A Brief History of the Barroom Brawl

[AJStoner]

How little the self-styled avatars

Of civility understand the past

And the honored place of brutality.

How can we revere the noble tiger,

Dismissing his teeth and his razored claws?

 

There was a time, when scars were in fashion,

And the flash of hotheaded steel was vogue,

That men erected manicured virtues

In lacy, convoluted monuments;

Daring one another to topple them.

 

By the silken, sissy-slap of a glove

Or a nice Chablis, applied to the face,

The natural order was ever maintained

With zeal enough to make Darwin chuckle

And set the ladies fans a fluttering.

 

The barroom brawl is beneficiary

Of this ancient and honored tradition:

The pool cue has succeeded the rapier,

The broken bottle usurps the bodkin.

What this new landscape wants for eloquence

 

It makes up in blue collar workmanship

And a more grassroots sense of bravado.

Until Byron’s ghost should return from Greece

I’ll content myself with humble brawling

In this wharf-side dive with the rest of them.