Whiskey 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
whiskey, but I did want the whiskey 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 whiskey poet began declaiming, and his name
went up in lights, and I blanked out
as we left the kerb.