For Shel, George And Me Poem by david lessard

You crazy little Frenchman!
Do you really have Indian blood in you?
Or is that just a coverup for the way that you get after you been drinking firewater?
All I know is that your life revealed to me a deep melancholy, interspersed by drinking binges.
Was happiness ever really yours?
And if so, for how long?
We all (the 3 of us) tried to find happiness in a bottle or out of a can.
We faked it for a lot of years.
But ours was an alcoholic happiness and that's not real.
Hey Miller- I never suspected that you were an alky.
Of course you drank too much. (Like Lefty and me)
When they carted you off to the funny farm, I didn't realize that you were 'drying out.'
They said that you'd drink anything.
Remember the night you drank a bottle of Vanilla Extract? (You probably don't)
You used to scream that you were a Seneca and drive through plate-glass windows. Does Rose know about that?
You can't make love grow and foster,
with a beer bottle in your paw.
I have Micmac blood in me (A Canadian tribe) .
So the family history goes.
Sheldon claimed that he was an Iroquois.
We're all Inidans of a sort I guess.
Lefty died at age sixty.
The booze got to him.
George, you haven't had a dropp in what, twenty-six years now?
Me? I still drink, but not to excess.
I indulged ennough back then.
So, my friends, here's to you...
new lifes, new loves, and new beginnings.