wheeling the old man

Wheeling the old man
against the flow of traffic,
he tells his tale
from beyond the pale
of life as an unwilling maverick.

A pause on the tracks,
all is calm, if not humdrum.
Some rats,
then some tats,
tear holes in Alexander's rectum.

I like to get out, he says.
My mother lets me; why not them?
We shake hands, depart;
he enters the mart,
buys a forty en route to Bethlehem.