Oregon Tavern Age: A Poem

A glass of Guinness

in a dive.

Rain rips outside.

Gamblers lose.

Mass shooting on one TV.

Harry Potter movie on the other.

Stuffed bobcat snarls overhead.

Corn dog $2.50

Homeless man enters, plays the slots.

Another homeless man enters, leaves.

His stench lingers.

Black and white photograph of Coos Bay’s last public hanging.

Poems for dead customers decorate the walls.

The poet is dead, too.

A favored patron, a sodden wordsmith.

No one wrote a poem for him.

I guess I am now.

Mt. Rushmore whiskey decanter.

When is someone going to fly a drone into that desecration of the Black Hills?

Hamm’s bear in permanent hibernation.

Regulars at the bar know it all,

including the old man who pours Bud Lights into his coffees

and limps around the neighborhood

like a deputy in a B Western,

searching the ground for cigarettes and cans.

He’s homeless half the time,

so the story goes,

soon, most likely, full time.

But at least he wears

that neon emergency vest.

They give those out to the homeless

to keep them from being run over.

They call this outreach.