Behind a Bottle Blue

Behind a Bottle Blue

written by: Pedro la Fuego

Alone
And on a bar stool
Steaming

Before the yard arm
Has crossed the small

A
barfly
Did
Buzz
Around my head

Trying to
Drink
from my glass
half full

A glass now
half empty

The buzz
It came

Like daggers in my ear

I splatter that
Drunken
Menace
With one swipe
Across a
gleaming oak veneer

My smiling eyes
rise
From the fly
That did try
drink my beer

And all the while
Sat there
Behind
There

Watching

Waiting

Tempting Spirits

Imprisoned
In glass oval
tears

Silent soldiers
I salute you all
What shall we seek today?

Well war of course
within ourselves

A salvo
Of shots
for every
battle lost and won

So once again into the madness
Dear fermented friends
It’s my turn to spin the gun

And as wild words
of ardent profess

Hammer forgotten dreams as they manifest

How vulgar they tongue the ear

And pepper the walls with their blank deceit

For my future’s sat right here

But behind yellow eyes
That pine and weep

And want not of death
Nor life
Nor sleep

But drink
and smoke
And
Lament
With
regret.

For
self-defeating sorrow
My withered friend
Has paved this path
we’ve crept

But a mind will labour
for what it will

And within sweet distraction lies a minute’s thrill

For this buxom barmaid
cannot leave
and must be sweet

So maybe I’ll stay a while
and offer her a drink

But without discourse
Or even a smile
She’s met my type before

And just a nod
is all she gives
as I order but one more

Maybe one last toast
to one and
All

So raise a glass

To the old man smoking
Wheezing in a fag burnt chair

For the ragged pub dog
Mad and balding
For every hungover drunk
That’s pinched a hair

Another

For the ladies lush
With cocktails sunk
At 30 minutes past two

And finally for my poor
crushed friend

Like me
A barfly

Stuck
Behind
A
bottle blue

With shaking hands
And a pickled liver

A moment’s clarity
And a shiver

What shall we seek today?

Another drink
Dear friend

Please leave this field empty

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• About
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Pedro La Fuego

Peter Lee AKA Pedro la Fuego is a Brighton poet, musician and founder of the Inclusive Neurodivergent Creative Arts and Peer Support Collective "The Walled Garden." Working in the space where myth, mental health, and creative identity intersect. My writing moves between two distinct internal voices: Peter Lee, the grounded editor who shapes the work, and Pedro la Fuego, the hypermanic alias who creates in bursts of raw, unfiltered intensity the problems that inspire it. Pedro doesn’t revise, refine, or look back — he generates, scorches, and leaves behind burnt unreadable pages I return to months later to sort out the ashes. Peter is the one who gathers the fragments, stitches the narrative, and makes the poems speak. Together they form a strange companionship: a shadow‑side duet shaped by lived experience of mental illness, where instability becomes a source of imaginative force rather than a mark of disorder.

Latest posts by Pedro La Fuego (see all)

• Behind a Bottle Blue - June 17, 2026
• Loco Motivus - March 14, 2026
• Cieder Muld and the Boy - December 15, 2025