The Heckler

The Heckler

He was between 40 and dead and had the look of a lad who often wet himself,

the bed, the settee, the doorway, the ditch,

wherever he happened to land at the end of a binge.

Regarding his ponytail, I thought about roadkill,

about tyre-flattened badger, black cross-stitch down the spine of a fox,

about the matted stink of tar and oil and dried-out shite and blood,

the whoom and whoof and whine of oblivious wheels going over and over.

Underneath his ethnic Irish cap

the dancing wee-men of alcohol were eating his brain.

No doubt about that.

A pint of Guinness was lasting him about a minute and a half.

But he wasn't getting  any merrier

no matter how many bitter black jars of it he sunk.

His days of getting  happy-drunk, I guess, were over.

He leaned against the counter in the far back corner

sniggering and guffawing loud and often at his own sad snorts and gags,

trying to undermine the  musicians and performers,

trying to clasp the crowd’s attention to himself.

Not one of the 70 or 80 packed in to the downstairs lounge

of  the International Bar paid him more than  an irritated glance --

he was so easy to ignore,

worse than useless even as a heckler.

He had the bit-o-banter with the barman though, which kept him yapping.

Barmen get on famously with alcoholics.

Some of them are on commission.

The heckler thought it was funny that I was from Cork.

He didn't seem to realise that the oldest and the stupidest jokes

in the world are about people from Cork.

He didn't seem to realise that making jokes about where people are from

or what their accents are like is to  define yourself as lacking.

For me the langered Heckler is just the most boring part of the show.

I've dealt with a plague of them over the years.

They’re really just  props

giving meaning to the lives of bar stools,

shitfaced dummies interminably mouthing the script

of Old  Man Alcohol, the world’s hammiest ventriloquist.

Half the ones I've come across are bones.

Others go to foam with Queen Victoria in the dettol wards,

terrorised and gurgling under  psychiatric sheets

in the companionless inferno of DT’s.

Seized by the bleak pyschedelia

of death by dipsomania

they screech at  giant ants that  aren’t there,

at dogs with tusks and double-headed serpent tongues,

rats  that  thunder down the phlegm-soaked quilt like  hippopotami.

Their skin and eyes burn and run.

Their young dreams vapourise.

I give hecklers all the respect they give to themselves

which is none.

It would be  convenient if there were somewhere safe  and sealed off

to put these people, perhaps one of our abandoned and ghostridden islands,

somebody caring and skilled  to see to their needs, but there isn't.

The bankers have squandered the peace and run off.

All the rest of us can go to fuck.

After the show I climbed the narrow steps out onto Wicklow St

for some space and air. An endless queue of empty taxis

crept by, each desperate driver eyeing me up for a possible score.

I tried my best to seem penniless and like I wasn’t going anywhere.

The heckler was already up there trying to sort out a deal

with a trio of  drugorexic ghetto teens

who were twitching and jerking and quivering

as if connected through their trainers to an  intravenous  upper-grid

running underneath the inner-city footpaths.

It was meths or cut cocaine or speed or whatever was after being cooked up

that night in the flats

for gobshites;

the heckler would drop anything to keep awake and gatting.

The  barman came up to  assist with the negotiating.

Half-cut too, and overheated from the indoor labour, aggressive,

he threw shapes when the kids didn’t like his advice.

They took the cue to rip-off the heckler for a 50 spot and scarper.

The heckler chased them up the street growling 

like a half-assed bear, hoarse and limping,

but the future got away 

from that outmoded bollocks

snortingly

with hands and dosh pocketed.

The heckler retraced his steps

retreating to his public house stronghold,

to that million-chambered catacomb

which will go on robbing him till he’s dead

and buried on the cheap

by our vintner’s government.

Panting and bleary-eyed,

he  tried to tap a yo-yo off me for a pint

but I told him to fuck off.