Four Poems
by Mike McHone
There’s Always a Fight
There’s always a fight in every bar. Maybe two guys will roll in from the night
and have it out, or maybe it’s the fight you have with the memories floating in
the ice of your drink, threatening to Titanic your soul with every sip, or the old
guy to your left treating your eardrum like a speedbag with every dumbass thing
he says about women and immigrants, or, simply the match on the TV in the corner
behind the cobwebs and the dust. Maybe the fat guy to your right, giving head to his
ninth beer, will mouth off to the woman beside him, and she’ll slap him with a palm
and, later, a divorce. Isn’t it always some palindrome of a fight between the swirling
blades of a ceiling fan and the stink of an old man’s voice, between an ice cube and
an autopsied marriage? Aren’t we all waiting for a bell, hoping for a belt, praying for
a standing eight, punching towards a standing o, hoping the beer-soaked towel doesn’t
get tossed?
Opium
as it seeps in
every worry dies
they say it’ll kill you
please
while there’s still time
Cassino
He said the Brits came to Cassino
and locked up and killed every last German within days
Young men with young skin in uniforms and coats
and hats and guns, tanks and jeeps after they destroyed the abbey
One night, after the liberation, he heard a girl screaming
and the sound of men laughing down the street from where he lived
while music played and soldiers sang and clanked mugs in cafés
like the bells of Monte Cassino before the bombs
“Pretty things,” he said. “They looked like glitter when they fell.”
They found the girl the next day. They buried her the day after.
He sat in his Michigan chair and told me and my friend, his grandson
these things in broken English
“The Germans were always quiet,” he said. “Never bothered us.
Never said anything to us.”
He never heard that kind of singing or laughter
until he was free
No Man Tells a Man
no man tells a man how sharp
your toenails become
when you’re past 40
no one talks about the hair in the ears
or the weird bruises that crop up
out of nowhere
or that it takes twice as long
to piss and how it’s best to not wear
khakis in case you dribble after
you put it away
no one tells you your erections look
like dying flowers or the fact that the blonde
at the pharmacy has as much chance of
stirring you as your grandmother
no one talks about the loss of friends
or the loss of love for music, film, books
food, drink, sex, walks, for sitting and
staring at the sky, for dreaming
for daydreaming, for jokes, laughing
smiling, enjoying a sunset, enjoying
a sunrise, for everything
yes, there are commercials for meds
but we tune those out, don’t we?
yes, we can talk to our doctors, but
we don’t, do we?
there are the shrinks, but we don’t
visit them. there are the sisters and
cousins, but they have their own lives
and their lives, like all lives, crush them
as they crush all of us
no one tells a man how heavy the weight
is, only that he can handle it, can carry
it, should never complain about it
should feel embarrassed if he says anything
about it, should be ashamed if he feels
the strain of anything about it
no man tells a man to lay it down, at least
once in a while
the only thing a man tells another man is that
the burden must be carried, and his end
can only be decided by time
never by personal decision, only by
cancer, accident, war, murder, or the like
to quit the game is to lose the game
and the only way to win the game is to stay
in the game
and that, above all, is the most important
thing about being a man: to win every game
no man tells a man what it’s like to be a man
unless they’re lying during a eulogy and then
don’t we all love a man?
call him hero, father, brother, husband, and
most importantly, a hard worker?
No one loves a man, only the memory
of a man when the man himself is a memory
No man ever talks to another man, but then
no man would listen anyway
BIO: Mike McHone's work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Anthony Award, and the Best of the Net Award. A Derringer Award winner, he has appeared in numerous outlets including Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Playboy, Dark Yonder, and elsewhere..