Old cirrhotics, alone and ashamed, seek lost childhoods.

Perspectives awash in a yellow hue and reeking of ammonia.

Young addicts, permanently linger with one foot in blackened shadows.

Synapses fried, aberrant collateral sprouting creating new obtunded realities.

Appeasers and approval seekers hem and haw, never receiving what they need.

Paradigms of thought and self-abuse permanently branded by only the pain that children can feel.

Thieves, wife-beaters, perverts, miscreants, and the vapid rich all gather together.

They silently scream for a cure, for a dissipation of their self-loathing.

We offer B-12, folate, and perhaps even a banana bag —

Admixed with various temporizing “Band-Aids.”

Always, always with an eye on diposition, and an undertone of disapproval and disgust.