Marcus Beilby's painting Happy Hour at the National

It is of course ironic
and we wouldn’t want it any other way
in our Western literature
that the blokes
and I use the word to place them and us
at the National Hotel
in Marcus Beilby’s super-realist painting
‘Happy Hour at the National’
should be so down cast
if not to say despondent
what with the evening sun outside
and their friends and family adrift
somewhere in other lives

There’s one bloke
in the foreground if you can call it that
who is sitting on a seat leaning forward
with his head propped in one hand
and his beer presumably in the other
with his blue and white banded thick jumper on
and jeans
and thongs on his feet

His elbow is resting on one knee
while the hand of that arm holds up his face
or should I say stops it falling further
because he is facing down
looking
but no doubt not seeing
the red patterned carpet
that has itself seen better days

Four men at the bar stand or sit on bar stools
chatting about who-knows-what to each other
two sets of pairs
all wearing jeans of various shades of blue
and I believe
although it is difficult to see in one case
all wearing some kind of shoes
sensible if it is cold enough
to wear jumpers and such to
warm the upper torso

But such is my habit
that I keep going back to the despondent man
slumped in his chair
head held from falling further
in one cupped hand

All his worries I’ve no doubt had
all his woes I’ve no doubt suffered

But to sit in a bar
ironically at the Happy Hour
in a dark brown plastic chair
is too depressing
it’ll do him little to no good

I want to get into that painting
and tell him, Buck up –
Here, the next one’s on me.



(Another poem writ for NaPoWriMo)