Swing Shift Blues

A poem by Alan Dugan

What is better than leaving a bar

in the middle of the afternoon

besides staying in it or not

having gone into it in the first place

because you had a decent woman to be with?

The air smells particularly fresh

after the stale beer and piss smells.

You can stare up at the whole sky:

it’s blue and white and does not

stare back at you like the bar mirror,

and there’s Whats-‘is-name coming out

right behind you saying, “I don’t

believe it, I don’t believe it: there

he is, staring up at the fucking sky

with his mouth open. Don’t

you realize, you stupid son of a bitch,

that it is a quarter to four

and we have to clock in in

fifteen minutes to go to work?”

So we go to work and do no work

and can even breathe in the Bull’s face

because he’s been into the other bar

that we don’t go to when he’s there.

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Poems in English 

• You Say You Love poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Written In The Cottage Where Burns Was Born poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Woman! When I Behold Thee Flippant, Vain poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• What The Thrush Said. Lines From A Letter To John Hamilton Reynolds poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Two Sonnets. To Haydon, With A Sonnet Written On Seeing The Elgin Marbles poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Two Sonnets On Fame poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Two Or Three poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Translated From A Sonnet Of Ronsard poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• To The Ladies Who Saw Me Crowned poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• To Some Ladies poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• To George Felton Mathew poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• To Charles Cowden Clarke poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• The Gadfly poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• The Eve Of Saint Mark. A Fragment poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• The Devon Maid: Stanzas Sent In A Letter To B. R. Haydon poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• The Cap And Bells; Or, The Jealousies: A Faery Tale — Unfinished poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Teignmouth: “Some Doggerel,” Sent In A Letter To B. R. Haydon poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Stanzas To Miss Wylie poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Stanzas. In A Drear-Nighted December poem – John Keats poems by John Keats
• Staffa poem – John Keats poems by John Keats

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