Sorrows

I wasn’t paying the singer any attention, and just got down to the business of consuming alcohol and drowning my sorrows. After my third double vodka I got a funny look from the barman but the night was still young and I had much to forget. I turned on my bar stool and looked over the clientele.

One of the booths had an old man, looked like a professor in a corduroy jacket with patched on the sleeves; he even had a pipe on the table in front of him. There was a table with three business jocks, all laughs and back slapping, shirts with loose ties. They were sharing a pitcher of beer and bonding in a way I felt was too fake for comfort.

The stage held a acoustic guitar a stool and one lonely looking blues singer. The face on this guy told you more than any lyric he could ever sing, this was the face of a man who knew pain. Though the joint contained more faces, the rested in the darker places of the bar and as such were beyond my interest. I started to listen to this sorrowful man singing his blues. Maybe my pains would shrink if confronted with larger stronger examples of their species.

His woman had left him, and his heart turned to stone, his lyrics told of his losses but I knew this song was just fluff. His heart what was left of it was not in this story. These were the troubles another man had wrote down. I wondered if he had a song to sing that would spill his own beans. I carried my fourth vodka towards the stage and sat at a vacant table.

My new vantage point brought other faces into focus but not a one of them had anything to distract me from the lonely guy. I let his song come to a close and then heckled up to him “Man you sing it, tell us how it is.” I called as I applauded politely

“That I might” he called back “Here’s one you might not know.”

“Well I wake up every morning

Damned cold and alone

Without you baby

Can’t make a house a home.

You just went up and left me

Left me nothing

Not one thing I was due

Nothing but my name

And these…

...destitute blues

My mama never told me

A woman could do such wrong

She never taught me

Never sang me sad songs

I wait for you to come back

I wait for you to write

I wait for hell to freeze over

Each and every night.

I want to tell you

I forgive you

I want to tell you

I’ll forget

I just want to hold you

But all I hold onto

Are the heartache and regret.

Guess I fell for you stories

The tall tales you did tell

The taller they came

The further I fell.

I got nothing against you baby

Cus’ I got nothing at all

You done led me astray

Yeah, You led me astray

When you got away

And all I got left

Are these…

…destitute blues

Ahh Thank you.”

I returned to bar mid way through and had settled up my tab and was leaving as he struggled to the last line. The car park was slick with the rain that had been falling earlier in the night. I was in no state to drive so I walked further into town and found another bar. I still had sorrows to drown. And in this place they just kept bobbing back up to the surface.

---
603 words