COMES A POINT

Who was that guy who called himself Ulysses,
laced with tattoos and lank, slickened curls?
Wet even in the driest seasons. Sitting alone
in the wine-dark glow of the juke-box, he spent
all his quarters on "Sea of Love."

If this sounds sentimental, forgive me, but it was all
we had to live on out there; that, and the hag-thick rouge
of our single wasted bar-fly. Tommy kept
his glass of brine, our lost teeth floated in it,
marking every single fight. They were like periods to our sentences, stories began
and ended with them.

We would break out the salt and sandwiches
when morning sputtered to life,
radio traffic reports, the horizon wearing its’ first belt of long, sullen red.
That's just like us, to witness what we knew was coming.
Nothing was there, that's why we stayed.
Comes a point you can't live long without it.