Yes, good evening, Mr. Forest. Not one of your trees have fallen in the woods. Your hair is as thick as your bark for beer. And snowflakes seem to have dusted the crowns of your timbers. And now you sweep your hand through the brown foliage releasing the flakes into the air, and I slap down the lid on the tray of the viscous red lake where the cherries for cocktails lie. And I imagine a scene with poetic verse
I take you by the Head and Shoulders,
Invert you,
And plunge your dome into a bucket of ice,
the veritable tundra of bewilderment
STOP SPREADING YOUR !*#*@!! DANDRUFF, YOU BEAST!
Take me far from the madding crowd. Business is very, very slow. No flocks on the pasture. Is there such a thing as a beer shepherd? A romantic figure wandering the streets with a crook, herding drinkers into the bar. I must be to blame for this barren scene. They must be reading the YELP reviews. Or the sex appeal of a middle-aged bartender is as exciting as the dying bubbles in a bottle of forgotten Budweiser, left in a dark corner to die.
And there it is, the mythical Bottle of the Lost Budweiser. It's been hiding under a table, and only discovered by the bar's flashlight looking for The Lost Phone. So many things are abandoned to fate in a bar's archaeological dig. The phone has a charge. Messages bleep. Where RU? Are you OK? :(
NO! I'm under a bench with a bottle of dead #Budweiser.
Finally, a customer, a human, a lonesome woesome, he may be the last of his kind. His bark is thin, his dome is dull, his hair is gone. His choice is Budweiser and he brightens up like one of those low watt bulbs on sale at the 99c store. And I ask him how things are going? And he says yes. And I ask him if he wants another beer and he says no. And I ask him to leave as it's now closing time, and he asks for another beer. And I say no. And fire his empty Budweiser into the Tomb of Broken Glass. And I am reminded in all this emptiness that the only words that have any meaning in a bar are yes and no.