Lives of the Poets: Billy Viscous

Billy Viscous, also known as King Heroin III, was a Mumbled Word Artist who performed on the Poetry Nod circuit (also sometimes referred to as the Anti-Slam circuit). His first chapbook, entitled Walt Whitman was a Phony, was published when he was fifteen. He had all of Edna Millay’s sonnets committed to memory and he began his readings by reciting one of them as an invocation – most often either “Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare…” or “Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!” His stage costumes were always some variant of what a gentleman in the Augustan age wore. Mimosa O’Toole created his signature outfit – a three-piece suit composed of tailcoat, waistcoat and breeches of green silk velvet. The stories he told between poems consisted of outré descriptions of things like the notorious activities of the Hell Fire Club at Sir Francis Dashwood’s estate, and the opium habits of Thomas De Quincey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But there was one big secret that Billy never shared with anyone, apart from Mimosa. The fact is that he wasn’t a junkie, and had indeed never even tried heroin. At one time he did have a taste for smoking skunk but he eventually gave that up because it made him too paranoid. Nowadays he contented himself with rather pricey white wines imbibed in moderation.