A Drunken Hangman

 

To any soul that cares I breathe, I am the drunken  

hangman

My disgrace great as was the power I laid to rest in  

quicksand

They used to send for me by car, assign me spacious  

quarters

Had all the whisky I could drink, had but a single  

order

And I stood in this world alone and those who paid me hated me

The heart inside me like a stone, this man you never want to  

see

My clients did not know me long, in wooden rooms stood  

trembling

The final one I barely touched, for I was barely  

standing

A warder strangled him instead, it took him seven  

minutes

That warder looked at me, enraged, and said “Your life is  

finished”

And in the boarding houses, since I toast my age with lemo

nade

Recent memories are few, there’s just a single fragment of one  

day

 

 

 

“What does this mean?” I gasped in joy, imagining re

demption

She glanced away and squinted back, in vexed incompre

hension

She said “Why must it be explained? I’ve taken nothing  

from 

you

I was just smiling at the day, and you’re that drunken  

hangman.”

She left the boarding house, human and unmoved and so com

posed

A  

world of feelings gaped at me as cancers stirred in all my weary  

bones

I  

felt now what I’d feared to know – unselfish love at far too late an  

hour

I will not be lonely, though, as ridicule and anguish mark my  

brow