Triumph

"Georgie Boy, you ain't dead yet,"
Midnight to eight
Mission man said.

Sure as hell he thought he was
Twenty times in jail or Bellevue
When he wasn't begging
NYU or Stuyvesant,

But jail was a bad boy
Half his age whose cock fight
Left a ghostly sight
Of red eyes pummeled black.

"Death of the Hired Man"
I thought, paraphrasing Frost:
Closest thing to home he had,
And they had to take him in.

It stopped at twenty-five.
"Five years now," mission man said.
Hasn't touched a drop since then.
Georgie Boy still ain't dead.