Billy

He was always laughing, glass-shattering sonic booms
that soared several octaves at blitzkrieg speed,
but there was something forced in that laugh,

plaintive, as if each and every convulsive cackle
was a cleverly choreographed cover-up attempting
to purge something putrid,

a pathogen so poisonous it compelled him
to seek new prey night after night, and we,
blinkered by our escapist needs,

were easily ensnared by his gargantuan guffaw—
to say nothing of those molten blue eyes,
the small button nose, pulpy pink lips,

a copper complexion alien to our snow-blown city,
and a torso that belonged in a Venetian fountain,
spouting fish paying tribute ...

Billy was simply a modern day Moses walking and
talking on water, parting the waves of lesser beings
... and making us laugh.


He liked his drink, but booze didn’t birth his banter,
that beer bottle just a redundant microphone or
symphonic baton waved to emphasize a point,

actions unnecessary because every eye in every room
was always glued to him like kids saluting the flag,
waiting for the July 4th fireworks,

his Gatling gun giggles so endearing, so mesmerizing,
we paid no attention to his glaring limitations,
fully aware he would never win a Nobel Prize

or be invited into Mensa International, even suspecting
there might be a void beneath his veneer of raucous
humour camouflaged as charisma,

but it never dawned on our congregation that his
caterwaul was really a plea couched in a chortle,
simmering shame about to bubble over.


He was hilarious and he was “hot," girls gawked
at his buttocks as he walked, but not all women
swooned in his presence, put off by the prospect

of perennial punishment by repeated repellent
punchlines while the lucky few who became
“significant others”— he never married—

were cruelly caricatured as blinded-by-bling
perma-tanned ketogenic fitness freaks convinced
that emojis were the highest form of empathy,

all of the victims at least 10 years younger than
Billy, each coupling provoking heated debate
as to which party, if either, was the “trophy”!!


Men were also drawn to the klaxon call of his
comedic karaoke—really just macho masculinity
masquerading in a clown’s costume; to them

he was a modern-day Pied Piper, his magical
flute fulfilling their foremost fantasies of foraging
in those fertile fields of the the fairer sex,

giving them confidence that they could be be
just like him ... except for those who, shall we say,
were unawed by the charade of his facade and

refluxed in disgust as Billy used golf outings,
expensive dinners with wines he couldn’t pro-
nounce and his full quiver of one-liners

to get rich selling insurance policies he didn’t
understand couldn’t explain— yet his band of
besotted bootlickers still bought big and blindly.


however as years devolved into decades, hunk
Hercules and his histrionic humor were painfully
supplanted by a bald, belching, beer-guzzling

Buddha-bellied public nuisance, hog jowls flopping
in their own breeze, a splotched purplish face dotted
with unmanicured tufts of spiky white hair,

and clawed hands that trembled grotesquely
as he labored to toast the ever smaller crowds
that greeted him in his old haunts,

his now Vaudevillian volcano regrettably
erupting with irritating regularity, and what
had once been fresh and uncontrived

was now little more than a poignantly pathetic
pantomime of past performances; he had
become a sorry sasquatch with a boombox,

incomprehensible to the younger generation,
recalling the boring banter, the dubbed
dialogue of their grandparents’ TV reruns,

Billy slowly shrinking before their eyes,
his own orbs glazed and sunken, bowed
head pendulating in stunned denial,

shoulders drooping like a boxer battered for
twelve rounds or a defrocked Wizard of Oz
at the end of his own Yellow Brick Road, so


despite all protestations to the contrary, no
one was surprised when three weeks after
another less than bravura performance,

Billy wobbled—no, staggered—into his regular
Tuesday night watering hole, bloodshot eyes
ping-ponging to avoid contact,

not even a muted murmur from his mouth,
just a raspy wheeze that seemed to ooze
from deep inside his distended abdomen,

a sound so disconcerting it screamed for exorcism,
but he somehow squirmed and stumbled his way
to the bar where, finally face to face with the foe

who had haunted and taunted him his entire life,
he flung himself at the mirror with all the force,
all the fury he could muster:

When the police arrived, they found a battered
body buried in shattered shards of mirror glass,
Billy’s face and fists engulfed in blood ...

the Pied Piper silenced but finally at peace.