Jack Moody
dark bars on sunny days there’s nothing romantic about being a drunkespecially a drunk that writesbecause for god’s sakeyou better have more to write about than that barstool under your ass.no one loses sympathy like a drunk that only writes about being a drunkbut hey, I’m learning the door is left open so the sunlight comes in and it’s blinding.when people walk in, they’re obscured by the bar’s shadowand bathed in the glow of light from behind like each one is angelbut they’re not.they’re drunks.because it’s four in the afternoon in a dark bar on a sunny day.if any angels have entered through these doors,they clipped their wings a long time agoor they just wear baggy clothesI’m hoping for that. I always imagined that if angels were real,they would be the ugliest human beings you could ever meet;only the most downtrodden, horrible, broken peopleotherwise it’d be too easyno one has sympathy for the angels.I believe you’d have to go to the darkest places of humanity to find the angels,they’d like it thereno gated communities, no law offices, no government buildingsno, if angels are realthey’re under the bridges and sleeping on mats in section eight housing,shooting up heroin on street corners and selling ass to johns on 82nd street no one has sympathy for the angelsso maybe there’s wings underneath those torn jackets after alland no one will ever know.they sit at barstoolswaiting for humanity to convince them we’re all still worth itand they’re still waitingno wonder they drink. a hopeful argument for entropy there are many things that work about lifemost of those are broken on the surface.bloody fights,messy sex,violent breakups,drunken conversations,near-fatal car crashes.anything that spikes the heart rate,dances with deathwe all live on the precipice of annihilationbut very rarely acknowledge it when you can,when you experience thingsthat bring you to the edge of oblivion and back,a great white certainty occurs to youand the mind calms.you enter the moment,and the moment screams in wild tonguesuntil the noise becomes a soft staticthe roses bloom and wither before your eyesand wrinkles form on the faces of the youthit all happens.existence is put on a loopon a great big projector screenand a shadowed figure that doesn’t look unlike youis at the helmthings make sense again. and then when they don’t,which will eventually come,the birds sing a bit more in tuneand the faces of strangers share more featureswith that face in the mirrorthere’s something there.you may not yet know what it is,but it’s there. we all go to the grave together,the sunand the moonand plantsand animals and people nothing dies alone.that’s the least anything couldever ask for we’re not so different, you and i every day I meet a woman I could fall in love with.when I’m in,I’m in.I’ve never broken up with someone in my lifeIf I love you,I can never leave on my own volitionit has always been my shortcomingsor insecuritiesthat’s broken the seal of companionship I think about death a lotabout as much as I think about womenI think there’s a connection there. trouble with women has been the birth ofentire philosophies,wars,art forms,suicide methods from such a physical,carnal experiencecomes the closest thing to spiritualitythat some people will ever know you worship your godI’ll worship women and whiskey we all end up in the same place. I just may get there faster Jack Moody is a short story writer, poet and freelance journalist from wherever he happens to be at the time. He has had work published in Down in the Dirt Magazine, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Round Up, Cold Creek Review, CC&D Magazine, Rat's Ass Review, Ignatian Literary Magazine, The Legendary, and Southern Pacific Review, with work forthcoming in Brick Moon Fiction. He didn't go to college. He likes his privacy. He doesn't have a social media account. Don't ask him to make one. Contact him at j.moody9116@gmail.com