Peyote Pete
Shuttered up from smoke from the chimney 
this pallid youth chews buttons for breakfast
and shrinks back from the guy on the porch.
In sunlight his amorphous softness
is less menacing; the grimacing
and insidious sniggering subsides
‘He is a living gin’ Pete tells me
‘you can tell by de whites of his acid green eyes
and the thump of his Frankenstein boots’
Again he hears the voices inside and
shuttered up by smoke, his hands to his throat
curls up into a ball of asphalt screaming
‘agh de fumes, de fumes, agh de fumes!’
