The cold brick hole in the wall

(or 'How to add brooding melodrama to your local watering hole')

A brick wall, alley in back,
chocolate lab and manx cat,
chucking Guinness at the bar and chatting up the skanks,
we’ve reached that
uncertain age and it’s
why we’re where we’re at.

Soft snow, white, metre thick,
Pick a private booth for carefree conversation tricks;
grey and slush, cold as ice, wallow in a vice,
never go home because your bed is full of lice.

Sweet wings hot as suicide,
lips bloody flaming red,
railing on about alements,
half a litre fills a head.
Darts needling
barbs witty,
clattering billiards, costumed customers,
neon firefliers sopping soggy coasters;
the warm smothering revolving roasts you
up and down and over.

Give me fire, flames, elbow-room to boast;
fifty years of these shut-up bars, this dirty water and deaf screaming,
these noisy dark halls. Fifty years
until I’m toast.