Poems by Tom Peeler Don Johnsoning How could he hold his head up again, when the booze and the dope wore off, knowing what he'd given the celluloid coils, a pastel period proof, gun toting fake as the unruined look on his thirty-something face. Later he would work cynicism into the act, a classic American sports coup, the other coast, the hipper Frisco hills; once there had been a boy and his dog, surviving beyond apocalypse, that cowboy kid willing to kill, the ever-beckoning big sky. Now this microwave cocktail smile, disintegrating to a half-cocked sneer, a face bronzed indoors, a string of blackout years, games tables and blondes, a biography of bar scenes, all the while another comeback cooking, another shell game, another face.   ©2003 Tim Peeler