The Empty Bar

There's nothing like an empty bar.

Walking in and not a soul is there,

Other than the bartender.

It's as empty as a tomb.

There are ghosts of patrons past 

mingling still in the haze of fleeting shadows,

In the murmurs of creaking floors,

And in the faint lingering odor of perfume and old cigarettes.

Lights all lit up in preparation for those that will never come.

There's enchanting music playing softly—

You can hear yourself think here. 

You can hear the soft murmur of those happy ghosts laughing, flirting,

Celebrating birthdays, holidays—

New Year's 1956.

Weddings, divorces, babies being born. 

Sad consolations of someone's passing—

For whom a drink sits on the bar.

Cheers to them and this—

For those who haven't been here in years,

But are here still, nonetheless, to reminisce.

The bar doesn't know that it is dead.

It holds out hope to live again past glory,

Waiting for people to come back 

Who are buried in a graveyard three blocks away.

Bars age like people age—people who drive by, 

Peer in the window and pass. 

That's where my father used to drink.

My grandfather met my grandmother there. 

But nobody's there now. Nobody. Not a soul.

The place is dead.

It's the autopsy of a glancing eye

Of the swipe right or left generation.

They go down to the new place that ain't for me

With the jungle music and no jungle.

But I got control of the jukebox here. 

The full attention of the pretty bartender who would never give me her attention otherwise, unless I tip her obscenely well—

Though she is not for me, anyway. 

And unlike the other place, 

Here there is a world of possibilities that may at any minute walk through that old green door 

That has opened and shut more than I have breathed. 

It has been painted over more times than years I've been alive. 

This is the place where dreams were born 

and where they died, once upon a time.

This is where people had their first and last drinks generations before us.

Before they went to a war they never came back from. 

Where someone was stabbed once, or twice, and where someone proposed. 

Where livers begged for mercy for over a century,

and depression was drowned for a little while longer on highballs and vodka martinis.

This place celebrated prohibition ending when it ended. 

It hasn't changed much over the years. 

People have come and they've gone,

They have graduated and they have resigned. 

This is where I met you in another life, I am sure.

When once it was the most popular bar in town

And for once, to my favor, when the stars aligned.  

This is where we met, yes, I am sure. 

I remember your eyes in the string lights, 

sitting at the table over there. 

I was alone and you asked if anyone was sitting here, 

though there were other empty stools and chairs for you to choose.

I was the luckiest man on the earth, 

in this other life.

Was it St. Patrick's Day?

I didn't ask why you were here alone, 

nor did you ask me,

For it is unlucky to speak of luck, isn't it?

There was never anyone else for either of us

And, still, there is nobody else for me. 

We are not the type to settle, are we, love?

This is why I prefer to drink in the afternoon—

I ain't up against any sort of dying clock.

And there's more time for you to come back. 

I eye that green door every time it swings open,

Looking for one face.

Looking for you. 

No one else will ever or can do, not even for a night or two.

No pointless love drivel or cheapening the sheets.

Dying is the next best thing for maybe I'll come back again 

And this bar will be here as it is now,

As it was then when last I was brand-new. 

Maybe we are flirting in our minds from a distance,

Slowly progressing to another day to meet again. 

Or maybe I just need to be more patient and to wait here longer, and drink more. 

But that empty feeling of leaving without you

Buries me a little deeper on the backside of that green door. 

Tomorrow, I tell myself. 

Tomorrow, she'll come for sure. 

I wonder, wherever you are, if you remember in the back of your mind—

If this place exists there as it existed when we knew it. 

If you recall me somewhere in the hazy lights of this bar. 

Amongst the smell of draft beer, cigarette smoke, and the chalk of a pool cue. 

The pulsating murmur of a crowd celebrating no particular holiday or occasion. 

Only that it is a Saturday, or a thirsty Thursday.

A happy hour. 

Only that there is a live band or karaoke.

Or just a bottomless well of drinks on a payday. 

I wonder if you will come if I wait across from an empty seat

As though to summon you. 

Or will I get another demon, instead, who pretends to be you?

Or maybe you were born a million miles away and this is only a faint inkling in your mind.

Or maybe, somehow, I just miss you in passing. 

I sit here on a Tuesday, and you are here on Thursdays, 

And the bartender doesn't bother to tell us

Because she doesn't believe in love. 

And days apart, we sit at the same table and drink alone with each other's ghost— 

Which is still preferable to anyone else. 

I love you. 

I love you. 

I love you. 

I scribble on cocktail napkins.