McClenney To Beeville

I step outside for the night’s last cigarette.
So quiet I hear paper,
tobacco sizzle the permanent scar
between my first and second fingers.

I think about my old friend Leonard Larson.
Leonard had a broad, angry brow
like his hero Beethoven.
Compared his mastery of harmonica
to Beethoven’s command of piano.
Several years of failing to convince
anyone of this, along with a dual diagnosis,
got him sent away to the horrors of McClenney
for six months of ECT and a lifetime of Thorazine.

I drove a Kenworth for forty years,
then a bottle of Wild Turkey deep into the night.
Ended up in a trailer east of Beeville, Texas.
So quiet I hear paper
burn, flesh sizzle.
Not sure what got me thinking of
Leonard again, but he
would have liked it here.
Maybe it’s the peace and quiet.

To the north, an orange moon
cracks like an egg on the mountain.
It was never quiet in McClenney,
Leonard confessed.

I finish my cigarette,
watch the yolk run down
the other side of the mountain.