When you hang out in the darkness
it’s hard to see the light...
You fail to recognize its likeness
and fail to know its might.

In that place of broken hearts
and sorrow in each glass,
we learned to call our pain great art
as the nighttime hours came to pass.

The smokey wings of cigarettes
plumed through the cold, stale air
wisping around our past mistakes
and tearing up our vacant stare.

Some sit here for the alcohol
some sit here for the conversation.
Some appear to have no reason at all
but all do come here for a reason.

We could not see his loneliness
when he thought he’d lost it all.
We could not see the nothingness
that resided beyond his heart’s cracked wall.

He sat there among us...the other lost souls
pleading for the bartender to hear us,
as we lamented life’s cruel tolls...
and the hope that was never near us.

The bar had no windows to the world
and the walls were painted in black.
It was a division line that couldn’t be unrolled
for it divides humanity without any slack.

Those of us lost, we didn’t recognize his pain...
What I wouldn’t give to turn time around
but in that darkness, he could no longer remain
and in death’s darkness, he was found.

We mourned for him in that dusty place
and wondered why... why it wasn’t seen before.
We never asked about his sullen face
when we were behind that barroom door.

When you hang out in the darkness
it’s hard to see the light...
You fail to recognize its likeness
and fail to know its might.

In that place of broken hearts
and sorrow in each glass,
we learned to call our pain great art
as the nighttime hours came to pass.

©March 18, 2005 Lori S. Maynard
In memory of a friend who decided he could no longer live.


I miss Wertz's bar. It has been closed for a handful of years now and it now exists as a Save-On Liquor store. So many colorful personalities and sadly...so many of those personalities have been extinguished from our light.

May you all rest in peace