"The Old Man's Legs".
"When you come too soon to take me out of this place, I go.
Anything's better than staring at that old man's legs,
all yellow and puffed up from cirrhosis.
Sure, I'm a drunk, too, but I never in my 25
years seen nothing like this--
his ankle swollen fat as healthy man's thighs, scaly and rude,
his Buddha belly huge as my eight month pregnancy,
face blank.
He can't even fucking raise up out of that motor chair
to get his bowl of mush every day.
What is he doing in this state-funded treatment place,
anyway?
Staring closer at Hell than anyone I've ever seen.
Even at the Vets Club in Eugene, even outside
on the filthy street, even that wet-brained guy down at the AA
place at the crossroads.
A lost cause, I'm thinking.
And this, after Eva, the ex-junkie counselor,
who still gets drunk on weekends,
lectures in group looking right at me.
There are no lost causes, baby, and by the way,
you don't have a problem--
you are a problem.
And that's when I fade into you, and your brown shirt,
and your clean white shirt, and your brown skin,
into the dark dirt parking lot outside the main house,
cigarette smoke whispering behind us,
as if the very spirit of Jesus has
come to sweep me and you and the rest of us evil sinners away."