Two Poems by Robert Philbin

Barflies

I don’t want to talk about bars.
Don’t want to remember them,
the smell of piss and dirty panties.
I don’t want to think about my father

in those days when bars were in my
life because I couldn’t get out of his.
And then I caught on to everybody’s game
and to this day, there are certain kinds

of bars, the kind Todd Moore writes about,
the kind that felt like home to Bukowski,
that I never go into. I don’t care about
any of those guys, those vicious old fucks
and their love for children.

______________________

random violence
at the kitchen table

 

Charles Bukowski reminds
me of my father, only
my father ended up
a better man somehow.

He pulled himself out
of that miserable neon
shit world of bars.

I caddied at age 11
so I could get one of
those cool shirts that
came all the way from

San Juan, and listened
to him play his new gibson
les paul into a long
Seagrams summer night.

Took me years to understand
why my kid brother hid in
the closet everytime the old
man came home from work.