she had an uncle who spent twenty years in the ring, landing solid blows until he landed in a downtown Oakland hotel, older than he, wrecking ball got it in the dawn of the cyber age but for ten droning years, it was his cage
he never had a title shot but he kept his belly full and had cash for the women, the drink never drove a car, cabbies knew him and knew the smell of gin meant “keep the change”
when his legs got weak and his left eye went to blur the money stopped rolling in but he still thirsted for the gym, the gin he got himself a gig at Big G’s just enough hours to clean out the showers, to keep the johns from smelling of ****, and a few greenbacks comin’ his way
he would end each day alone in his room, inhaling the gloom that seeped over the transom like smoke from a smoldering fire but there was no fire left in the ancient hotel or Parrot’s burned up belly only fading memories of a wounded warrior who taunted his opponents by mimicking every word they said in the ring, where he earned a bird’s name but never its sweet song, before time took its tattered toll