Band of Brothers

Band of Brothers

 

 

 

There’s you, a few of your friends, a bottle

or two of whiskey, a case of thirty in red white and blue (just in case), and

a shared pack of smokes in this old room

 

You’re screaming over the top of your lungs

at each other, because none of you want to be the one that turns the volume

down;

 

-Not on such serenades, ballads, and attacks

as are on this playlist- until it’s time to break just to crank your own

guitars for a spin;

 

-Just after or in between sessions of speaking

wishfully of bands and women, of either this name or that- all pretend, though

not quite in the realm of some weird fairyland

 

It might as well be a well-packed concert

hall in here, but it’s just the group of you in a tired old house that’s seen

one too many of these. 

 

You shout over shots of whiskey, debating the

ins and the outs of each band, and of each song that’s played,

sometimes way too strongly,

but that’s just the whiskey

 

Or it could be what everyone is suppressing

inside; the things each of you gathered to escape or at the very least,

suppress.

 

Memories of love, loss, war, peace- people

and places not-so laid to rest-

 

All the things music is supposed to be about.

 

 

It could be the anger, pain, the joy, or any

sort of memories, not so safely harbored just beneath the shells, the masks you

all three wear

 

-masks that read “over it?” with pizza stains

and dead skin on your guitar strings

 

you down another

shot, and spark up a smoke- the bunch of you at once,

 All for one, and one for all.

 

-Then you repeat the process until the first of you falls 

 

You’re celebrating nothing, but here’s to

pretending- at least until morning when each of you wake, one by one cursing

the sun, and proceed to breakfast over hangovers and swollen lips

 

And memories �" still seething like the callouses

on your fingers-

 

Still bleeding.