that bar in buffalo by John Grochalski

was across the parking lot

from my job selling wine

i went there for lunch

as much as i could afford

a burger and a few beers

and a chance to sit there

and wonder what in the hell

i was doing with my life

sometimes i drank my lunch away

with just a bag of chips

and it felt like heaven not being at that job

and i didn’t care about that job

buffalo was cheap

my rent was cheap

it was probably the last time in my life

where i didn’t have to care about anything

now i have a career

and i’m middle-aged

waiting on a pension

that the job keeps threatening

to try and take away

i agree to things that i don’t want to do

through gritted teeth

and tell myself that it’s fine

while getting drunk on the couch at home

i pass the dimly-lit bars now

and never walk inside

because they hold nothing for me

except aggravation

but that bar in buffalo

had a jukebox that played all of my songs

and the people left me alone

the burger was good

the beer was cold

and i sat there on my lunch

reading bukowski poems

like i was reading the bible

sometimes my boss came in

and glared at me while he had a sandwich and a coke

but i was on my time

and i ignored him

he couldn’t touch me in that bar

i’d order another beer

just to call his bluff

the prick never said a word to me

when we were back in the wine store

he knew buffalo was cheap

he knew the rents were cheap

and there were cheap jobs everywhere

that would hire the clueless

and spiritually confused

so i stocked wine bottles

and breathed stale beer

through my nose

thought about bukowski

suicide and death

and when i punched-out

i’d walk out into that parking lot

and think about going back to the bar

but it would be lit up in neon

and you could hear loud, young after-work voices

and the worst club music booming into the night

the place seemed

foreign and strange

like some slick aliens had taken it over

so i’d just go hone

to get drunk listening to cds

but the next day

the place would be back to normal

silent and dull

waiting for me to come over

at noon

to sit with my beer

and my thoughts

sometimes pretending that i was rich man

and there was nothing in this world

that i had left to do.

John Grochalski is the author of the poetry collections, The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), and The Philosopher’s Ship (Alien Buddha Press, 2018). He is also the author of the novels, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016).  Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where the garbage can smell like roses if you wish on it hard enough.