunting. Finally the barmaid brings me another Coors and I’m hungry. I ask for a menu. She brings it. People are trickling in. Like moths to a flame, at night. Like flies hovering over dead rotting flesh on a burning sun highway. I’m the moth without any wings, under the flame, endlessly trying to jump high enough. I hide in this corner. I order a salad (ranch), a t-bone (bloody but not cold), potato . . . another Coors. The bar has come to life. A bus load of Fraternity faced soccer chumps from some New York shithole, a Jewish couple in a heated lovers argument, a middle aged gay man with a cell phone glued to his ear, and a few scattered walk on characters, they line up before the bar (beer bottle in hand) just hoping to find the garden of Eden tonight within the barley and fermentation and within the beautiful barmaid. None of us are new at this game. We have all been drunk before, we’ve all been laid, we all drive a car, and we have all felt lost in our own homes. Especially me and the beautiful barmaid . . . we’ve seen tragedy and madness. We’ve known love and hate. I’m not sure about the rest. But we line up here like a tribal community, meeting at a watering hole with all the rituals and fear. These days the water has alcohol in it and it comes in a glass. The holes are more comfortable and convenient and the hunt . . . oh the “hunt” these days. The jobs to pay for all this mess, the blood, sweat, and tears to pay for all the booze, sex, and gasoline. That’s where all this ends. The problem is that the victim is no longer a deer, or buffalo, or elk, or moose. Our prey is ourselves, and our method is the flame. The candles we burn, the brain cells, the cigarettes and endless hours looking for that mystical garden. The one we believe in but can’t realize. The one where we can tolerate the sunshine, the one where everything is going to be O.K., but we just keep coming to this purgatory looking for heaven. Until last call, and the crying ashtrays and heart-broken beer and liquor bottles go back to sleep before our part of this spinning ball of water dirt and madness twists around again to face that star of light and gravity. We come here when the moon smiles, even hidden by clouds; we come here when the moon is on our side. I have always felt closer to the moon.

The Side Track Cafe'
(Damascus, VA)

there i was, stuck in a little cafe'
cooking up a mess of blues
got my apron on
and a giant pimple from the stress
and grease
and caffeine
and lack of sleep
the damn thing was the size of a grape
(a small grape)
but a nasty white sight at any reflection

this little cafe'
there i was
right beside the tales
of a million and ten footsteps
of a million and one wanderers
(they keep moving through
like moonshine in a broken mason jar)
too fast to know them
(to rough to chug)
and there i was stuck
in their journey
in their stories

it was my story once
now that story has become a piece of my past
all those faces i once
knew
the characters of my personal myth
have all wrapped up into one big mud-ball
that got stuck under my hiking shoes
and the tread is gone
from all the miles

now all that mud is smeared around this little cafe'
my cafe'
"clean up that mess!"
i say . . . to no one,
and no one listens, no one cares.
a cup of "joe" and a mess of the blues
washed down with a bottle of beer
with a constant train whistle that you can't really
hear
but you know it's there
it's in your head
calling constantly.
it’s giving me a headache
and all these adventurers
come and go
they don't know
but they hear it while they sleep

that's how it ends . . .
me
there,
them
moving on,
and that little cafe',
with walls, and ovens and beer coolers,
frying pan burning the blues
and that monstrosity of a pimple
reminding me how human i am.

sometimes i'd rather be hiking