Orange Poppies

There’s no Nixon-goes-to-China move left.

No tale my pink, Kennedy-sized head

doesn’t tell you without your asking.

In French it’s called Rue de la End, My Friend.

I went into debt renting hotel rooms,

my longest conversation with the front desk:

‘Yes, I am going to stay three more days,

reruns of Cheers in the north of England!’

Much like a Maupassant story, I think,

I worked hard to erase my debts, and then,

my face, bashed by age and east-end doctors –

oh, poppies, lilies and chrysanthemums.

Mark Twain’s rock-bottom memoir of being drunk

and slinking through the dusty back streets

of Virginia City, unseen, alone,

seems like a late-life paradise to me.