blues bar on the edge of town

Late at night in a blues bar on the edge

of town, a brick building crowded with emptiness,

I'm drinking whiskey from a cloudy glass,

and listening to a man sitting at the piano

in the corner as he pours out his anguish

and his vampire fingers plunge through the ivory keys,

through the floor and the crumbling foundations,

and down into the earth, the victimized earth,

stirring magma to trigger a Vesuvius eruption,

a flame quenched only by drinks from my cloudy glass.

R. R. Shea