Whisky poet! After eating a cold supper,
the crowd Pat used to associate with
when she was still at high school
no longer want to hear you read your poems — it’s after
eleven o’clock on a hot December evening, and you
are a little sore-head. Yet from Vegas
I finally came to your rescue.
I hadn’t slept long when I
awoke, a few miles under the table, sinking
slowly into everything had come down
with a faint crash. I’d make up my
mind later, I thought, should there prove
to be a reason to do so. Meanwhile I had plans
to get laid, as in plots to hatch, so I bestirred
myself from the futile picnic and rang
to be continued. Mr Penny, who lived in
my pocket, had a chute I used to slide down
while fishing for odd jobs: wherever it led to
told me what I wanted. I didn’t want
whisky, but I did want the whisky poet
to read me one of his poems. I’d step
to the edge of the precipice and signal. Sometimes
I’d see Pat and her school friends signalling back
to thank me — clearly they thought I too was
untanked — as I entered the back of the ambulance
and the whisky poet began declaiming, and his name
went up in lights, and I blanked out
as we left the kerb.