Last Real Poet (Silver Crown Version)

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James O'brien

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The last real poet walked into a bar called America
Where I sat most mornings drawing maps on napkins
Where the gray light punched through windows yellow from decades of Marlboros
Ate up your nerves like a two-toothed kid hungry for candy

The poet approached the bartender and said
"OK, bartender, give me what you got, if you've got any"

The barman let it bleed
Four long shots of courage and cool and good luck and chutzpah
The poet swallowed this poison and wheezed while I watched from my napkins
While in the halls over our heads
Someone crashed into something and broke something fragile

Up there, junkies and musicians executed slow dives into obscurity
In front of courtesy mirrors in low-price rooms to rent

"I could smell this place for a mile," spoke the poet
"I could feel it like a planter's corn, a small white hot spot on the tar
Every time I took a step"

The bartender topped him off with courage and put the other bottles away
I collected my napkins and waited
The poet drank

"This is where art comes to die," he said
"This is the final lounge in the final hotel of all of our lives
Whatever you're serving, mister, make it a double
And one for my friend in topography"

"Are you dying?" I asked the poet, from my corner of the room
"I'm in exile," he replied. "And my country is the namesake of this saloon
I've come here to remember"

"I remember my mother
I remember my brother a child with blue cheeks and limp wrists, never crying
I remember my ghost-white sedan
Churning up the earth in another man's hands, a beautiful man
A messiah, a Charlton Heston madman freedom fiction lover from Texas, forever"

The poet sang out this way for half an hour, rattling jazz at us
The only two listeners in the bar
The courage kept flowing
I'd had five, maybe six, before he was done
The bartender winked at me
He'd kept me on the poet's tab

When he'd finished, words hung in the afternoon air like vapor from a gun
It smelled like oranges

The poet stood and I felt like I saw him for the first time...
Gaunt, roped with exercise
His eyes a flat grey like the seashore just before it rains

He plunked his money down and a tip
He tossed a paper envelope next to all of it
His fingers whisked my table on his way out the door

The bartender salted the change from the dollar bills
And left the envelope where it lay
He blinked at me through the gloom

In my bravery I opened the envelope and into my hand fell a thin bronze disc
It was blank on one side
On the other was a word
Like the stamped words on a pill, a medallion, a medal, or a coin
Anthrax
Somewhere upstairs, somebody sneezed

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