Pinaud's Tonic

Five disabled dollars later, this man is cleansed-

Briefly allowed to borrow some human sunlight

On another stranger’s bench.

His heart is now as hard as a claymore,

Pointed at some forgotten enemy,

Beating eight to the bar

like some slopehead jukebox,

Pulsing with the bagged donations

of o-positive neighbors back home.

The barber sweeps away the remnants

of this man’s raincatchers;

He knows how close they were

to being brothers to the dragon-

He has breathed its jellied fire before;

He shut that door with a shiny trade school license,

His talk gets smaller as the years allow.

For six hungry weeks, this man could be Westmoreland himself,

Safe in the knowledge that anyone could love him;

He could limp and clang

with the best of fatted Rotarians,

Eating the center of the rubber chicken

every Monday at twelve.

His neck stiffens in the breeze

with the steady burn of Pinaud’s Tonic,

He has become temporary master of all he can remember,

He rises to greet his brethren with a one-legged kiss,

He embraces the illusions of a town that evaded him.

(I gave him a cup of water, and he spilled it all over the place).