Hotel Bar in the Rain

Somewhere rain splashes in the eyes
of dead soldiers, but no one sees,
so it falls on me to imagine it
is the kind of thing I say that makes
bartenders cut me off. Rather than rain,

I hear the squeak of my departing
father’s sneakers speaking their sole word,
which I can’t translate, except to say
it’s like the sheen on the face of
a starlet in an old movie that you watch,
horrified by the black-and-white fact
that by now she’s forgotten
all her lines including her kids’ names.

Apollinaire said the future trembled
like a tiny, faraway light, but how could he
have foreseen this broken barfly
about to get bounced and this broke
waitress, nearly in tears, apologizing
for the lousy, overpriced nachos?

What can I do but overtip her
and lift my last bourbon to his lips
to take the shaking out of his hands?