Tonto Rides off into the Sunset

Strapped into his wheelchair, Tonto's head nods
As though it takes too much effort to raise it.
Stubbornly he rebuffs the nurse's attempts to feed him,
His jaws clenched, his boney fingers drumming the tinnitus
Of the William Tell Overture. Over and over and over.
The music gallops through his mind, iron hooves of rhythm
That never seem to cease, that won't ever give him peace.
He suffers from dementia pugilistica.
He's as punch drunk as any ring-ravaged boxer
From too many pistol butts to the head.

He was always the obliging side-kick,
Ever faithful, willing to take the beat-down,
The whack on the head, or to be tied to a chair
Next to a fuse leading to a keg of dynamite,
Willing to endure pain and to court death
In order to give the Lone Ranger
An opportunity to arrive
Just in the nick of time
To save the day
And make the future bright
For television clichés.

Now, in his few lucid moments,
When he's cognizant enough to observe
The tape on the window screens,
The yellowing of the peeling wallpaper
And to smell the disinfectant that
Almost masks the odor of urine,
He watches his nurse disgustedly scowl at him,
Dump the plate of food she'd been trying to feed him
Into a garbage can and flounce outside
To smoke a cigarette with the good-looking janitor.
.
Tonto wonders bitterly
Why his old friend, Kemosahbee,
Doesn't come around to visit him anymore.