The World’s Last Barman Poet

I am The World’s Last Barman Poet,
apprenticed to Jean-Thomas Cruz,
half-French, half-Spanish wizard
with vodka, lime juice and thesaurus
via a backpacking trip that didn’t
work out, small misunderstanding –
Not drugs, talcum powder, see?
The times I hated Jean-Thomas,
all his prattle about the holy spirit
of cocktails, the preparation
a kind of sacrament, and of course
the importance of abstinence,
when he was tapping my girl
in his hotel suite every chance
he got. I lay in the room below,
wall fan beating its sultry drum,
alert to the trochee of bedsprings,
him, between thrusts, shouting: Twist
of dark rum! Whiskey! Orange juice!
Until one night I added a good slug
of hydrocyanic acid, thus became
The World’s Last ... you get the idea.


-Ian McLachlan