People Say

Baudelaire was left-handed.
People also say he drank. As one
who knows, I can tell you,
there's some truth to each of those
claims. But it's complicated, because
these two life-long compensatory
behaviors are like evil twins who
make their home in his breast;
beneath their pink and cozy
firmament, they squirm like
snakes, if snakes were made of
tar and wax; these devils twist
and braid their breakable bodies
together, and snare the ancient
sounds of what poor strands
of his own remain to him, in any
vague but somehow recognizable
shape that evokes memory from
the perforated, also twisting,
black eels that are all that's left
of his once really quite notable brain.
I can tell you that... and no one
else can, because I'm the one
who knows it. But just as he was fond
of saying when he found himself
near, or more likely already long
past, wit's end, he'd intone with
his crooked smile, but which
I'll forego: “Ah, but I digress.”
I'll spare you the bloody detail,
the grim lot issued by drink, a chit
redeemable only in Hell, one that
daily finds with freshened vengeance
even its lesser acolytes, men nowhere
near so loyal as Lairey. I can tell you
the secret to his effortless, even
graceful, albeit entirely assumed,
left-handedness, though. The simple
quirk of anatomical fact that's behind
that distinctive look he's got; and further,
has got it doubled, actually, that
universally recognized, one sure
give-away that even in silhouette
or shorn of the context of a mate,
still fairly screams: “left hand.”
Well, it's because both of his arms
end in hands whose palms, each
present their respective thumbs
as quite plainly emerging to the
immediate left of the palm's base.
Why, it's the very definition of a
left hand, the classic clinical description,
But, listen, Lairey has two! the same!
one on each side! So, and I suppose
this is the funny part, he could hardly
help but be left-handed, eh? Well,
I shouldn't joke, because actually, it's
far worse where his syndrome
has taken him. It began at birth.
Lairey was a twin, twin grotesquery,
they all said, because, as it happened,
his dominant brother, in the womb,
took most of the limited supply
of toes they'd been issued. Poor
Lairey's two feet, opposites, thank
the Lord, had to get on with but
a single toe, between them.
You'd drink, too, I think.
Plus, already his eldest son has arranged
that once the old bounder's finally
drunk himself clear through to death,
he gets the hands, and that,
free and unencumbered.