Poem by Shane Smith

Personification of My Psyche, As Patrons of a Cerebral Dive Bar

It was getting late.
And just as I was beginning to think he might take a night off,
he comes marching through the door.
He came in, as he does every night,
with the look of an executioner
pinned to his brow.
He walks like a man with the scales of justice
stuffed into his back pocket,
and a judgment day trying to
force it's way out
from behind his eyes.

Violent always carries a gun,
you can usually see the outline in his shirt.
And besides,
it's not like he keeps it a secret.
He's the type of guy that carries a couple of knives, too,
for reasons he's never expressed...
suffice to say he's not always comfortable
letting the Hydra-Shoks have all the fun.

He immediately pulls the air in the room as taught as the skin of a drum,
when he comes in.
You can practically hear the air in the room
twang, as though it were a guitar string being tuned.
Tighter, and tighter,
until the silence finally snaps.

"Jack and Coke"
he says.

He sits next to Sarcastic,
who spends most of his waking life at the bar.
Violent never takes the same seat, otherwise he'd always be alone.

There's not a soul in this place that hasn't been threatened by Violent.

It happens about the same every time he comes in.

Sarcastic and Impatient say something offhandly to each other,
and it sets Violent off.
Intelligent is on his way out the door at this point,
Reasonable and Logical are nowhere to be seen.

And when it does happen like this,
and it always does,
the only man in control is Violent.

He grabs me by the front of my shirt,
and pulls me over the bar.
A cacophony of liquor bottles crash to the floor,
as I struggle to break free.

At this point,
Sarcastic is usually passed out in a pool of his own blood, on the floor.
This is when he threatens to take over.

He pulls me in,
and his inky pupils engulf his irises.
Spidery veins splinter in from behind his eyelids
like bolts of lightening,
and he says:

"I will be the last thing you ever witness, so take a good look."
his pistol appears from behind his back
and quickly finds its way to my temple,
a familiar resting place.
"I suggest that you sleep in the clothes
you want to be buried in,
because on the day you die,
I will be nothing more than
a ghost in the gunsmoke."

Tonight, though,
he's just sitting at the bar,
like everyone else.

He drinks his Jack and Coke,
pays,
and leaves.

As he walks out,
I can't help but notice
that there's no pistol outline,
protruding from his waistline.

It's a strange night to be running this place.

The only one that's got anything to say at this point is Sarcastic.

But Sarcastic always has something to say.

Shane Smith is a music producer, graphic artist, writer, photographer, and network administrator living in Lake Mary, FL. He is a student at Seminole State College studying Computer Programming. You can contact him via Facebook (listed as Shane Smith in Orlando, FL) or by e-mail (shane@shanebsmith.com). His website is www.shanebsmith.com.