Midnight Poetry: “Upon Drinking With an Old Man”
Upon Drinking With an Old Man
(William Haskins)
with the snapping slap
of a credit card,
we turned the night
from beer to hard-
stuff lining the wall
behind the bar;
“we’ll sample them all,”
he said, and
i’ll be damned
if he wasn’t right.
his memories
spanned centuries,
landscapes mangled
and twisted; brought low
by rot and violence;
even in silence,
the world inside
him shivered.
and so we drank
through histories
i cannot measure
until our senses dulled
and lulled us into lies.
on a rainslick sidewalk,
we parted ways—
he, to stumble
back through the past;
me, to tremble
before the night.
(Read more of William Haskins’ poetry here)
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