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Clifford

Bill Tope

Clifford sat slouched in the park,
beneath a snow-laden maple tree,
scribbling furiously in a small tablet.
Shivering violently, he wrote:

The night was dark/the clouds were
blue/down the alley/the Shit-Wagon
flew/a shot was fired/a scream was
heard/a woman was killed/by a
flying turd!

Clifford lay back satisfied; his daily task of
writing a poem now complete. It mattered
little that he had written the identical poem
each of the last three days; his chore was
complete One couldn’t rush the creative
process, he knew. Now he could reward
himself by getting high. He smirked to
himself.

Suiting the action to the word, he drew
from his winter coat a Baggie containing
a quantity of potent homegrown marijuana.
He stuck two fingers into the bag and
extracted some leaves, with which he
filled a tiny sheet of stark white cigarette
paper. In no time he had expertly rolled
a tight cylinder of pot.

Sticking the joint between blue lips, he
lighted the pot and inhaled lustily.
Contentedly he released a vast cloud of
frosty, smoke-filled vapor. The acrid scent
of the pot attracted the attention of a middle-
aged policeman who was lurking nearby,
killing time in the confines of his police
cruiser.

Alighting from the car, the cop approached
Clifford and, tapping his baton menacingly
against his own leg, muttered darkly, “You
know, a couple years ago I coulda’ busted
youse for smoking pot in this neighborhood.”

Clifford, bothered by this comment not at all,
responded by taking another prodigious hit
off his reefer. The fiery end burned brightly.
Holding the smoke in his lungs for an extra
long time, he released it with a studied
satisfaction. “Illinois cleared over a billion
in pot taxes last quarter,” he pointed out with
another smirk. “So,” he went on, “this vice
is nice.” His eyes now very bloodshot, his
pupils dilated to the size of dimes, Clifford
smirked once more, glanced up at the cop,
who frowned.

“I don’t suppose you got a job,” ventured
the cop gruffly. Maybe he could nail the
disheveled pothead on a charge of
vagrancy. “I certainly do,” answered the
other man, climbing unsteadily to his
feet and batting snow from his
shoulders. “Doin’ what?” asked the cop.
“Garbage Collector?” He sneered.
“I’m a poet,” said Clifford rather
superciliously. “Then lemme hear one
of your poems,” challenged the man
with the gun.

In reply, Clifford passed over the tablet in
which he had been writing. The cop read,
made a puzzled face. “What’s this ‘shit-
wagon’ business?” he asked. “Sounds
familiar.” He furrowed his brow. “That’s
my stock in trade,” Clifford told him. “It’s
the brand name of a simply righteous
new state-grown pot, cultivated on the
shaded hillls of Peoria.”
“Then, you work for...” began the cop,
wonder dawning in his eyes.

“That’s right,” said Clifford smugly. “I
work in the Marketng Department of
The Illinois Department of Controlled
Recreational Substances--IDCRS.”
“Yes!” said the cop with enthusiasm.
“I know. And my kids just love you.
You’re the guys that thought up the
All-Day PCP Patch and the Meth
Madness Scratch-Off Cards! We
use your products all the time.”

Clifford took a bow or two, then
strolled off, still sucking avidly on his
roach. As he watched him depart the
cop observed with newfound respect
the acclaimed Poet Laureate for the
State of Illinois.

He knew that the other man was the
second highest paid state worker, after
only the governor himself. But for all
of that, he thought soberly, the poet
was just another chemical-state pimp.

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