The Troubadour - An Original Poem

He strums his guitar
In the seedy old bar
In front of a dozen people or so
They pay no attention
To the man on the stage
While he lives and dies with each note
Now his set is finished
He walks off the stage
To a smattering of applause
How do you go on
Night after night
When only you have belief in your cause?

He walks out the back door
After a couple of beers
That cost him most of his take for the night
He pretends to not hear
The heckler’s barbs
Otherwise there’ll be a fight
He walks down the alley
Past the homeless man
And the drug dealer plying his trade
He pauses for a moment
Considers making a score
But that will cost him all of the money he made

He arrives home
To his modest apartment
Ramshackle would be a good word
He turns on his TV
Goes to make some coffee
But the Goddamn coffee machine doesn’t work
The troubadour falls asleep
on the sofa again
The infomercials are droning on
He wistfully dreams
About his girl Eileen
When he wakes up she’ll still be gone

In the crisp cool morning
Our hero wakes up
Slings his guitar onto his back
He heads out to the street
To play for spare change
So he can afford his bottle of Jack
The wind it is cold
And the people are few
He stays out there longer than planned
What he wouldn’t give
To play the subway stations
But without the proper permit he’s banned

His fingers are frozen
The skin it is cracked
He’s chilled right down to the bone
He’s earned enough money
For that bottle of whiskey
But not enough for the subway ride home
It’s a long walk
And his body is creakin’
It takes him an hour or more
For the one hundredth time
On that day alone
He asks himself what am I doing this for?

Well the truth of the matter
And a sad truth it is
There’s nothing else that he can do
With no education
And no other skills
Nothing more to look forward to
So another night comes
At another seedy bar
Another indifferent crowd
He holds his head up
In one last act of defiance
And plays his last song extra loud

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I am Scott. I love writing poetry and song lyrics and one day I hope to turn my lyrics into music. Please upvote and follow. I always follow back. :)

Thanks to Pixabay for the images.

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