20150828 (legal drug dealing)

Google had no image satisfactory for "down and dirty small neighborhood bar."
Even these glasses look too clean.

None of my family were entrepreneurs

Not a butcher baker candlestick maker

In the lot but if you include in-laws

Two I remember a cousin’s young

Husband who after the failure of two of his

Companies killed himself and an uncle

Of checkered history who ran a corner

Bar-grocery in the old neighborhood

Bodega’s much more descriptive 

To protect it from thieves he had a gun

Knew how to use it kept it 

Quite close as he bartended

He lived in the apartment above

The rear entrances guarded by a 

Great Dane so ferocious they penned

Him inside of two fences if he

Ever leapt over the inner he’d not 

Have room to charge the outer

I was about ten when I met the dog

Whose slobber would soak my shirt

Whose bark seemed to come 

From deep in the earth standing 

On his hind legs he towered 

Above me his massive paws curved

The fence top his nails like bent spikes

There was another uncle-in-law who ran a 

Gas station for a while but sold out to the 

Oil company then managed it for them

Two other uncles-in-law were independent

Insurance men not quite the cutting edge of

Corporate capitalism back to liquor sales

Apparently the bar was more profitable

Supported grocery losses my aunt

Too generous to the poor babchi

Whose pensions came up short

The end of every month she failed to check

Petty theft by kids this was long before

Cameras even mirrors would have helped

A church-goer she took loads of crap from 

Fellow hypocritical pew fillers

How her church money was tainted

From whiskey and beer

If one of my uncle’s patrons overdid it 

He’d call the family to get him

If they refused he’d drag the inebriant 

Out the door prop him up against the steps

He refused family requests not to serve them

It’s my business he’d holler it’s a free country

He’s got money let him spend it as he wants 

The bar served them well all drove new cars 

Bought a nice house in the ‘burb down the road 

Retired to warm California when

Their son joined the navy

Had you asked them if they were drug-dealers

They’d loudly protest as loudly complain 

They were not bourgeoisie either 

They lived let's say unexamined lives

I never asked him 

If in sunny San Diego his dreams 

Ever were troubled with the faces of 

Familiar alkies drinking their disability

Retirement dollars down every month 

One shot and beer at a time

c. J.S.Manista, 2015