Saint Ignatius, Hold the Bitters

Saint Ignatius, Hold the Bitters (A Shitbum Reckons His Days)

Three beer soaked
semesters
at a flunky
school in Western
Carolina,
a severance deal
and then a
binge,
perhaps a smokeless,
shaky flight
back to
Bucharest
if they'd have
you?

Nursing a swag
can with lice
clattering across the
oak,
cigarette ashen beard,
no Burns to eulogize your
fumes and
Yuengling,
broken
choke on a fried
pickle,
prayers to the god of wine
for someone
to tell your wide
roving tales
to.

Your Passport stamped,
greasy trams and
trannys,
crawling through
a Copenhagen brothel,
loafers reeked with
the foul of the Quarter,
a dime and six kronen
in the pocket
of your tattered wool
knicks,
Waltzing Matilda
to The Best of
The Midnighters,
you'll never see
thirty again.

Maybe Chile?
Maybe Spain?
A prowl in the rain
with a sweat damp
fag,
a weathered satchel
round
your corduroy,
three leather bound
Ethics
and a girl two
alleys back in ruins
with the pox—
a casualty of
market forces,
you say.

A scribbled note weighted
by bedside
claret,
a vintage Beaumont Adams
chambered
six spun and
cowardly pawned at the Jewess
for
another go at the
bottle.

Town Tavern,
sixpence of ale
and hot sulphur
match sparks
lighting your Meerschaum
merry
where you'll find
another useless night
telling your wide roving
tales
to Freshmen only
too eager
for you to finish
and blend with their
yesterdays.

Maybe you'll redeem your pistol?
Maybe you'll redeem yourself?
Perhaps you'll snivel
your way back to the
wife and child
you left in a Boston tenement,
but the child is now a teenage
waste
and the wife common lawful to a
plumber.
Or perhaps you'll stay true to
character
and booze your
way through the vacuum,
joining that endless procession
of sots
hell bent on imagined
greatness
and bowery
fame,
laid to rest in a
gents,
mourned,
by a passing
tabby.