Art

he was approaching eighty
when i met him.
a four inch paint brush
in his hand.
a tall
string bean
of a man with bad teeth
and a can of Budweiser
in his pocket.
his red hair, thinned,
was pushed back
with grease.
his eyes bleary with drink,
his ears too long
for his narrow face.
he said anything to anyone.
cursed the line that wouldn't move.
shook his head
at the world he was
stuck in, and couldn't leave.
he talked about
world war two.
called them japs, and krauts.
showed me his scars.
his bullet wounds.
the tattoo of the ship he was
on that sank
when torpedoes hit the side.
he wrote his phone number down
on a little slip of paper once,
a week before he died
in his one bedroom rental
in logan's circle.
he wrote his name, the numbers
in perfect script handwriting.
legible and even,
he may have been Catholic.