Another can of Laker please.

He rambled as he always does
His voice is nasal and
Without enunciation.
He has a bushy moustache
Like a grey tickler Tom Sellick might wear.

I don’t know what he’s says
When he speaks to me at length
And I’ll be honest, I never have.
He knows my name and I’ve
Shaken hands with the man
Hello, my name is Andrew
Herrr my nmmmrr is jjjjurrrrsaan-
That being the extent
That I comprehended,
But I smiled and said I was pleased
Happy to meet him of course.
People don’t like being told to repeat
Themselves
Especially I find
During introductions.

He’s a short man
My height, perhaps an inch or three taller
Though to be fair,
That isn’t quite so hard.
He wears a frayed
Beaten and filthy
Red baseball cap that is
About two sizes too small
For his rather small head.

All of his clothes seem to be
Covered in dust.
Where I work, I discovered
The common clientele
Those who drink the most
Are often covered in dust.
On his back he has a
Beaten denim backpack
That I think he carries his life in.

But he smiles a lot
Counts for something right?

I recall one of the only things
He ever said
That I actually understood,
(Maybe his pronunciation improved
Either before or after his drinking,)
Was that there was a church
Handing out food somewhere,
A ways down the road from where
I work and sling cases and
Kill strangers slowly
He was rather pleased
With his full stomach
And was recounting stories
Speaking of macaroni and cheese
And the six
No seven
Fuck fuck
Fuck
Lots and lots and
Lots
Of different kinds
I think he said sorts
Of cheese
And how it strings off of everything.
It was a fine story
He was happy
When he got his single tall can of cheap beer
He was even happier.

I hadn’t seen him for quite awhile after that
Then again,
I hadn’t been in.
But I saw him the other night
A big smile across his face
Rambling away and slurring so badly
He wasn’t saying anything I understood
But in just a moment his smile dropped
And he pulled a picture from his
Filthy backpack
He and a woman
His grey Sellick moustache brown
And the smile that wrapped across him
Didn’t seem to be strained
By too many hung mornings.

He and the woman were dressed
In clothes befitting the eighties
The picture was aged
With a slight film of brown dirt
But they looked happy

He pushed the picture
And the frame it was in
Across the steel counter towards me
Looked past me
Through me like I wasn’t there
And just left it standing there
Looking through me for a moment or two.

Then his can of beer came up,
He traded the photo’s place
For a dollar and change.
Putting the memory
Whatever it was,
Back in his filthy bag
And he left with the beer
To slam it down
The very second he couldn’t see us.