The Beer Poet

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