Swing Shift Blues

A poem by Alan Dugan

What is better than leaving a bar

in the middle of the afternoon

besides staying in it or not

having gone into it in the first place

because you had a decent woman to be with?

The air smells particularly fresh

after the stale beer and piss smells.

You can stare up at the whole sky:

it’s blue and white and does not

stare back at you like the bar mirror,

and there’s Whats-‘is-name coming out

right behind you saying, “I don’t

believe it, I don’t believe it: there

he is, staring up at the fucking sky

with his mouth open. Don’t

you realize, you stupid son of a bitch,

that it is a quarter to four

and we have to clock in in

fifteen minutes to go to work?”

So we go to work and do no work

and can even breathe in the Bull’s face

because he’s been into the other bar

that we don’t go to when he’s there.

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Poems in English 

• Nominalism Is A Liquid Kuhi by Poetry In English
• My Mother’s Grief by Poetry In English
• If Truth In Hearts That Perish by Poetry In English
• I Havent Betrayed You My Hometown by Poetry In English
• Eclipse Of Love by Poetry In English
• Divided Passion by Poetry In English
• Death039s Claim by Poetry In English
• Dear Bhikkhu A Eulogy by Poetry In English
• As With A Senryu S Hardening Ridge by Poetry In English
• A Gogyohka And The Forgotten Panopticon by Poetry In English
• A Faded Postcard Is A Tanka Daydream by Poetry In English
• The Dead Woman poem – Pablo Neruda by Pablo Neruda
• If Truth in Hearts That Perish poem – A. E. Housman by Poetry In English
• Fragment of a Greek Tragedy poem – A. E. Housman by Poetry In English
• Diffugere Nives poem – A. E. Housman by Poetry In English
• Water Strider by Aaron Baker
• The Infernal Regions by Aaron Baker
• Honeycomb by Aaron Baker
• Dark Matter by Aaron Baker
• Wet City Night by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

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